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Sean Foley
EcoAsia Limited, Human Ecology and Environmental Advisors

 

Sean Foley was born in England and migrated to Australia in 1952. His first exposure to Asia was an extended visit to India and Nepal in 1969-70, traveling widely in both countries. In the mid-1970s, while living in Perth, he started traveling frequently to Indonesia. He returned to university (Murdoch, Western Australia) to study Natural Resource Management and conducted field research for a year in 1979 on the changes in ecology, energetics and economics of rice cultivation in Bali caused by the Green Revolution. On the basis of this work, he was awarded a doctoral scholarship to Australian National University and returned to Bali for further research (1981-83) on the effects of modernisation on agriculture and changing patterns of income and expenditure in three rural villages. His doctoral dissertation in Human Ecology was called “The Ecological Transformation in Bali.” He built a house in Sayan in 1981.Since the late 1980s he and his wife Melody (a writer and Samdhana Fellow) have worked and lived almost continuously in Asia, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Vietnam, and, currently, Laos. They have a foster son and granddaughter in Indonesia.Sean's work has spanned almost all aspects of development during the past decades: natural resource and environmental management, environmental legislation, community development, institutional analysis and development, and most aspects of policy analysis and development, project design and management – intermingled with teaching and mentoring. He has worked on projects ranging from agroforestry and IPM to watershed rehabilitation and management, urban environment and social and environmental planning for hydropower and, more recently, on adaptation to and mitigation of climate change (which he calls climate chaos).In addition to professional work, he is active as the Regional Advisor for mainland Asia. Melody and he travel to new places as often as they can find time. They have no plans for retirement. Sean can be reached at sean@samdhana.org


 

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