Comments on: Local cooperation to overcome climate change

By: m.g. chandrakanth

m.g. chandrakanth — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:48:36 +0000

These days in India institutions are either poorly framed or they are so nicely framed that in practice there are institutional failures. In fact it would be a good study to find out institutional failures in India and their extent. Similarly there can be studies on institutional successes if any. For instance forest conservation act of 1980 has been largely a success, but some opine about failures also. The Land Reforms Rules of 1974, Karnataka has been a success. There is no institutional evaluation. Ofcourse, amendments to laws by themselves are an indicator of evaluation.

By: Stephan

Stephan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:19:41 +0000

Thank you for your comment, Prof. Chandrakanth. Good to hear from you (you might remember me from the CAPRi training in Hyderabad).

Unfortunately, I cannot point you to any projects that have been put up to counter climate change in South India, but I believe that the experience you cite can teach us very valuable lessons on how to set up (and maintain) local management regimes that work with nature and conserve resources instead of simply betting on exploration.

Quoting John Nye on the significance of Lin Ostrom’s work: “But as Elinor has demonstrated, ham-fisted reforms that attempt to bring the illusion of modernity to the developing world by a naive adoption of Western best-practice laws without the structures that support and enforce those rules often leads to a destruction of indigenous practice that works reasonably well without substituting a functioning and reliable market of impersonal exchange. Much of the disaster that is foreign aid can be tied to the blunt importation of best-practice rules without understanding how their implementation interacts with existing practice.” – http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/12/economics-nobel-ostrom-williamson-coase-opinions-contributors-john-v-c-nye.html

By: M.G. Chandrakanth

M.G. Chandrakanth — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:09:34 +0000

Dear Sri Stephen
The local cooperation for climate change is a great idea. One such live example is the effort of the local communities in Kodagu, westren ghats of Karnataka where sacred groves are maintained by the village community providing social fencing
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118771621/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
However these initiatives have been since time immemorial and I donot think I can link this to climate change, since those early men and women conserved the sacred groves not keeping climate change in view but ecology in view.

I would appreciate if you can give examples from south Asia, India, which you know of reflecting local initiatives for countering climate change.

regs
mg chandrakanth