Department of Environmental Studies

Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

Participatory decision tools enable stakeholders to reconcile conflicting natural resources management objectives. Fisheries targeting highly productive species can have profound impacts on co-occurring bycatch species with low fecundity and other life history traits that make them vulnerable to anthropogenic sources of mortality. This study developed a decision tool for integrated bycatch management for data-limited to data-rich fisheries, improving upon current piecemeal approaches. First, through a systematic literature review, participants compile a comprehensive database of methods to mitigate the catch and fishing mortality of threatened bycatch species. These mitigation methods are then categorized into tiers of a sequential mitigation hierarchy, where interventions that avoid capture are considered before those that minimize catchability, followed by methods that minimize fishing mortality, before approaches that offset residual impacts. The methods are also assembled within an evidence hierarchy, where findings from meta-analytic modelling studies are more robust and generalizable than from individual studies. The decision tool enables stakeholders to evaluate alternative bycatch management strategies’ efficacy at meeting specific and measurable objectives for mitigating the catch and mortality of bycatch and for costs from multispecies conflicts, economic viability, practicality and safety, while accounting for the fishery-specific feasibility of compliance monitoring of alternative bycatch management measures. Ongoing adaptation of the bycatch management framework addresses findings from performance assessments, updated evidence, new mitigation methods and changes to governance systems. The proposed decision tool therefore enables stakeholders to develop bycatch management frameworks that provide precautionary protection for the most vulnerable populations with acceptable tradeoffs. © 2022, The Author(s).

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Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries

A decision support tool for integrated fisheries bycatch management

Frontiers in Forests and Global Change

Evaluating methods to map burned area at 30-meter resolution in forests and agricultural areas of Central India

Since the summer of 2020, Indian farmers have been protesting three laws that aim to liberalize agricultural markets and encourage contract farming. In doing so, they have also mounted the largest challenge to an authoritarian Hindu nationalist government to date. The contributions to this JPS Forum provide deep and diverse insights into these farmer protests, including their social composition and political character, as well as their roots in long-term transformations in markets, ecology, and agrarian—and non-agrarian—political economy. In this introduction, we put these contributions into dialogue with older debates in JPS over India’s ‘new farmers’ movements,’ which reached their zenith in the 1980s, in order to throw into relief what has changed in rural India and in agrarian studies over the subsequent decades. We argue that the polarized terms of the earlier debates—between Marxists and populists—are no longer adequate for the transformed agrarian milieu of the twenty-first century, which is increasingly defined by agrarian distress, ecological crisis, semi-proletarianization and diversification of occupations amidst jobless and exclusionary growth. This new agrarian reality, combined with the significance of the protests in challenging an authoritarian regime, helps to explain not only the broad coalition behind the current farmers’ protests, but their far more sympathetic treatment by agrarian scholars.

The Journal of Peasant Studies

Farmers’ protests in India: introduction to the JPS Forum

Yale Agrarian Studies Series

Genetically Modified Democracy: Transgenic Crops in Contemporary India

The modernist conception of urban order is predicated on state regulation of city spaces and social practices. Street food vending disrupts this idealized order and is therefore denounced by state officials and the bourgeois public. Hamstrung by this hostile discursive field and their own lack of symbolic capital, how do food vendors manage to maneuver their way through an inhospitable city? In this paper, I use ethnographic vignettes from two neighborhoods in Delhi to argue that street vendors and city spaces should not be treated as homogeneous categories; differences among vendors and between urban settings are crucial for explaining heterogeneous survival strategies. These differences relate to ethnic identities derived from diverse histories of migration, as well as to the variegated layout, land use and legal geographies of spaces in the city. I conclude by showing that negotiations over food vending now occur not only on the street, but also through the virtual world of food blogs and videos. By representing street food as a valued part of city culture, the internet has emerged as a new space where the claims of street vendors acquire greater legitimacy in the public sphere.

Food, Culture and Society

Street food and the art of survival: migrants and places in Delhi, India

The sustainability of global fisheries has emerged as a major concern for the future of marine biodiversity. In the spheres of seafood production and consumption, strict regulation of fisheries and more recently, ethical certifications of seafood products, are favoured as a means to ensure thriving fish stocks and healthy oceans. However, research has shown that such restrictions and market-driven certifications have had mixed results, with socio-ecological impacts detrimental to the long-term sustainability of tropical fisheries in the Global South. We approach this issue of fisheries sustainability in the Global South from the perspective of common pool resources by considering the practices of seafood producers, retailers and consumers and their inter-connectedness with marine fishing commons. We build on critical literature on commoning using data on consumption preferences of 531 seafood consumers and seafood availability in 400 seafood restaurants across 4 metros in India and examine the extent to which seafood consumption patterns and availability can facilitate or unsettle marine fishing commons. We identify patterns of selective seafood consumption and dependence on niche markets that are translated across seafood supply chains and disrupt initiatives by fishers to sustainably manage local fisheries. We then discuss efforts to increase consumer awareness and recommend building community-supported fisheries through initiatives like InSeason Fish. In conclusion, we argue that discourse in fisheries sustainability should be theoretically recast through a ‘seafood commons' that integrates practices of diverse resource users.

Geoforum

Rethinking sustainability: From seafood consumption to seafood commons

A fierce controversy over genetically modified (GM) crops has been raging in India for over two decades. Analyzing India’s regulatory regime for GM crops, this article focuses on the modes through which state bureaucracies know the environment. It argues that two epistemologies - scientific and legal-administrative – underpin environment protection. By unraveling the course of regulatory disputes, I demonstrate that bureaucracies are not just hierarchically divided but are also segmented by horizontal, functional specializations. There is thus an inherent ambiguity lodged between environment as a technical discourse and as statecraft. This ambiguity both fosters and constrains democratic participation in policy decisions and can even partially disrupt power relations in unanticipated ways. © 2021 SAGE Publications.

Journal of Developing Societies

Environment and its Forms of Knowledge: The Regulation of Genetically Modified Crops in India

Despite multiple approaches over the last several decades to harmonize conservation and development goals in the tropics, forest-dependent households remain the poorest in the world. Durable housing and alternatives to fuelwood for cooking are critical needs to reduce multi-dimensional poverty. These improvements also potentially reduce pressure on forests and alleviate forest degradation. We test this possibility in dry tropical forests of the Central Indian Highlands where tribal and other marginalized populations rely on forests for energy, construction materials, and other livelihood needs. Based on a remotely sensed measure of forest degradation and a 5000 household survey of forest use, we use machine learning (causal forests) and other statistical methods to quantify treatment effects of two improved living standards—alternatives to fuelwood for cooking and non-forest-based housing material—on forest degradation in 1, 2, and 5 km buffers around 500 villages. Both improved living standards had significant treatment effects (−0.030 ± 0.078, −0.030 ± 0.023, 95% CI), respectively, with negative values indicating less forest degradation, within 1 km buffers around villages. Treatment effects were lower with increasing distance from villages. Results suggest that improved living standards can both reduce forest degradation and alleviate poverty. Forest restoration efforts can target improved living standards for local communities without conflicts over land tenure or taking land out of production to plant trees. © 2021 The Authors. Biotropica published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.

Biotropica

Improved household living standards can restore dry tropical forests

Dalit folktales are an important part of Indian folkloristic categories. They have existed since long, often in a complex relationship with the dominant culture. The development of Dalit cultural, political and public spheres in the recent past has galvanized a dynamic Dalit system of organization of folktales in performances, festivals and protests, leading to a diffusion of its contents and forms, and intimate connections with everyday life of the community. The folktale has also increasingly become an expression of Dalits’ environmental risks, conflicts and rights. Its mythical characters have been transformed into symbols of ecological ancestors with immense physical, natural and spiritual skills, who have the courage to liberate the community from oppressive ecological and social systems. Drawing on the folktale of two Musahar brothers, Dina and Bhadri, widely circulated in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India and Nepal, the article sheds light on how folk traditions work within Dalit and other marginalized groups in South Asia. It particularly focuses on how folklore has become a way for Dalits to assert their environmental rights through their own motifs, everyday memories, and ecological ancestors. Based on extensive fieldwork in the North Indian River Plains, the article highlights this new phenomenon of ecological symbolism of Dalit folklore.

South Asian History and Culture

God of Humans’:Dina-Bhadri, Dalit Folktales and Environmental Movements

The National Capital Region of Delhi in India is one of the most polluted urban areas in the world, and its intense pollution episodes are attributed to crop residue burning (CRB). However, existing studies are limited in time and pollutant type, and do not often control for non-biophysical factors. We used ground-measured pollutant levels and aerosol optical depth (AOD) data to understand the role of CRB in Delhi’s air pollution from 2015 to 2018. While the CRB peak in October–November is associated with pollution episodes, biophysical conditions in the April–May CRB period allow the pollutants to disperse. Elevation in SO2 and ozone is associated with CRB from more distant source areas than elevations in PM2.5 and PM10: gaseous molecules such as SO2 may travel further than particulate matter; and NO2 may convert to ozone during long-range transport. Pollution levels are very high in December–January despite low CRB in this period. Given the high contribution of biomass burning in this period in source apportionment studies, it is unclear whether the sharp elevation in pollutant levels with temperature drop in this period can be explained only with meteorological conditions, or whether there are unquantified sources contributing to pollutant load in December–January, such as small-scale CRB that is undetected by the MODIS active fire product or local burning for heat. There are limitations to the substitution of ground-measured pollutants with AOD in analyzing drivers of pollution since AOD, unlike ground-measured pollutants, is unable to identify fine-scale drivers such as construction. Further studies that use seasonal emissions inventories, particularly for waste and household burning for heat, are required to understand their contribution to pollution in December–January as they may have a disproportionate impact on pollution and human health. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd