Author: Eminent Contributors
Editor(s): Smitu Kothari / Imtiaz Ahmad / Helmut Reifeld
Publisher: Rainbow publishers
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 286
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8186962638
Description
Despite widening awareness about the adverse effects of human activity on our natural environment, there are multiple perceptions of what needs to be urgently attended to and by whom. Whose reference point defines the value of Nature? For a vast majority of Indians, Nature continues to be the source of life, it provides subsistence and meaning, and it contributes to their self-definition of who they are. It is also brutish and unpredictable, often bringing starvation, conflict, and strife.
For others who predominantly live in urban areas, priorities encompass pollution of air, water and land, loss of vegetative cover and diversity of florae and fauna, destruction of the ozone layer, and destabilization of climate. There thus exist complex and vastly differing relationships with Nature in these two domains. How Nature is valued in each domain and how the dynamics in one impacts on the other frames ecological politics. This book explores the different approaches to the environment as well as examines the emerging international framework of coming to terms with the environmental crisis.
Contents
PREFACE
Nature as Value: Ecological Politics in India
Environmental Discourses and Environmental Politics
Nature, Culture and Diversity: The Indigenous Way of Life
Forests, the State and Forest Dwellers
De-Valuing the Private-Public Relationship
The Value and Politics of Water in India
Watermarkets Exclude the Poor
Sustenance and Sustainability-Gender Relations in Community Management of Natural Resources
Politics of Diversity and Food Security
Environmental Law in South Asia: An Overview
Strengthening International Environmental Governance: Some Reflections
The Environment in International Trade and Investment Law
Index
Contributors