Poonam Keral is a researcher at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her scholarship examines environmental governance, natural resource management, and environmental justice through interdisciplinary and comparative approaches. Her work focuses on the institutional, legal, and socio-political dimensions of natural resource governance, with particular attention to water rights, public trust doctrines, Indigenous stewardship, and community participation in decision-making processes. Drawing on case studies from Hawaiʻi and other regions, she investigates how governance systems shape access to and control over environmental resources and how legal and policy frameworks can support more equitable and sustainable outcomes. Her research contributes to ongoing debates in Earth System Governance concerning justice, allocation, and democratic participation in environmental decision-making.
