Democratizing Forest Governance in India

Democratizing Forest Governance in India
Author: Sharachchandra Madhukar Lele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780198099123

The forest discourse in India has shifted decisively from questions of management to questions of governance. The essays in this book highlight and explore how this shift is occurring and what the challenges to democratic forest governance are. It covers questions of local management, wildlife conservation and forest conversion, as well as the changing socio-economic context of forestry in India.

Rewilding

Rewilding
Author: Bahar Dutt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2019-09-05
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0199098336

We live in a time of serious environmental catastrophes. Every year we lose thousands of species, even as others slip deeper into danger. The extinction crisis is well known; what is not are stories of people trying to turn the tide. In Rewilding, environmental journalist Bahar Dutt documents stories of hope for India's natural world. She meets people who are trying to conserve species not just by replenishing their dwindling numbers, but also by restoring their habitats in the wild. This means going to great lengths, from airlifting corals from coast to coast, to going undercover as a spy to check the availability of toxic drugs that wiped out a bird. In the process, Bahar learns that though it may not offer easy answers, rewilding can offer great rewards. And that news about the environment doesn't always have to be bad.

Modern Forests

Modern Forests
Author: K. Sivaramakrishnan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1999
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780804745567

Modern Forests is an environmental, institutional, and cultural history of forestry in colonial eastern India. By carefully examining the influence of regional political formations and biogeographic processes on land and forest management, this book offers an analysis of the interrelated social and biophysical factors that influenced landscape change. Through a cultural analysis of powerful landscape representations, Modern Forests reveals the contention, debates, and uncertainty that persisted for two hundred years of colonial rule as forests were identified, classified, and brought under different regimes of control and were transformed to serve a variety of imperial and local interests. The author examines the regionally varied conditions that generated widely different kinds of forest management systems, and the ways in which certain ideas and forces became dominant at various times. Through this emphasis on regional socio-political processes and ecologies, the author offers a new way to write environmental history. Instead of making a sharp distinction between third-world and first-world experiences in forest management, the book suggests a potential for cross-continental comparative studies through regional analyses. The book also offers an approach to historical anthropology that does not make apolitical separations between foreign and indigenous views of the world of nature, insisting instead that different cultural repertoires for discerning the natural, and using it, can be fashioned out of shared concerns within and across social groups. The politics of such cultural construction, the book argues, must be studied through institutional histories and ethnographies of statemaking. In conclusion, the author offers a genealogy of development as it can be traced from forest conservation in colonial eastern India.

The Vanishing

The Vanishing
Author: Prerna Singh Bindra
Publisher: Penguin Random House India
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2017-06-28
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9386495864

Can a populous country like India 'afford' to protect wildlife? Is there space for wildlife in a land-scarce, densely populated country, and can wild animals and people coexist, or is the relationship inevitably confrontational? Is conservation and protecting the flora and fauna a hindrance to the growth agenda? Is development inimical to ecological security? The Vanishing explores such burning issues that confront wildlife conservation today.

The Indian Forest Act,1927 and Forests in India

The Indian Forest Act,1927 and Forests in India
Author: Ashutosh Samant Singhar
Publisher: Notion Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2022-01-06
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

India’s forest area has come down below one fifth of total geographical area, due to indiscriminate alienation of forest land for non-forestry purposes and deforestation leading to rapid loss in biodiversity and forest natural resources. An outdated Indian Forest Act, 1927, the most important legal instrument for forest management and administration, with a colonial mindset, influenced by Locke and monetization of forest resources for financial profiteering by the British colonial administration, has been found to be inadequate for conservation of valuable forest environment and resources and alienated local stakeholders in natural resource management. Higher judiciary has started intervening by issuing several judgements and orders, keeping in tune recent developments in the field of international environment law, to save forest land and forest resources, in absence of a strong legal frame work. Global initiatives for conservation of natural resources and mitigation of damaging effects of Climate Change, Sustainable Development Goals etc. have catalysed swift action on part of the government and other stake holders towards achieving conservation goals. A paradigm shift in the system for forest conservation and management, supported by a new law, based on sound scientific forestry, such as landscape level management etc. is the need of the hour.

Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering

Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering
Author: Majeti Narasimha Vara Prasad
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1119678609

Learn from this integrated approach to the management and restoration of ecosystems edited by an international leader in the field The Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering delivers a comprehensive overview of the latest research and practical developments in the rapidly evolving fields of ecological and ecosystem engineering. Beginning with an introduction to the theory and practice of ecological engineering and ecosystem services, the book addresses a wide variety of issues central to the restoration and remediation of ecological environments. The book contains fulsome analyses of the restoration, rehabilitation, conservation, sustainability, reconstruction, remediation, and reclamation of ecosystems using ecological engineering techniques. Case studies are used to highlight practical applications of the theory discussed within. The material in the Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering is particularly relevant at a time when the human population is dramatically rising, and the exploitation of natural resources is putting increasing pressure on planetary ecosystems. The book demonstrates how modern scientific ecology can contribute to the greening of the environment through the inclusion of concrete examples of successful applied management. The book also includes: A thorough discussion of ecological engineering and ecosystem services theory and practice An exploration of ecological and ecosystem engineering economic and environmental revitalization An examination of the role of soil meso and macrofauna indicators for restoration assessment success in a rehabilitated mine site A treatment of the mitigation of urban environmental issues by applying ecological and ecosystem engineering A discussion of soil fertility restoration theory and practice Perfect for academic researchers, industry scientists, and environmental engineers working in the fields of ecological engineering, environmental science, and biotechnology, the Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering also belongs on the bookshelves of environmental regulators and consultants, policy makers, and employees of non-governmental organizations working on sustainable development.

The Saga of Participatory Forest Management in India

The Saga of Participatory Forest Management in India
Author: N. C. Saxena
Publisher: CIFOR
Total Pages: 225
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Forest management
ISBN: 9798764153

Forest policy in India before 1988. The 1988 forest policy Joint forest management. Locally inspired collective action. State sponsored people's participation. Constraints of government policies. Programmes complementary to joint forest management. Property regimes and JFM in India.

What's Left of the Jungle

What's Left of the Jungle
Author: Nitin Sekar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9354355862

Indian officials estimate that over half a million families lose crops or property to wild elephants a year. Akshu Atri, born and raised in Buxa Tiger Reserve, is one such victim. Elephants have destroyed his kitchen, regularly take over half of his annual crop yield, and have even killed some of his neighbours. Akshu could hate elephants, but he doesn't - neither does his family nor most of their community. By telling Akshu's story - of his childhood destitution, family tragedies, romantic pursuits, entanglements with poachers and smugglers, and his tumultuous rise out of poverty - What's Left of the Jungle unravels the complex affection that rural Indians have for jungle wildlife. Akshu's story can help us understand both why some of the tropics' most crowded landscapes still host the world's most stunning wildlife - and what we might need to do to keep it that way.