Maliku Development Society Minicoy

Vineeta has a Ph.D in cultural geography and has done research on traditional lifestyles of indigenous people in remote areas. The recipient of the Asia Pacific Post doctoral fellowship from the East West Centre, Hawaii, the Freda Bage fellowship of the Australian federation of university women and a Norwegian Research Council Research Fellowship. Her quest to understand traditional knowledge in sustainable utilization of ecological resources has lead her to live amongst the Trans-Himalayan nomads, Lakshadweep Islanders,  and the Sámi reindeer herders in the Arctic. She is the author of the book, Living on the Move, the Bhotiyas of the Kumaon Himalayas, (Sage:1996).  She is a founder trustee of the Centre for Action Research on Environment, Science and Society (CARESS). This was set up out to help stem the rapid loss of cultural and natural biodiversity and focuses on the revival of traditional values amongst island and mountain people through awareness and integration of community based livelihoods with conservation. To integrate marine examples in environment education, she has co-authored The Children’s Perception of the Environment: a teachers toolkit for coastal and marine areas in Asia, published in 2009, by IUCN.  Vineeta has been at the heart of coral reef affairs involving the island communities in the South Asia region. since 1997.  she has worked as consultant for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), CORDIO, ICRAN . IUCN and is the lead author of the SOCMON SA guidelines and Regional Coordinator for SOCMON South Asia. She has been associated with Minicoy since 1989. This was when she first came here to research the situation of women on the islands and suggest alternative livelihoods. More recently she has helped catelogue all the items in the Maliku Museum.