Photo: Kandarp Patel
The 2017 Nehru Humanitarian Award in Memory of Prem Goel has been awarded to Liu Scholar and PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, Sameer Shah. He specializes in water security and governance at the rural-urban divide, with a focus on developing evidence-based policy recommendations to protect vulnerable peoples facing socio-hydrological change in global South regions. Shah’s doctoral research examines the equitability and sustainability of drought relief interventions across Western India, with a specific emphasis on tracing the institutional politics behind who is made water secure and who is not. Currently he is concluding related work at the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Research Center (SESYNC) at the University of Maryland, where he co-leads a project exploring large-scale patterns and underlying reasons explaining certain adaptation strategies for over one-thousand smallholder farmers in norther India in the context of hydro-climatic change. Shah is also actively involved in water policy planning in British Columbia and across Canada. He holds an 18-month appointment as the President of the Canadian Water Network’s Student and Young Professional Committee. Shah is also a SESYNC Graduate Research Fellow, and Governor General Gold Medalist at The University of British Columbia’s Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability and their Program on Water Governance.
Photo: Kandarp Patel
Photo: Kandarp Patel