For years environmentalists thought natural resources could be best protected by national legislation. But due to the poor outcomes resulting from this top-down policy, professionals today look to local communities to take real strides in conservation efforts. According to a recent survey, more than[...]
In this innovative political and historical study, Arun Agrawal illuminates changing environmental processes, institutions, and identities through an examination of forest protection by villagers in the northern Indian state of Kumaon. In the early 1920s, Kumaoni villagers set hundreds of fires prot[...]