Ram Pandit

Being grown up in a Nepalese village, I have experienced closely the role of forests on subsistence economy, which partly led me to pursue undergraduate study in Forestry Sciences from Tribhuwan University (Institute of Forestry) in Nepal. Upon completion of BSc in 1994, I initially worked as an Agro-ecological Research Site Coordinator at Lumle Agricultural Research Centre, a centre funded by the then ODA of the British Government, for 3 years (1995-1998) and later worked with the Government of Nepal (Department of Forests) as a Forester for 3 years (1998-2001). The Fulbright Scholarship in 2001 took me to the State University of New York, College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry to pursue Master’s degree in Forest Resources Management. As a part of Master’s thesis I conducted a research to examine the impacts of Community Forestry on forest products supply and environmental outcomes among selected community forests in Nepal. A PhD research assistantship offer from Auburn University to work on ‘human dimensions of species fragility’ took me to Auburn in 2003 for an Applied Economics PhD, which I completed in 2007. With the change in focus from forest resource management to applied economics, I studied economics and statistics while pursuing PhD that eventually led me to earn MS in Economics and MS in Probability and Statistics degrees. In my PhD research, I analysed socio-economic determinants of threatened species among countries using spatial econometric techniques. Then prior to joining UWA in 2009, I spent 2 years at Auburn as a Postdoctoral Fellow working on an urban forestry project that examined the economic impact of tree shade on energy consumption in urban homes.

Conservation and development
Ecotourism and cultural tourism
Proected area management
Land degradation and restoration
Soil conservation and watershed management
Effectivenss of land degradation responses
Economics of biodiversity conservation
Biodiversity offsets
Payment for ecosystem services
Valuation of threatened species
Valuation of urban greenery
Forest economics and policy

*2015 [Co-Project Leader] of “Project 6.1 Quantifying benefits and costs of threatened-species management in rural and regional economies”, with David Pannell, Kerstin Zander (CDU) and Stephen Garnett (CDU); National Environmental Science Program, Threatened Species Recovery Hub, Department of the Environment and Energy, Australian Government, AU$503,000 (AU$826,048 In kind), 2015-2020.
* 2013 PI ‘Forests, Ecosystem Services and Communities: Lessons from Nepal Himalaya’, UWA Research Collaboration Award, AU$ 11,583 (with R. Marchant of York, S. Sallu of Leeds).
* 2012-2013 CI ‘Resilient pasts and sustainable futures? The social-ecological dynamics of East African landscapes in temporal, spatial and social perspectives’,World Universities Network Development Fund, £20K (with R. Marchant of York, S. Sallu of Leeds and Petra Tschakert of Penn State).
* 2011-2012 PI ‘The value of urban trees in the Perth metropolitan area: a hedonic analysis of home sale prices, UWA Research Development Award, AU$ 24,178 (with M. Polyakov and R. Sadler).
* 2007-2008 CI ‘Trees and Residential Electricity Demand: A Large-Scale Multivariate Empirical Analysis’ ‘The National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council (NUCFAC), US$238,817 (with PI David Laband, Auburn University, USA)

Natural resource economics
Environmental economics
Application of economic valuation techniques (hedonic pricing)
Forest policy and management
Urban and community forestry
Payment for ecosystem services
Ecotourism and protected area management
Biodiversity conservation
Valuation of threatened species