Urban wetlands are well-known to provide multiple ecosystem services and are essential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The management practices of local institutions are strongly influential on the sustainability outcomes of urban wetlands, yet the beliefs and value systems underlying distinct management approaches have not been studied thoroughly. Therefore, this study aims to elucidate the perceptions of local stakeholders regarding the ecosystem services provided by urban wetlands, their linkages to the SDGs, and pertinent threats to the wetlands, to reveal the connections between local awareness and sustainable management practices. Using the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) in India as a case study, we used a mixed-method approach to interview 120 local stakeholders associated with two differentially managed wetland systems – community and private. Our results demonstrate that the community wetlands are more socially inclusive in nature than the private wetlands. The private users emphasized economic benefits and livelihood security above all, whereas the community users strongly valued diverse provisioning services and cultural services in addition to the livelihood security. Further, community users identified a greater number of ecosystem services as contributing toward the SDGs relative to private users. We suggest that sustainable development strategies consult and incorporate the perceptions of local community wetland management groups, as these management practices are rooted in more comprehensive value systems and are more aligned with sustainable outcomes. These insights reveal the importance of local awareness of ecosystem services, and may be of value to urban planners and policymakers working toward sustainable urban management.

Authors: Sukanya Basu, Harini Nagendra, Peter Verburg, Tobias Plieninger

Building on the success of the Forests of Life newsletters last year, and with the upcoming Mountains of Life festival scheduled in November 2024, we are excited to bring you a collection of mountain wonders through captivating stories, insights into challenges faced by the communities and calls for action. Additionally, we facilitate a platform for young voices to showcase their creative renditions, encouraging them to explore the various facets of the mountain ecosystems and the need for their conservation. With ​“Planet vs Plastics” as the theme of this newsletter, we intend to raise awareness about the danger of plastic pollution in the mountains, advocate for the reduction of single-use plastics, acknowledge the efforts of some unsung heroes, and call for more sustainable alternatives.

Hand book for a course on Community Forest Rights for the tribal youth in Kerala Azim Premji University’s FRA initiative, in collaboration with the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), launched a two-months long course on Forest Rights Act (2006), focusing on the Community Forest Rights (CFR). The course was tailor made for the tribal youth in the state of Kerala, following case studies[1][2][3] and orientation workshops conducted between 2020 and 2022. This handbook is the basic resource for this training. Students are expected to be informed and equipped for initiating the vesting of CFR working with their gram sabhas. Course Content and Delivery: The pedagogical approach is a blend of class room and hands-on learning, including field visits and computer lab sessions. There are three weeks of classroom interactions and five weeks of hands-on learning. The course has four units: the first unit, ​‘Tribals and forests – a historical perspective,’ examines the historical context of tribal issues both globally and within the regional landscape. Second unit, ​‘Understanding FRA,’ covers the history of FRA and comprehensively unpacks the Act, Rules, and the implementation challenges. Unit 3,‘Skills & competencies for Community Forest Resource Management (CFRM)’ imparts specific skills including accountancy, communication and mobilization skills as well as biodiversity management, necessary for effective implementation of CFR. The fourth unit ​‘Individual field project’ is to be carried out by each student in two phases: (a)identification of the challenges and opportunities for implementation of FRA — for 2 weeks (b) finding responses to address the specific challenges identified during the first phase of 2 weeks. [1]https://practiceconnect.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/implementation-of-forest-rights-act-observations-from-keralas-attappadi-block/ [2]https://practiceconnect.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/implementation-of-forest-rights-act-lessons-from-vazhachal-division-of-kerala/ [3]https://practiceconnect.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/implementation-of-forest-rights-act-observations-from-wayanad-district-of-kerala/

Food is the product of a community’s culture and environment. Hence a study of ​‘foodways’ can tell us about what food resources are available as well as how customs, beliefs and practices shape the use of these resources. In this report, we share some of the stories and recipes we collected from women in different settler communities between June to November 2023. Our report showcases how these women use marine resources in creative and careful ways to improve the nutritional security of their families. In the process, the report offers a glimpse of the cultural, historical and ecological connections of settler communities of the Andaman Islands.

Authors:

Madhuri Ramesh
Chandralekha C

The Azim Premji University has been encouraging the expression of diverse and disparate views on a variety of subjects in the past too. Over the last two decades of its existence, the Azim Premji Foundation under which the University operates has been consistently focusing on its vision of contributing towards a more just, equitable, humane, and sustainable society through extensive on-the-groundwork across the country as well as through its partners. In this context we may venture to say that the present collection of essays is an expression of that focus, while encouraging views and counterviews on various perspectives on the national endeavour, with the goal of working towards the Foundation’s vision.

Amidst the Corona crisis of 2020 to 2022, another compendium of essays entitled Understanding Post-Covid-19 Challenges in India had been published in March 2022. The essays in that collection too had looked at certain key domains such as Health, School Education, Impact of Covid on vulnerable groups, urban development, the systems of recording deaths etc. While that collection tried to document how the nation navigated through a short period of the toughest challenge, this collection tries to offer a snapshot of more than 75 years of history
since Independence.

It is hoped that this collection of essays will encourage its readers to think about the myriad activities that India as a nation has undertaken in its unending search for building a better society, the complexities that it has to encounter and the challenges that it has had to overcome, in trying to achieve that objective. The essays here are collected over a year’s time following the 75^th year of Independence, and as such some of the essays might not have captured the latest developments in the themes that they focus on. The readers’ responses are welcome.

Editors:

CK Mathew

A Narayana

The National Curriculum Framework for Foundation Stage (NCF-FS) document has not reached all teachers and is yet to be translated into regional languages. But as we wait for this, we thought we could start to understand it and the experience of some teachers in Azim Premji Schools and those who we work with in government schools in several states who have been implementing parts of it in their classrooms.