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Course Description
This course explores the fundamental ideas and “tools” related to environmental sustainability in the Himalayan context. We examine various ways of understanding the environment-development relationship. We study how the simplistic discourses of environment-development conflict and "sustainable development" have been used by various interest groups to promote their particular interests. Topics critically examined include the relationship between sustainability and current environmental problems, sustainability indicators and plans, decision-making and public policies, and issues of consumption patterns. We inquire how alternate formulations of the concepts might be mobilized to create new strategies for mediating the relationship between nature and society, for the betterment of both.
Course Objectives
Upon completion of this course, a student should be able to:
1. Describe the impacts of farming, pastoralism, hunting and ecotourism on the geology and biology of the Himalayan region.
2. Understand the Himalayan context for international agreements and treaties such as: the Biodiversity convention, the Commission on Trade in Endangered Species, Agenda 21.
3. Describe the legal status of Himalayan protected areas, different categories of protected areas and its effects on people and biological diversity.
4. Define sustainable development in a Himalayan context and informed by a specific environmental ethic, propose a method for problem solving that is consistent with sustainable development.
5. Understand the role of the residential, business, government, NGO, education, religious sectors in designing, implementing and managing Himalayan development policy based on sound cultural, ecological and economic knowledge.
Course Outline
I. Definitions of sustainability
II. Reasons for sustainability
A. Earth Charter
ethical framework,
B. UN Decade
of Education for Sustainable Development.
III. Sustainability assessment frameworks and
tools
IV. Sustainability indicators and evaluation:
key performance indicators, targets, benchmarking
and best practice.
V. Human dimensions of sustainability
A. Behavior change
B. Organizational
and institutional change
VI. Toward sustainable living: the Himalaya
as a learning laboratory
A. Protected
area strategies
B. Food and farming
C. Pastoralism
D. Renewable
energy
E. Women’s
collectives
F. Education
and cultural exchange
G. Health and
healing systems
H. Handicrafts
I. Ecotourism
Evaluation
Students will be evaluated on participation in tutorial and seminar discussions, quality of written assignments, field research projects, and performance on the midterm and final examinations.
Library and Required Texts
Course Reader (available from instructors upon acceptance) includes material from the following sources:
Becker, A. and Bugmann, H. (Eds.). 2001. Global Change and Mountain Regions: The Mountain Research Initiative. International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Carr-Harris, J. (Ed.) 1995. Mountains and People: A Peoples' Perspective from the Indian Himalayas. Sri Bhuvaneshwari Mahila Ashram. Paper Presented at the NGO Consultation on Sustainable Mountain Development, Lima, Peru.
Dhar, T.N. 2001. Land and water resources in the Indian Himalaya: Issues of development, uses, sustainability and people's dimension, in G.P. Mishra & B.K. Bajpai (eds.) Community Participation in Natural Resource Management. Rawat Publications, Jaipur, New Delhi.
Fox, J. L., Nurbu, C., Bhatt, S. and Chandola, A., 1994. ‘Wildlife Conservation and Land-use Changes in the Transhimalayan Region of Ladakh, India’. In Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 14, pp 39-60.
Green, M.J.B., 1993. Nature Reserves of the Himalaya and the Mountains of Central Asia. World Conservation Monitoring Centre, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Green, M.J.B., 1994. ‘Protecting the Mountains of Central Asia and their Snow Leopard Populations’. In Fox, J. L. and Du Jizeng (eds), Proc. Seventh Intl. Snow Leopard Symp, pp 223-239. Seattle, USA: Intl. Snow Leopard Trust.
G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development. 1992. Action Plan for Himalaya. Shyam Printing Press, Almora.
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. 1999. Mountains 2000 and Beyond (RCP-II, 1999-2002).
Jain, Nandita, Rinchen Wangchuk, and Rodney Jackson, An Assessment of CBT and Homestay Sites in Spiti District, Himachal Pradesh, August 19, 2003 (pdf 161kb)
Jackson, Rodney, Gary G. Ahlborn, Mahesh Gurung, and Som Ale, Reducing Livestock Depredation Losses in the Nepalese Himalaya, Proc. 17th Vertebrate Pest Conference (R.M. Timm & A.C. Crabb, Eds.), U.C. Davis, 1996 (pdf 118kb)
Jackson, Rodney, People-Wildlife Conflict Management in the Qomolangma Nature Preserve, Tibet. Proc. International Workshop, “Tibet’s Biodiversity: Conservation and Management,” (Wu Ning, D. Miller, Lhu Zhu and J. Springer, Eds.), 1998. (pdf 32kb)
Jackson, Rodney, Snow Leopards, Local People and Livestock Losses: Finding Solutions using Appreciative Participatory Planning and Action (APPA) in the Markha Valley of Hemis National Park, Ladakh. CAT News 31, p 22-23. Autumn 1999. (pdf 22kb)
Jackson, Rodney, Community Participation: Tools and Examples, presented at the “Management Planning Workshop for the Trans-Himalayan Protected Areas,” Leh, Ladakh, 2000, (pdf 68kb)
Jackson, Rodney, and Rinchen Wangchuk, A Community-based Approach to Mitigating Livestock Depredation by Snow Leopards (Human Dimensions of Wildlife, Volume 9, Number 4 [pages 307-315], IUCN Special Issue), 2004 (pdf 44kb)
Jackson, Rodney, and Rinchen Wangchuk, Fostering Co-existence with Predators in Hemis National Park, Ladakh, India, presented at the symposium “People and Predators - Conserving Problem Mammals” International Theriological Congress (ITC8), Sun City, South Africa, 2001. (pdf 12kb)
Jackson, Rodney, and Rinchen Wangchuk, Linking Snow Leopard Conservation and People-Wildlife Conflict Resolution: Grassroots Measures to Protect the Endangered Snow Leopard from Herder Retribution, in Endangered Species Update, Vol 18, No. 4, 2001. (pdf 452kb)
Jackson, Rodney, Rinchen Wangchuk and Darla Hillard, Grassroots Measures To Protect the Endangered Snow Leopard from Herder Retribution: Lessons Learned from Predator-Proofing Corrals in Ladakh, presented at the Snow Leopard Survival Summit, 2002 (pdf 154kb)
Karanth, K. U. & Madhusudan, M. D. (1997). Avoiding paper tigers and saving real tigers: response to Saberwal. Conservation Biology 11: 818-820.
Karanth, K. U. & Madhusudan, M. D. (2002). Mitigating human-wildlife conflicts in southern Asia. In Making Parks Work: Strategies for Preserving Tropical Nature: Pages 250-264. Terborgh, J. W., van Schaik, C. P., Davenport, L. & Rao, M. (Ed.). Washington D.C.: Island Press.
Kartikeya V. Sarabhai. 2000. Strategies in Environmental Education: Experiences from India. Paper prepared for the International Meeting of Experts in Environmental Education, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, November, 20-24, 2000.
Leopold, A. 1961. Thinking Like a Mountain. Sierra Club Books.
Miller, D.J., 1995. Herds on the Move — Winds of Change among Pastoralists in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau. MNR Discussion Paper No. 95/2. Kathmandu, Nepal: ICIMOD
Miller, D.J., 1997. Rangelands and Range Management. ICIMOD Newsletter No. 27. Kathmandu, Nepal: ICIMOD.
Miller, D.J. and Jackson, R., 1994. ‘Livestock and Snow Leopards: Making Room for Competing Users on the Tibetan Plateau’. In Fox, J. L. and Du Jizeng (eds) Proc. Seventh Intl. Snow Leopard Symp, pp. 315-28. Seattle, USA: Intl. Snow Leopard Trust.
Mishra, C. (1997). Livestock depredation by large carnivores in the Indian Trans-Himalaya: conflict perceptions and conservation prospects. Environmental Conservation 24: 338-343.
Mishra, C. & Rawat, G. S. (1998). Livestock grazing and biodiversity conservation: comments on Saberwal. Conservation Biology 12: 712-714.
Mishra, C. (2000). Socioeconomic transition and wildlife conservation in the Indian trans-Himalaya. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 97: 25-32.
Mishra, C., Prins, H. H. T., & van Wieren, S. E. (2001). Overstocking in the Trans-Himalayan rangelands of India. Environmental Conservation 28: 279-283.
Norberg-Hodge, H. 1991. Ancient Futures, Learning from Ladakh. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.
Norberg-Hodge, Helena. 1996. Breaking up the Monoculture. The Nation magazine, July 15-22, 1996.
Norberg-Hodge, Helena. Buddhism in the Global Economy. Downloaded from http://www.isec.org.uk/articles/buddhism.html on Feb 1, 2005.
Norberg-Hodge, H. 1997. A radical challenge to the encroachment of monoculture. Development 40: 67-70.
Orr, D.W., 1992. The problem of sustainability. In Orr, D. Ecological Lieracy. Albany, N.Y. State University of New York.
Page, John. Rambo, Barbie and Wordsworth: Partners in Cultural Destruction on the Tibetan Plateau. Downloaded 2 February 2005 from http://www.isec.org.uk/articles/rambo.pdf.
Saberwal, V., 1996. ‘The Politicisation of Gaddi Access to Grazing Resources in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, 1960-1994’. In Himalayan Research Bulletin, Vol. 16, No 1-2, pp 7-11.
Snow Leopard Conservancy, A Survey of Kathmandu-based Trekking Agencies: Market Opportunities for Linking Community Based Ecotourism with Conservation of Snow Leopard and the Annapurna Conservation Area, December, 2002 (219kb)
Snow Leopard Conservancy, Report on a Nature Guiding Training Workshop held in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, India, June 15-21, 2004 (217kb)
Snow Leopard Conservancy, Visitor Attitude and Market Survey for Planning Community-based Tourism Initiatives in Rural Ladakh, December, 2001 (303kb)
Snow Leopard Conservancy, Visitor Satisfaction and Opportunity Survey Manang, Nepal: Market Opportunities for Linking Community Based Ecotourism with Conservation of Snow Leopard and the Annapurna Conservation Area, July, 2002 (303kb)
The Earth Charter, www.earthcharter.org.
Wangchuk, Rinchen, A Learning Tour of the CBN (Corbett, Nainital and Binsar) Eco-tourism Initiative Sites by Villagers from Hemis National Park and the Surrounding Area(18-28th November 2002) (pdf 341kb)
Wangchuk, Rinchen, and Rodney Jackson, A Community-based Approach to Mitigating Livestock-Wildlife Conflict in Ladakh, India, presented at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development conference, Lhasa, Tibet, 2002 (pdf 31.8kb)
program info | courses | field conditions | instructor | costs