René Véron is a professor of social geography with primary interests in the field of development studies. His policy-oriented research addresses urban and rural environmental governance issues in the global South with a regional specialization in South Asia, where he has been involved in international collaborations since 1994. For the SOR4D project, René brings expertise on decentralization and rural governance in West Bengal. More recently, he has contributed to the literature on (urban) political ecology, and his research on flood governance in West Bengal and France in Switzerland is directly linked to the SOR4D project.