Pranab Kumar Mandal is a PhD Candidate at the Department of English of Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He is also working as an Assistant Professor of English at Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, India. With an orientation in environmental humanities, his research interest lies in the indigenous ways of environmental governance, which is characterised by animist cosmovision, ecospiritual reverence, natureculture entanglements, and regenerative practices. With rapid human consumption of natural energy leading to species extinction every single day, he feels that spiritual connection with nature appears to be a viable way to re-indigenise the human habitation on earth to make it sustainable. Having a sacred feeling for the earth elements can essentially lessen, if not solve the problems of earth-slaughtering, leading to a sustainable governance of the ecosystem. With particular focus on some of the indigenous communities and their treatment of forests across the world, he engages with how indigenous knowledge of environmental governance is inherently imbued with human-nonhuman reciprocity, how indigenous approach to nature is ecospiritual and conservational, and how these intersections can foster an eco-epistemology that enforces environmental sustainability.
