Shamen VIDANAGE

Shamen Vidanage brings over 30 years of experience in natural resource management at government, academia and non-government sectors. He is currently the Country Representative of IUCN Sri Lanka Programme. Previously he was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kelaniya, prior to that held the position of Programme Coordinator at IUCN, Sri Lanka Programme. Where he took the lead in designing and implementation of IUCN’s programme in Sri Lanka. In his previous stint with IUCN, he served for little over 17 years at IUCN. His tenure at IUCN includes three years as the Acting Country Representative cum the Programme Coordinator during 2011 and 2014. Before joining IUCN he was the Head of the Socio-economic and Market Research Division of the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA) where he contributed to the national research agenda on aquatic resources. Prior to NARA, he was with Natural Resources Management Division (NRM) of the Central Environmental Authority (CEA) contribution to administering the EIA process of Sri Lanka. Shamen holds a PhD, MSc in Environmental Economics, Masters of Arts in Economics and Honours degree in BSc in Agriculture. He also followed several short training programmes related to Natural Resources Management and Environmental Economics in many parts of the world. Shamen was born and bred in Galle, southern Capital of Sri Lanka, now living in Malabe, a suburban area of Colombo.