ABSTRACT

This book focuses on the regional political ecologies (RPEs) of environmental conflicts in India. It explores broadly, landscape-based analyses of political, economic and social issues, which impact environmental changes, challenges and conflicts at local and micro-local levels.

The chapters in this volume examine the intervention of different stakeholders in the management of various regional ecological landscapes in India, including forests, rivers, canals, creeks and wetlands. The volume is an interdisciplinary endeavour, weaving together contextual narratives through a combination of approaches from sociology, anthropology, geography, political studies and environmental history. Using such core approaches, the book studies the place-based dynamisms within the regional environmental conflicts in the selected conservation landscapes. It provides empirical reflections on transboundary issues, rural-urban transitions, middle-class environmentalism, identity conflicts, decentralized natural resource management and the role of political institutions.

Regional Political Ecologies and Environmental Conflicts in India will be of great interest to students and scholars of Political Ecology and South Asian Environmental Studies.

chapter 1|10 pages

Introduction

Understanding Regional Political Framings of Environmental Conflicts in India

chapter 2|18 pages

Heritage or Basic Human Rights?

Politics of Environmentalism Surrounding the Adi Ganga in Kolkata

chapter 4|16 pages

Riverbank Erosion and Inter-Community Relationships in Majuli

Political Implications of a Changing Landscape in Assam

chapter 7|15 pages

Political Ecology of Natural Resource Governance in Chhattisgarh, India

Critical Ethnographic Reflections on Vulnerable Livelihoods of the Scheduled Tribes in Bastar