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Update – 13th March 2025 – The 19th SANDEE Summer School has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstance.

The Summer School primarily aims to provide economists with the basic skills necessary to teach and conduct environmental and natural resource economics research. The course is intended for practicing junior to mid-career economists from South Asia and the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region interested in enhancing their knowledge of the interlinkages among economic development, poverty, and the environment. The Summer School will also help participants develop research proposals that can later be submitted to SANDEE for its research grant competition.

 

About SANDEE

SANDEE at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) supports ICIMOD’s programmatic work and strengthens the Centre’s economic and policy analysis. It is a research capacity and academic leadership development network that works in South Asia and the HKH region. SANDEE supports researchers from the region and institutions interested in understanding the interconnections between economic development, the environment, and the use of natural resources through rigorous research and training.

 

What does the Summer School cover?

The Summer School course will cover economic issues underlying sustainable development, biodiversity, energy, externalities and market failure, policy instruments, non-market valuation, impact evaluation, poverty–environment interactions, and natural resource use and pollution management. Participants will be exposed to theoretical issues and economic tools used in applied environmental economics research, combined with hands-on computer lab sessions for analysing environmental problems in developing countries.

List of faculty Members

  • Eli Fenichel, Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, Yale School of the Environment, Yale University.
  • K. Enamul Haque, Professor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and Academic Advisor, University College Sedaya International (UCSI) Bangladesh Branch Campus.
  • M. Tanvir Hussain, Environmental Economist, SANDEE-ICIMOD.
  • Madhu Khanna, Distinguished Professor, Environmental Economics, College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  • Mani Nepal, Programme Coordinator, SANDEE, and Lead Economist, ICIMOD.
  • Subhrendu K. Pattanayak, Oak Foundation Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Energy Policy, Duke University.
  • Joyashree Roy, Distinguished Professor, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT).

Additional guest speakers will be invited depending on the need and availability.

Organisation

Mani Nepal, Programme Coordinator, SANDEE, and Lead Economist, ICIMOD, is the course director; A. M. Tanvir Hussain (Environmental Economist, SANDEE) and Manashree Newa (Senior Programme Associate, SANDEE), will administer the course.

Who can attend the course?

The ideal participant should have a master’s degree (with a few years of work experience) or a PhD in economics and a good understanding of microeconomics, calculus, and basic econometrics. Junior to mid-career faculty and researchers are encouraged to apply. Priority will be given to qualified female faculty members and researchers who have submitted a research proposal to SANDEE on issues related to environmental and resource economics.

Those who have already received training in environmental and resource economics through other programmes or universities or are likely to go overseas for higher education within the next few years are not eligible. Researchers from outside the HKH/South Asia region or are from the region but living outside the HKH/South Asia are not eligible.

What are you expected to do during the course?

The SANDEE Summer School is an intensive residential teaching workshop (around 90 contact hours, equivalent to a two-semester course). Participants are expected to read up on the topic of each day’s lecture beforehand and participate in individual and group assignments and discussions. Working days, on occasion, will extend from 9 am to 9 pm or beyond based on assignment demands. All participants are required to review and present an empirical paper and develop a research concept note and present it at the last segment of the summer school.

Funding

There are three types of seats available at the Summer School:

  1. a) Self-funded. Participants are responsible for covering their travel, accommodation, meals, visa (if needed), and other miscellaneous expenses.
  2. b) Partially funded. Participants are responsible for travel-related expenses, and SANDEE will cover hotel, food, etc.
  3. c) Fully funded. SANDEE will provide a few scholarships worth USD 4,500 (equivalent) per participant to cover course materials, international travel, meals, and accommodation during Summer School.

Please note that support will be based on need, and no cash will be provided. Applicants are requested to indicate their preference in their application. The number of seats in each category is limited as we will invite around 24 participants. All participants, including SANDEE-funded, are responsible for their local travel arrangements, travel insurance, visa fees, and other personal expenses. All shortlisted participants are required to pay a non-refundable registration fee of USD 250 to confirm their seat.

Update – 13th March 2025 – The 19th SANDEE Summer School has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstance.

Faculty profile

Eli Fenichel is currently the Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics at the Yale School of the Environment, Yale University. He is interested in approaching natural resource management and sustainability as a portfolio management problem by considering natural resources as a form of capital. A significant part of his research focuses on valuing and accounting for natural capital, particularly through benefit-cost analysis and national accounting, with an emphasis on scalable and replicable measurements. He has also worked on understanding how people respond to risks, especially those posed by infectious diseases, and how these responses impact system dynamics. He was an assistant director in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2021 to 2023. He has a PhD in Fisheries and Wildlife and a Master of Science in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University.

A. K. Enamul Haque is Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Academic Advisor at University College Sedaya International (UCSI), Bangladesh Branch Campus and Executive Director at the Asian Center for Development. With a prolific career spanning decades, his expertise lies in environmental economics, climate change, and sustainable development. A leading voice in policy circles, Haque’s research contributions have significantly influenced national and international dialogues on environmental policy formulation and economic development strategies. He holds master’s degrees in economics and agricultural economics, and a doctoral degree in natural resource economics from the University of Guelph, Canada. Haque has been a SANDEE faculty advisor for the past 20 years.

A. M. Tanvir Hussain is currently an Environmental Economist at SANDEE-ICIMOD. He is an applied environmental economist by training, his work focuses on using economic principles to tackle environmental challenges, particularly related to biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate change, and project impact assessments. He is currently on leave from his position as Associate Professor of Economics at East West University in Bangladesh, where he has taught courses in microeconomic theory, mathematical economics, environmental economics, and environmental valuation. Tanvir has also worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Lueneburg and later at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He holds a PhD in Economics degree from the University of Wyoming, USA, with a specialisation in environmental and natural resource economics.

Madhu Khanna is the Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences (ACES) distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics and Alvin H. Baum Family Chair and Director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research is at the intersection of agricultural, energy and environmental economics. She has served on the USEPA Science Advisory Board for 10 years and as a Chair/member of panels and advisory committees for NIFA, USEPA, NSF and the National Academy of Sciences. She has also served on the Board of Directors of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE). She is a University of Illinois Scholar, Stanford Woods Institute of Environment Leopold Leadership Fellow, AAEA Fellow and past President, fellow of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), and member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Agricultural Economics.

Mani Nepal is the SANDEE Programme Coordinator and Lead Economist at ICIMOD. He manages SANDEE’s research activities, coordinates training programmes, and mentors SANDEE researchers. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the Agriculture and Forestry University and an Associate Professor at Tribhuvan University in Nepal; an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, USA; a Visiting Professor at Kathmandu University, and a distinguished Visiting Professor at Kyoto University. He has also held the position of Senior Economist at the Department of Finance and Administration, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. He has an MS degree in policy economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a PhD in environmental/development economics and applied econometrics from the University of New Mexico, USA.

Subhrendu K. Pattanayak is the Oak Foundation Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Energy Policy, Duke University, USA. Professor Pattanayak is also a Faculty Fellow of SANDEE and a Research Advisor to the Environment for Development Initiative (EFD Initiative). He received his PhD in Environmental Economics from Duke University and MS from Purdue University, USA. He studies the causes and consequences of human behaviours related to the natural environment to help design and evaluate policy interventions in low-income tropical countries. His research is in three domains at the intersection of environment, development, health and energy: household energy, environmental health and forest ecosystem services. He has focused on design of institutions and policies that are motivated by inequities and a range of efficiency concerns (e.g., externalities, imperfect information).

Joyashree Roy is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand. She is also the Founder Director of the Centre on South and Southeast Asia Multidisciplinary Applied Research Network on Transforming Societies of Global South (SMARTS) at AIT. She is a former Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University, India and is a National Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research (ICSSR). She was a Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley. She is a Founding Advisor of the Global Change Programme and Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SYLFF) Project at Jadavpur University. She was part of the IPCC 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning team and served as a Coordinating Lead Author of Working Group III of the IPCC in the 4th, 5th and 6th cycles. She has been a Chapter Author of the Global Energy Assessment and part of the winning team of the 2012 Prince Sultan Bin Aziz Award for Water. She has published more than 180 peer-reviewed journal articles on issues related to environmental and energy economics.