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Ecology of the Middle Himalaya: Mapping Transformation and Change

Reseacher: Rinki Sarkar

This study looks at various changes occurring across a wide geographical expanse of the Indian middle-Himalaya, especially the construction of roads, market linkages, tourism initiatives, and mega hydro-electricity projects, and their impacts on several outcomes, including forest-use by local inhabitants, and the resilience of village-level resource use arrangements to withstand forces of change. While economic security and access to social and physical infrastructure in the region have improved, the resulting environmental externalities have been less obvious, even in an ecologically sensitive area. The continuing dependence on open-access forest resources, the development of roads, initiatives promoting tourism, and the construction of mega dams have all had serious implications for natural resources in an already vulnerable region.

The study finds that increasing population and growing commercialization have eroded local institutions of natural resource governance, and the community spirit has given way to a more individualistic ethos resulting in undermining the efficacy or even the persistence of traditional local institutions of forest management such as van panchayats in the Uttarakhand Himalayas.

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