Varnitha Kurli Arrasmith (She/her/hers)

I am a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Environmental Studies. I’m co-advised by Prof. Zia Mehrabi and Prof. Amanda Carrico. I work very closely with Prof. Jane Menken on population dynamics and gender preferences in South Asia. I am affiliated with the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), Better Planet Laboratory, Environment and Behavior Lab, and the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience. I am a recipient of the University of Colorado Chancellor’s Fellowship.

My work is funded by the University of Colorado Chancellor’s Fellowship, The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and The Climate Innovation Collaboratory (CIC) launched by Deloitte and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Before embarking on my Ph.D., I was a Water Data Specialist in the World Bank’s Water Global Practice (GP). I joined the Bank in July 2018 and continue to provide analytical and advisory (ASA) support on multiple projects and be part of Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDR).

I hold an M.Sc. in Logic, Computation, and Methodology from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics (Honors) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

My research is at the nexus of climate change and population dynamics via fertility preferences and internal displacement. I’m also interested in natural resource management-forests and groundwater, and use data-driven solutions to find solutions for sustainable development challenges. I use survey data, satellite data, and other types of novel data to develop applications, tools, and models to answer some of my research questions.

Publications

Fischer, Harry W., Bill Schultz, Eric A. Coleman, Anthony M. Filippi, Vijay Guleria, Burak Güneralp, Varnitha Kurli et al. "Forest restoration for environment and well-being is associated with empowered local governance over long time horizons." Environmental Research Letters (2025).

Demaree, Kat, Varnitha Kurli, Piotr Magnuszewski, Krister Andersson, and Evan Thomas. "Development and evaluation of a digital behavioral economics game towards improved understanding of groundwater conservation in southern Colorado." PLOS Water 3, no. 12 (2024): e0000298.

Kaur, Komal Preet, Varnitha Kurli, and Krister Andersson. "The challenge of governing complex forest ecosystems: can a polycentric approach help?." In Handbook on Institutions and Complexity, pp. 349-373. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025.

Varnitha Kurli. "To Be (e) or Not To Be (e): Understanding the Economics of Voluntarism." The Massachusetts Undergraduate Journal of Economics (2016): 55.

Manuscripts

Agrawal, Arun, Ashwini Chhatre, Elisabeth Gerber, and Varnitha Kurli. "Behavioral and Motivational Crowding Undermine Sustainable Development Programs." Under review at Science, 2025.

Kurli, Varnitha, and Jane Menken. "Two-Child Policy in India: Challenges for Incentive Tools in the Face of Conflicting Motives." Preparing for submission to World Development, 2025.

Menken, J., Varnitha Kurli, M. Nizam Khan, and J. Williams. "Changing Expression of Gender Preference: The Case of Bangladesh." Preparing for submission to Demography, 2024.

Reports

World Bank, European Union, and United Nations. Gaza and West Bank Interim Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment. February 2025.

World Bank Group. Western Balkans 6 – Country Climate Development Report. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, 2024.

"Multilingual detection of personal employment status on Twitter." arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.09178 (2022).

World Bank Group. Myanmar – Food Security and Agriculture Monitoring Brief. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, 2022.

World Bank. "An Invisible Water Crisis? New Data Application Maps Hotspots of Global Water Quality and Their Evolution between 1992-2010." World Bank Blogs. Accessed 2021.

"The Evolution of Built-up Areas in Ghana since 1975." Policy Research Working Paper No. 9314. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020.