Dr. TEK JUNG MAHAT

Visiting Fellow

Email: tmahat[at]gmail[dot]com

      

PROFILE

Tek Jung Mahat started his professional career in 2003-2004 with a brief assignment with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)/ Mountain Partnership (MP) project on mountain products, where he researched on local mountain products in Karnali. Then, he moved to national NGOs – Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) and Nepal River Conservation Trust (NRCT), where he co-led projects on “Science for society” along with famed journalist Mr. Bhairav Risal, and on “river conservation and ecotourism” along with renowned environmental activist Mr. Megh Ale. During 2004-2008, Dr. Mahat took several teaching assignments in Nepal, with government and private colleges, where he taught ecology, environmental education, environmental economics and climate change to undergraduate environmental science students.

 

During his second term at ICIMOD from 2005-2013, Dr. Mahat initially worked with the Mountain Forum Secretariat (MFS) on knowledge management and communications. Later he moved to the Integrated Knowledge Management (IKM) Programme, where is managed several Asia-Pacific and Himalaya regional projects including the Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN), the “Mountain Thematic Node” of the Asia Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN), and the Asia-Pacific Decentralised Hub of the Mountain Partnership. He also co managed the transition phase of the Himalayan University Consortium (HUC), ICIMOD’s Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) funded Rio+20 Project, the World Bank (WB) and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Kathmandu funded Mountain Initiative (MI) Project to support regional governments of Nepal, India and Bhutan to implement national and regional initiatives, and co-led/facilitated ICIMOD’s participation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) and other regional processes. He developed the first Mountain – “Youth” and “Media” initiatives and trained over 600 youth from over 25 Asia Pacific countries and 100 media persons from greater South Asia region on SMD, climate solutions and the green economy. Many of the youth climate initiatives in Asian countries are now led by these alumni.  In 2014, he joined the Government of Nepal’s (GoN) Building Climate Resilience of Watersheds in Mountain Eco-Regions (BCRWME) project co-funded and co-operated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Nordic Development Fund’s (NDF) and Nepal.

 

Since November 2019, Dr. Mahat has been working at the Masaryk University (MU) in the Czech Republic as a Foreign Research Scholar. His current research focuses on climate policy, governance, finance and adaptation planning.

 

Dr. Mahat holds a master’s degree in Environmental Science from Tribhuvan University (TU), Nepal and a PhD in Environmental Health Science from Europe, where he served as an Erasmus Mundus PhD fellow to research on “Climate Policy and Governance in Developing Mountainous Countries”. He was born, raised, and schooled in Jumla, Karnali Province, Nepal.