Remi Chandran

Remi Chandran is an environmental policy researcher who developed the Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS) initiative while working with the United Nations University (UNU), Tokyo in 2005. His idea of building a common information sharing framework (bridging policy makers, enforcement officials, researchers and civil society members) to monitor illegal wildlife crime questioned the current practice of enforcement information sharing which relied on closed information where participation of scientific experts were discouraged. The first prototype of WEMS was developed in partnership with Asian Conservation Alliance, a network of grass root civil society members from 14 Asian Countries. In 2007, he moved to United Nations University – International Institute for Software Technology based in Macao as a Senior Researcher where he re-constituted the project to the needs of government agencies. The success of WEMS however had to wait until 2011 when Lusaka Agreement finally approved the implementation of Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System in East Africa.

Chandran left UN in 2010 but leads the WEMS initiative and continues to serve in its management committee.

In a recent journal article, he explains the limitation of science and scientists in addressing the gaps in enforcement information sharing, where he outlines the role of policy beliefs as a key factor in the acceptance and rejection of a transboundary enforcement monitoring system.

Chandran is a recipient of the Irish government fellowship (1995) the Erasmus Mundus (2010) fellowship and the UNU-IAS PhD Fellowship (2012–2014)