Athula Senaratne

Athula Senaratne is currently a Research Fellow and Head of Environmental Economic Policy research at the IPS. Prior to joining the IPS in 2006, he has gathered considerable experience on the management of environmental resources and economic policy in Sri Lanka serving in the government sector as a Research Officer of the Department of Agriculture, as an Agricultural Economist at the Land Use Policy Planning Division, as an Aquaculture Economist at the National Aquaculture Development Authority of Sri Lanka and as the Director- Competition Promotion of the Consumers Affairs Authority of Sri Lanka.

Athula Senaratne has researched and published in areas such as sustainable agricultural systems, supply and demand analysis of fish, economic utilization of non timber forest products (NTFP), deforestation and land use planning and  institutional analysis  of community-based aquaculture. He has also received training locally and abroad including an advanced course in Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His major current research interests are climate change economics, economics of rural institutions and environment and macro economic policy. He jointly authored the Sinhala language text book on Natural Resource and Environmental Economics which is being used at undergraduate level teaching in Environmental Economics at universities in Sri Lanka.

Athula Senaratne holds a BSc in Agriculture with Second Class (Upper) Honours and M.Phil in Agricultural Economics from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.  He is currently reading for PhD in Resource Economics in the Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya.