Resources, Environment and Development

Hritik Arora’s path to study at Crawford is full of twists and turns, but it begins in a bookshop. We sat down with him to find out how this led to his Master of Environmental Management and Development degree and what advice he would have for other students considering the program.

Tell us a bit about your background and where you grew up.

I grew up in a small town called Gangtok – the capital of a little state called Sikkim in India. With the town being comfortably nested in the foothills of the Himalayas, you could say that I grew up surrounded by the mountains, rivers, and the beautiful people that inhabit the place. Growing up, I used to frequent the bookstore run by my father. There, I spent most of my time sifting through the huge, burly, and colourful encyclopaedias just so that I could see the pictures of various animals such as the majestic tiger, plants, such as the golden wheat, and galaxies, such as the Milky Way. At that time, I could hardly grasp what everything in the encyclopaedia meant, but even so, a kind of innate peace and curiosity welled up inside me as I looked through it. This was my first exposure to how people tried to explain the things around them – using science.

As I spent years in school, I got to know how people for millennia have tried to explain the world around them, some failing and some succeeding. I learnt that with each failure and success, building on the work of the people before them, we achieved the unthinkable. Take, for example, eradicating smallpox - unthinkable a few centuries ago. To me, these teachings were like memoirs – the compilation of memories and efforts of people wanting to give back to society and to make the world a better place. Inspired by this and wanting to give back to society myself, I took up higher studies to find out what I’m good at – all so that I could, in my own small way, help make the world a better place.

Why did you choose to study at Crawford?

I started off my higher education learning more about the physical sciences and thus did an undergraduate degree with a triple major in Botany, Chemistry and Biotechnology. My rationale during my studies was that I might go work in drug development in the future – the best way to give back to society is to develop medicine for diseases, right?

However, as time passed, I came to a poignant realisation. The city where I did my undergraduate degree, Bangalore, was quite different from the town I grew up in. It was there that I had a first-hand experience of a truly polluted environment. Polluted ponds; mountains of plastic; heavy, humid and dusty air; and a dead concrete jungle devoid of plant life. Isn’t it the environment that is the root cause of the increasing disease incidence, and just simply working on producing new medicine isn’t acting on the root causes? It was at this moment that I realised that if I truly wanted to give back, I needed to work to address these root causes, and for that, I needed to know how to identify and work with them.

The Environmental Management and Development program at Crawford is different from the Environmental Sciences programs in other schools and universities. Here, we do not focus on the physical sciences aspect of the environment but rather the socio-economic and political aspects of tending to the environment. Here, I could understand these root causes and learn how people have tried to tackle and wrangle with them. This is why I chose to study the program. The fact that Crawford is internationally renowned for its research output and faculty was, frankly, the icing on the cake.

What topic area are you most interested in and why?

This is quite a difficult question to answer, frankly, because my interests lie in examining how humans have interacted with each other and with nature based on their cultures, institutions, priorities, and beliefs to build and form the current environment we know today. As such, I have dabbled with quite a lot of topics that have allowed me to explore this interest.

For example, I have a) Explored the role of competition, games and culture in Indore’s (a city in India) waste management policy for my Master’s research project and b) Learnt and utilised GIS and spatial analysis to learn how people quantify land-use priority, the knowledge which I utilised in my volunteering role at Beyond Zero Emissions.

Currently, I am also looking forward to understanding and tracking how a new payment for ecosystem services scheme called GREEN, which started in India recently to pay landowners to conserve their natural forests, evolves over time. As you can see, each project gives me the opportunity to examine certain aspects of ethnobiological interactions. With the research project, I examined how human-human interactions took place in a policy development context. With the GIS volunteering, I get to see how human-nature interaction takes place from the perspective of development, and the PES scheme examination gives me the opportunity to examine human-nature interaction from an economic, cultural and conservation perspective.

How would you describe your experience at Crawford?

The best way I could provide this description is perhaps in three words – challenging yet satisfying. Make no mistake, the program at Crawford will challenge you to deliver well beyond your initial expectations of your capability. I do say this, however, not as something negative but rather as something positive about the Crawford experience. As you are challenged and expected to deliver to high standards, you get the opportunity to work on yourself and go much beyond your earlier believed capability. You can expect the classes to be extremely personalised due to small class sizes, with extremely down-to-earth teachers and peers from all around the world. I assure you that you will learn something new every day.

Can you share your thoughts on how your experiences in local policy issues have shaped your perspective on global policy challenges? How will this perspective guide your future endeavours in public policy? What do you think policymakers in Australia and the region should focus on?

In saying this, I do realise that I am opening a can of worms, but I also believe that this example really exemplifies what I believe is the biggest lesson I have learnt in the program – everyone has their own beliefs and priorities which shape their outlook to life and what they consider to be problems. Their beliefs and priorities might be extremely different to the common beliefs and priorities, but it is only by putting them on the table for discussion can we really work towards solving wicked problems such as climate change. To do this, we must learn not to take people’s views and experiences with a grain of salt but rather consider them seriously. Only then would working together be possible. The feral horse case in Australia exemplifies this extremely well. While many take the horses to be a cultural icon and a symbol of their history, many others see them as a threat to Australia’s native environment and Indigenous culture – both are true if seen from the perspectives of the people giving these arguments. But, to work towards what is ultimately good for Australians in general, both these parties need to work together.

What is the most memorable experience from your time at Crawford?

This would be my research project. Initially, when I started the program, I had never intended to do a research project. However, curiosity and the want to learn and experience got the better of me. I must say though, that the experience was the best decision I made. From getting funding from the Bhati family travel grant (thank you to the Bhati team!) to selecting and refining research topics, doing the fieldwork, and presenting my findings to the faculty at Crawford, I cannot stress how grueling, tough, but ultimately fun and satisfying the experience was. For this, I will appreciate and thank Associate Professor Keith Barney, Associate Professor Sarah Milne, and Professor Assa Doron for their guidance throughout. From guiding me, commenting on my findings, pushing me forward, and for the tasty-tasty carrot cake, I cannot thank them enough.

What advice would you give to prospective students considering studying this course at Crawford?

Go for it! If you like learning more and want to know how to learn more, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it here. However, I must stress that you will be expected to pull your weight, maybe much more than you’ve ever pulled before, and be challenged to think in ways you’ve never been before – all of which will lead you to see that you are much more capable than you imagine.

What’s next for you after graduation?

My goal is to do a PhD, where I can explore human-human-nature interaction to my heart’s content. However, before that, I intend to work for a few years in the environmental sector (ideally, where I can work with indigenous communities) to save up some money. It’s also during this time that I will be focusing on working on my other projects (remember the examination of the PES scheme I spoke about earlier?) and publishing them. I am slowly building my skills in research.

Hritik’s outstanding academic achievement has earned him the Tiri Tiri Prize for which he will receive special recognition at the Crawford graduation celebration this Friday.

Congratulations from all of us here at Crawford on finishing your degree, Hritik! We can’t wait to see where your skills take you next.