Centre for Ecology Development And Research

CEDAR is a not-for-profit organization registered in 2006 under the Societies Act of 1860. The registered office is located in Delhi, while the chief operations office is based in Dehradun. It was established when a group of academics and development practitioners came together to bridge the gap between applied research and field based interventions or, to put it differently, ‘balance theory and practice’. The development sector has, for long, been caught in the divide between theoreticians and practitioners. This divide has set the sector back and deprived it of the opportunity to assess and improve its work continuously. This has also had implications for policy formulation whereby the lack of a right blend of lessons from the field, properly documented and analyzed, has led to an information gap in policy formulation. CEDAR sees its role to straddle this divide and help fill the information gap in policy formulation. The research activities of the organization mainly focus on generating, monitoring and interpreting socio-hydro-ecological field-data that can improve the management of natural resources. Central to CEDAR’s ideology is the recognition that local communities must participate in conservation. Therefore, in addition to building core research competence in forestry, ecology, and social sciences, CEDAR works towards strengthening links between communities and ecosystems by networking with grass-root organizations.