Ms Arpitha Kodiveri

Arpitha Kodiveri is a doctoral researcher and Hans Kelsen Fellow at the European University Institute. Her thesis examines the operationalization of the right to free, prior and informed consent under the Forest Rights Act,2006 (FRA) of forest-dwelling communities in Odisha, India. Previously, she was a senior research associate in the forest and governance program at the Ashoka Trust of Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) where she worked on understanding the conflicting web of laws in forest areas. Prior to joining ATREE, she worked as an environmental lawyer with Natural Justice, an international non-profit organization supporting Adivasi communities in their struggle for rights over resources in Rajasthan and Odisha. She has a Masters with a specialization in Environmental Law from UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law as a Fulbright Scholar and a Bachelors in law from ILS law college in Pune. As a visiting fellow to the Indian Equality Law Programme, she will be working on how Dalit forest-dwelling communities engage with the consent provision under the FRA when forest land is being acquired by mining companies in Odisha. Her analysis will be drawn from extensive fieldwork in forest areas which are impacted by two mining projects namely, the Posco integrated steel plant now to be undertaken by Jindal Steel Works in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha and the Vedanta bauxite mine and aluminium refinery in Lanjigarh, Odisha.