Dr. Pratap Kumar Shrestha is a socio-economist by profession, and has over 20 years of research and development experience in South Asia. His work focused on enhancing livelihoods of resource poor farmers through sustainable agriculture, biodiversity conservation and utilization, and natural resource management with emphasis on gender and social inclusion, community empowerment, sustainable development. He has extensive experience in community-based in-situ on-farm conservation and utilization of agricultural biodiversity, including policy and legal issues associated with farmers’ rights, and access and benefit sharing from the use of the genetic resources. He has high appreciation for farmers’ knowledge and innovation, and firmly believes in building on these to promote farmer-led and participatory research and development interventions. Dr. Shrestha has worked with a wide range of partners from farming communities to national and international research and development institutions.

Dr. Shrestha holds MSc degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of East Anglia, UK; and PhD degree in local knowledge and participatory technology development from the University of Wales, UK. He served as Executive Director of Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD), a Nepal based NGO for 5 years and as Technical Advisor for six months. Dr. Shrestha is serving as Regional Representative and Scientific Advisor for USC Canada Asia Office in Nepal since December 1, 2009.