MESM 2025
Pronouns: he/him
Bio
Shivank’s interest in environmental issues sparked during a law firm internship where he worked on a landmark case concerning groundwater pollution in Kerala, India. He graduated from National Law University Odisha, India in 2017, with an integrated bachelors in business administration and law. Since then, he has worked in the areas of rural development, law and human rights.
He was a State Bank of India (SBI) Youth for India fellow in rural south India where he collaborated with a women’s collective and set up a waste upcycling enterprise. Over the last three years, Shivank has worked at the Legal Resource Centre in New Delhi and Vasundhara, Odisha, providing legal support to environmental justice movements and grassroots activists. He has advocated for rights-based conservation policies and forest tenurial security of India’s ‘Adivasi’ (indigenous) communities under the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
At Bren, Shivank has been awarded the Forest Sustainability Fellowship and will specialize in environmental policy with a focus in strategic environmental communications. His interest lies in sustainable agriculture and food systems, democratization of forest governance, and political ecology of conservation. He is also keen to research the implementation of nature-based solutions resulting in climate injustice in the global south.