The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2006, for his contributions to Indian society.

Under the aegis of HESCO, Joshi promoted research and development of new environment-friendly technologies for the agricultural sector, tapping the local resources.

He is supported by a team of 30 people, and the group is known to have been involved in the dissemination of knowledge on eco-friendly techniques and technologies[3] in 40 villages in the state.

[5] Dr. Joshi has launched several social programmes, based on resource-based rural development, such as Women Technology Park, Technology Intervention for Mountain-Eco System, Ecological Food Mission in Mountain and Women's Initiative for Self Employment (WISE)[6][1] and has been reported to be successful in providing the villages with water mills, composting pits, toilets, plan-based drugs and herbal pesticides and rainwater harvesting techniques.

[4] Finding uses for a local shrub, Kurri, which had been considered a weed, by utilising it for making furniture, incense sticks and using the left-overs as fodder was one initiative developed by Joshi.