| Property | Value |
| Name | Harnessing Wisdom for Managing Watersheds:Honey Bee Perspective |
| Description | Gupta, A.K., S. Chokkakula, R. Sinha, K. Patel, S. Muralikrishna and D. Koradia. 2001. Harnessing Wisdom for Managing Watersheds:Honey Bee Perspective on Innovations, Institutions and Policies for Marginal Environments. SRISTI.Household survival in marginal environments such as mountains, dry lands, and flood prone regions requires tremendous creativity. As was noted in Alice in Wonderland, you have to move very fast and work very hard even to remain where you are. The choice for large number of households is to sustain the livelihood support systems such as the catchments, biodiversity, other natural resources, etc., in a manner that they do not get trapped in downward spiral of erosion of resources, self-esteem, and of course, economic opportunities. The fact that despite various odds, including lack of policy support, so many communities and individuals manage not only to conserve resources but also augment them is something that this monograph is all about. The Honey Bee perspective builds upon what poor people are rich in i.e. their knowledge, creative potential, and institutional heritage. The discourse on participation often is restricted to the concept of either physical participation in terms of labour or social participation in implementation of externally designed policies and programmes. In this study, we draw attention to the scope of intellectual, moral, and institutional participation of local communities in reconceptualizing the watershed approach and implementation process. The greatest irony of watershed projects is that they founder after they are ‘handed over’ to the people by the project implementation authorities. If the watershed projects are designed, owned and implemented by the people, why should the question of handing over arise at all. Unless we, the external facilitators, learn to participate in peoples’ own plans, the possibility of building upon peoples’ knowledge is very remote. It is extremely opportune that international and national institutions are recognizing the need for incorporating indigenous knowledge and institutional heritage in the design and implementation of modern watershed projects. This blending of traditional knowledge and contemporary innovations developed by people without outsiders help will not take place unless we understand the policy and institutional context of technology generation and diffusion for rainfed, mountain, and dry regions. The macro policy and the framework for organizing incentives to ensure peoples’ participation in design and implementation of watershed are discussed in part one. In part two of the paper we critique the formal models of technology development and transfer. We argue that technology development process in highly ecologically heterogeneous environments cannot take place in the classical lab to land framework. The last part three deals with the framework for institution building in watersheds. In part four, we provide illustrations of more than fifty technological and institutional innovations from Himalayan region as well as western Indian dry regions. |
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| Created On: | 11/19/2008 18:00 |
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