Dr. Shubhechchha Sharma

 Dr. Shubhechchha Sharma 

  Nationality: Nepal

  Institution: Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota

  Website: https://environment.umn.edu/staff/shubhechchha-sharma/ 

Bio: 

Dr. Shubhechchha Sharma, from Kathmandu, Nepal, is a researcher at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment (IonE). She is an interdisciplinary scholar focusing on resilience to climate shocks, developing frameworks, and improving climate services for underserved communities in collaboration with federal partners. She is a member of the Resilience Alliance Young Scholars (RAYS) and a founding member of the Ostrom Center for the Advanced Study in Natural Resource Governance (OCeAN). Dr. Sharma holds a PhD in Community Sustainability from Michigan State University and a Master's in Natural Resources Management from the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. Over 12 years, Dr. Sharma has worked across South and Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, collaborating with academia, community-based organizations, practitioners, and policymakers. In South and Southeast Asia, she co-led multi-country policy research on REDD+ for biodiversity conservation, emission reduction, and poverty alleviation in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Myanmar. Her work was instrumental in devising benefit-sharing mechanisms and legal frameworks for climate action. In Nepal, Dr. Sharma facilitated the Local Adaptation Programme for Action (LAPA) and the Community Adaptation Programme for Action (CAPA), enhancing local resilience through community-developed adaptation plans integrated with development goals. She also piloted an ‘adaptation plan health check-up tool’ to assess the effectiveness and sustainability of CAPAs and LAPAs in reducing vulnerability and improving socioeconomic conditions. In Sub-Saharan Africa, her resilience assessments in Tanzania and Ethiopia's dryland agro-pastoral systems have provided valuable insights and identified crucial actions to mitigate disturbances, contributing to the global understanding of climate resilience in agro-pastoral social-ecological systems.

Relevant skills on climate change adaptation: 

Social-ecological resilience; participatory research; collective action; institutions; monitoring and evaluation of adaptation plans; vulnerability assessment; policy research; policy practice gaps; collaboration; decision support.