Search

In a world where biodiversity is on the decline, examples of conservation success especially of large carnivores are of interest to policy makers and conservation practitioners. Herein, we elucidate the conservation actions that have been responsible for the recovery of tigers and their ecosystems in India; a feat many range countries are struggling to achieve. Demand‐driven poaching resulted in extinctions at two prestigious Tiger Reserves. India's Prime Minister constituted a Tiger Task Force that led to the formation of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, scientific monitoring of tiger populations and incentivized voluntary relocation of human settlements from tiger reserves. Tiger Conservation Plans, cognizant of constraints imposed by small reserves embedded in human land uses, aimed to create source populations within tiger reserves with corridor links between sources and to sink habitats. Metapopulation management enhanced occupancy and long‐term viability of tiger populations. Tiger Protection Force and technology like MSTrIPES, E‐eye and drones effectively reduced poaching. Community support was attempted through profit sharing, mitigating human–tiger conflict with a fast, fair and transparent compensation process and removal of problem tigers. Reintroduction and reinforcement of tigers and prey assisted natural recovery. Political will ensured resources. Tigers were monitored using Spatially Explicit Capture–Recapture with camera traps and ecological covariates. In 2018–2019 from 381,000 km2 of tiger habitat, 89,000 km2 was occupied. Currently, 50 tiger reserves cover 72,750 km2 and harbour 65% of India's ~3,000 tigers. Tiger reserves are managed with an annual investment of ~1,000 USD/km2 with one staff per 6.5 km2. Tiger reserves were regularly evaluated for Management Effectiveness. Tiger reserves were valued to have benefit flows between 76,900 and 292,300 US$ km−2year−1. In the Anthropocene it is unlikely that tigers will survive without targeted conservation investments. Political commitment and resources can become available for conservation when people and tigers benefit simultaneously. Conscious balance by governments between development for rapid economic prosperity and long‐term ecological security will ensure that wild tigers and their intact ecosystems will survive for future generations. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

This article, a reprint of a seminal 1991 paper, argues that developing countries like India were being burdened unfairly with the responsibility of addressing climate change. The authors discuss how allocating responsibility for climate change involved juggling with numbers. It argues for a fair allocation of natural sinks as an important part of any use of the global commons.

Executive summaryDespite dramatic improvements in survival, nutrition, and education over recent decades, today’s children face an uncertain future. Climate change, ecological degradation, migrating populations, conflict, pervasive inequalities, and predatory commercial practices threaten the health and future of children in every country. In 2015, the world’s countries agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet nearly 5 years later, few countries have recorded much progress towards achieving them. This Commission presents the case for placing children, aged 0–18 years, at the centre of the SDGs: at the heart of the concept of sustainability and our shared human endeavour. Governments must harness coalitions across sectors to overcome ecological and commercial pressures to ensure children receive their rights and entitlements now and a liveable planet in the years to come.

The international response to the global crisis of climate change has reproduced the patterns of advantage and disadvantage that plague the global community of nations. Within the international negotiations to address climate change, the interests of the world's poorer nations and of the environment itself have taken second place to the dominant economic interests of the richer nations and corporations. There are many successful examples around the world of governments promoting renewable energy; in fact a large part of the current world demand for photovoltaics is based on government programs. India's carbon dioxide emissions in 1990 from burning fossil fuels, gas flaring, and cement production for instance was 0.22 tonnes of carbon. The prospects of climate change are forcing the world to reconsider the way its uses fossil-fuel energy to driveits economy and to serve as the basis for the conventional models for economic and social development.

In this article, I argue that sustainable development is not possible without affordable and inclusive growth. Inequality and unsustainability are linked and unless the world is able to look for environmental solutions that are affordable and can meet the needs of all, these will not work.

The idea that developing countries must share the blame for climate change is an example of environmental colonialism. The manner in which the global warming debate is being carried out is only sharpening and deepening the North-South divide. A major problem is how to share the global commons of carbon dioxide and methane sinks. A system of global tradeable permits should be introduced to control global greenhouse gas emissions. 12 refs., 7 figs., 6 tabs.

In India, recent micro-experiments clearly show that environmental regeneration is possible if native wisdom and local decision-making is respected. Towards Green Villages sets out an environmental improvement strategy that is based on real life experiences of grassroots work in which people have improved their environment together with their economy. Three initial steps are essential. First, the decline in overall biomass production must be reversed. Second, economic growth and rural development programmes must focus on how to increase biomass in an equitable and sustainable manner. Third, there must be democratic decentralization and a devolution of powers to village communities.

Prologue I first learned about global warming in the late 1980s. My colleague Anil Agarwal and I had spent over two years traversing Indian villages, searching for policies and practices to reforest wasted common lands. We quickly learned to look beyond trees, at ways to deepen democracy so that these commons could be regenerated. In India forests are mostly owned by government agencies, but it is poor communities that actually use them. It quickly became clear that without community participation, afforestation was not possible. This is because our forests are not wilderness areas, but habitats of people and their animals. For people to be involved the rules for engagement had to be respected, and to be respected, the rules had to be fair . At the time, India had a ‘green’ environment minister. Data released by a prestigious US research institution had convinced her that it was the poor who contributed most substantially to global warming — they did ‘unsustainable’ things like growing rice and keeping farm animals. Anil and I were pulled into the global climate debate when a flummoxed state Chief Minister called us. He had received a government circular that asked him to discourage rural people from keeping animals. ‘How do I do this?’ he asked us. ‘Do the animals of the poor really disrupt the world's climate system?’ We were equally puzzled. It seemed absurd. We had been arguing for quite a while that the poor were victims of environmental degradation .

For the rural poor – who depend above all the land for their survival – a central development challenge is to sustain a base of natural capital that can support a robust local economy. In India, government mismanagement of forests, grazing lands, and water resources has often alienated rural people and exacerbated resource degradation. This paper shows the potential to reverse these trends when local people gain control over natural resources and manage them through systems of participatory democracy. Four case studies from semi-arid, hilly regions of India illustrate how democratic control of natural assets can lay the basis for ecological restoration and sustainable livelihoods.

What is behind the concept of a Green Economy, advanced at the Rio-2012 conference? The case of protection and use of forests in India exemplifies the most important challenges: Green cannot be green without equity and justice.

Auf Indien kommt in den nachsten beiden Jahrzehnten eine ausergewohnliche Herausforderung zu. Seine Bevolkerung betragt jetzt rund 800 Millionen. Am Ende des Jahrhunderts werden es etwa 1000 Millionen sein. Gegenwartig mussen jeweils eine Million Hektar des indischen Bodens etwa 2,5 Millionen Menschen ernahren; um das Jahr 2000 werden das jeweils drei Millionen sein.