FEATURED AUTHOR

Shangrila Joshi

Associate Professor
The Evergreen State College

Dr. Shangrila Joshi is a scholar interested in the human dimensions of global climate change, with a focus on environmental and climate justice, and institutions of commons governance. Her academic preparation is in the fields of Environmental Studies, Geography, and International Affairs. Her research has examined global climate policy and politics, within a political ecology theoretical framework. She is interested in continuing these investigations through the lens of Newa Indigeneity.

Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Geography

Biography

Dr. Joshi is a Member of the Faculty in Climate Justice at The Evergreen State College. She has a doctoral degree in Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy, with Geography as the focal discipline, from the University of Oregon; a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Ohio University; and a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Environmental Sciences from St. Xavier’s College, Kathmandu University. Her dissertation 'Justice, Development, and India's Claim to Environmental Space: A Postcolonial Political Ecology of the Atmospheric Commons' examined North-South climate politics leading up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, focused on the position of India on debates and negotiations to create a fair burden-sharing agreement for global climate mitigation. Her post-Ph.D. research has critically examined the Clean Development Mechanism and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) as they have been implemented within Nepal, with an eye towards understanding how they are transforming social relations in the local context, particularly as they relate to the forest commons. Shangrila is a Newar from Lalitpur, Nepal, and spent her formative years there, as well as in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Kabul, Afghanistan. She is fluent in Nepali, Nepal Bhasa (Newa Bhaye), Hindi, and English. She is the proud mother of a delightful young man who has cheerfully accompanied her on most research journeys; and who amazes her everyday with his thoughtfulness, intelligence, creativity, and self-discipline.

Education

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Dr. Joshi's academic expertise is in the areas of environmental and climate justice, political ecology, critical development studies, and global climate politics.

Personal Interests

"As of 2021, I realize I have spent an equal number of years, 19, in my home country of Nepal, and in my adoptive country of the United States," says Dr. Joshi, adding that she has also lived in Bangladesh and Afghanistan for five years. "The tensions between rootedness and mobility, and the connections between place, ritual, and identity are of immense interest to me. While growing up in Nepal, I was immersed in Newar culture and traditions at home, but was steeped in Western epistemological and ontological approaches of understanding the world within spaces of formal education." Having lived and worked in the 'West' for almost two decades, she now feels "a burning desire to advance my scholarly knowledge and understanding of Newar identity, culture, and ecological practices. I have started to research the Guthi, which I understand as a multi-faceted Newar cultural institution that shapes much social and cultural life in the Kathmandu Valley, and historically served as a form of resource governance." Dr. Joshi is currently interested in studying the history of the Guthi, in order to understand its broader significance for social and ecological resilience.

Books

Featured Title

Routledge Handbook of Global Environmental Politics 2e - 2nd Edition book cover

Climate Change Justice and Global Resource Commons - Joshi - 1st Edition book cover

Routledge Handbook of Global Environmental Politics NIP - 1st Edition book cover

Articles

Book Review Fora: Climate Change Justice and Global Resource Commons

Published: Apr 12, 2024 by The AAG Review of Books
Authors: Dinesh Paudel, Brandon Derman, Galen Murton, Costanza Rampini, and Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Asian Studies, Geography

In this review forum article, four geographers offer commentary on Joshi's 2021 book 'Climate Change Justice and Global Resource Commons: Local and Global Postcolonial Political Ecologies' with Joshi offering a response. This forum article builds on an 'Author Meets Critics' panel discussion on the book that was held during the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers.

Book Review Fora: Struggles for Climate Justice

Published: Apr 10, 2024 by The AAG Review of Books
Authors: Tracey Osborne, Patrick Bond, Zoltan Grossman, Jennifer Rice, Shangrila Joshi, and Brandon Derman
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Law, Geography

In this review forum article, five geographers offer commentary on Brandon Derman's 2020 book 'Struggles for Climate Justice: Uneven Geographies and the Politics of Connection' with Joshi offering one of the commentaries. This forum article builds on an 'Author Meets Critics' panel discussion on the book that was held during the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers.

Climate Justice: Taking Back the Commons

Published: Dec 05, 2023 by Climate, Science and Society: A Primer
Authors: Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Asian Studies, Geography

This book chapter reviews key frameworks in understanding different dimensions of climate justice, namely, distributive, participatory, and transformative justice, and argues for more expansive understandings of participatory and transformative justice. Drawing on research on Nepal's community forestry and Newa Guthi, the author illustrates how reclaiming the commons is critical for transformative climate justice; and argues that epistemic justice is central to the success of these imperatives.

North-South Relations: Colonialism, Empire and International Order.

Published: Mar 25, 2022 by Routledge Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, edited by Paul Harris, 2nd edition.
Authors: Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Political Science, Geography

This book chapter provides an updated overview of the history and contemporary status of North-South relations, with a particular focus on how these dynamics have been shaped by and in turn how they have shaped prospects for addressing global environmental change. It surveys the development of global environmental politics and scholarly debates about the validity of the geographical categories Global North and Global South and how they intersect with conversations in critical development theory.

The Poetics and Politics of Nature

Published: Feb 07, 2020 by Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
Authors: Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Geography

This article reviews poet and fellow Evergreen faculty member Professor Leonard Schwartz' books of poetry IF, At Element, Capitol Forest, and The New Babel. It reads and analyzes Schwartz' eco-poetics through a lens of political ecology; discusses the complementarity of the two approaches of seeking to understand and articulate nature-society dynamics; and reflects on the worthwhile challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration between these two seemingly incommensurable intellectual endeavors.

REDD+ and the Forest Commons in Nepal

Published: Nov 22, 2019 by Voices from the Sylff Community
Authors: Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Geography

Shangrila Joshi held workshops and a forum on REDD+, one of the climate mitigation initiatives, for forest community users in Nepal, with funding from Sylff Leadership Initiatives. Although REDD+ is widely promoted as a global effort to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, Joshi argues that the implementation of associated projects often lacks informed consent by all stakeholders, and it is often the case that community forest users are left out from the discussion.

Collaborative Teaching and Interdisciplinary Learning in Graduate Environmental Studies

Published: Jan 30, 2018 by Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences
Authors: Kevin Francis, Martha Henderson, Erin Martin, Kathleen Saul, and Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability

This article discusses strategies for fostering interdisciplinary and collaborative learning goals in the field of Environmental Studies. The authors, who are faculty members in The Evergreen State College’s Graduate Program on the Environment, have designed and team-taught numerous graduate programs together. In this article, they reflect on 30 years of graduate teaching, learning, and collaborations, including the challenge of creating equitable social dynamics in teaching teams.

Household Use of Biogas Systems in the Developing World

Published: May 02, 2016 by Center for Sustainable Infrastructure
Authors: Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Geography

This article presents an overview of a climate mitigation program, the Clean Development Mechanism, as it has been implemented in Nepal in the context of alternative energy projects, specifically biogas. Drawing on fieldwork conducted during 2013, it describes how the biogas projects are understood to contribute to global greenhouse gas reduction as well as locally relevant sustainable development, before going on to raise critical questions about their implementation and purported benefits.

Visceral Geographies of Whiteness and Invisible Microaggressions

Published: Jul 17, 2015 by ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies
Authors: Shangrila-Priscilla-Elizabeth Joshi-McCutcheon-Sweet
Subjects: Geography

This article draws on Critical Race Theory, and theories of racial microaggressions and visceral geographies to analyze the experiences of geographers of color in the United States, showing how whiteness permeates the social, institutional, and intellectual spaces of geography at multiple scales. The article is the outcome of an AAG/NSF funded collaborative research project involving focus group interviews conducted at the 2012 Race, Ethnicity, and Place Conference held in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Postcoloniality and the North-South Binary Revisited: The Case of India’s Climate Politics

Published: Apr 11, 2015 by Handbook of Political Ecology, edited by Raymond Bryant, Edward Elgar.
Authors: Shangrila Joshi
Subjects: Environment and Sustainability, Geography

This book chapter takes stock of various strands of argument within postcolonial theory, bringing them in conversation with one another and with critical geopolitics and global environmental politics to elucidate the ways in which North-South power dynamics are being contested and re-inscribed in the context of global climate politics. The author invites political ecologists and other critical scholars to be reflexive about their possible complicity with the status quo.

+ view more