 Welcome back. I hope you had some rest and recuperation from the workshop yesterday. We continue for a few more days till the end of this week. So, I am going to continue from my previous discussion on institutions, governance and common property resources for about half the class. Then we are going to link the issues of commons and common pool resources to issue the topics of wasteland development, biodiversity, also the intellectual property issues related to biotechnology and agriculture, because these also are some of the contentious or controversial issues that are listed in our syllabus. We do not have enough time to go into them in great detail, but they have implications for what kind of rules, regulations, laws we make about environment and they also have implications for collectives that is groups of people to make decisions and govern resources efficiently. And then towards the end of the class, I am going to spend a little bit of time on what we discussed in my third lecture that is on issues relating to environmental legislation, where we had a bit of a discussion with the 40 directors and vice chancellor who had come here last week on Saturday. Partly borrowing from some of the responses that you gave me, but also including other commons, I am going to give you a few tips on how best to teach environmental legislation and laws in India. Finally, I will end with giving you an assignment based on the topics that I have been dealing with. So, in the previous class, we were discussing issues of commons and common pool resources. There was a perspective in the 1960s and 70s about tragedy of the commons and I was stating that there is a difference between common pool resources and free rider problem. So, if a resource is allowed to be used by everybody, but nobody is responsible for maintaining the resource or for enforcing rules and regulations, then the resource degrades very quickly that is when the tragedy of the common happens. But as I told you with the help of the theoretical and conceptual perspectives of Eleanor Ostrom, people do develop a lot of rules and regulations and norms for governing resources. And therefore, the commons are seen as one way of efficiently arresting the degradation of environmental systems. How important is the commons for the incomes and livelihoods and employment of people? On what scale do people practice common pool resources as a way of governing resources compared to public or private management? I will explain through a short documentary in a little while from now because all of us are aware of government or public management and private management or ownership of resources. It is only a few people working in environmental studies who are aware of the common pool resource style of management. Even though it is practiced on a very extensive and large scale around the world including in countries like India. So, understanding scale is very important so that we can then tell the students as well that this is a very significant alternative to more efficient management of resources, more participatory management of resources. So, one additional aspect that is particularly relevant in countries like India when it comes to the commons is wasteland development. In my first after my first lecture one of the participants asked me about this since this is covered in the UGC syllabus and there is not much information about what is to be taught there is not much literature the textbooks also do not mention it much. So, India as you may know has a national wasteland development board set up in 1985. Why did we set up this national wasteland development board and why does the Indian government have an integrated wasteland development program and a series of projects attached to this. So, we have to go back a little bit in history because what is classified as wasteland is not really wasteland. So, it was during the British period that a lot of land which were commons were classified as unproductive or barren and were classified as wasteland even though these lands were actually used temporarily or permanently by people living in villages around these wastelands. So, for the British unless you could cultivate commercial crops on land or dig for minerals underneath the land that land was considered to be wasteland because of this a lot of land was considered to be unproductive or barren and these were handed over for non-agricultural non-environmental urban development industrialization other kinds of activities these became state property and again like in the case of forests the people who are dependent on these wastelands they were considered to be illegal users of these wastelands. Secondly both during the British rule and after independence there has been rapid degradation of productive land this happens because of excessive irrigation. So, soil salinity becomes a problem land becomes uncultivable this happens because of intensive agriculture taking two crops three crops per year. So, the soil fertility declines and the land becomes barren this happens because of excessive pollution of agricultural land due to use of chemical fertilizers pesticides and so on. So, on the one hand you have common land where shrubs different kinds of grass some plants grow which were used for various purposes by local communities on the other hand your productive land which has become unproductive because of ecological degradation. These two categories of land are classified as wasteland and as per the department of land resources of the government of India you have the definition of what is considered to be degraded land and the primary purpose and objective of government's policies on this is to bring such land under vegetative cover through use of science technology and peoples efforts especially to be noted are issues related to water and soil management because many of the projects related to watershed management are integrated with wasteland development projects because providing sources of water is considered as one important way in which vegetative cover can be restored to wasteland. And two very important examples here one is the case of Raleigh-Ghamsidhi earlier in one of the classes I gave you a link to a video made by the center for science and environment New Delhi on the case of Raleigh-Ghamsidhi where the watershed development was used to restore vegetative cover in an area which was essentially drought prone so the land was barren by restoring vegetative cover they could provide fodder throughout the year to their cattle and other livestock. Second is the initiatives of Rajendra Singh called as the water man of India who has won many awards for his significant work on water restoration projects in Rajasthan especially in Alwar district. So, these are rainwater harvesting structures using a lot of indigenous knowledge and thousands and thousands of hectares of land have been made cultivable because they have successfully harvested rainwater. So, water shed in wasteland go together one of the important things that we must remember is that much of this land on the wasteland is commons that is these are not individually owned they may be government owned but these have been used as commons as common pooled resources by people living in rural areas or they may they constitute common property resources by being attached to the village panchayat. So, the national wasteland development board suggested that since India has a significant proportion of the world's population but a very tiny proportion of the world's cultivable land there is a lot of pressure on land to produce more to feed our population. To decrease the pressure on land and increase the carrying capacity of agricultural land in India the objective is to restore wasteland make them productive and accessible to people. So, as part of this they have launched an integrated wasteland development program through which many projects have been implemented all over India primarily to put wastelands into sustainable use. So, the term sustainable use is very important here it is not just to bring wasteland into use for industries for mining for various other kinds of projects. So, they want to make this wasteland useful in the long term they want to sustain the use of these resources for a long time and they want to use the wasteland to increase biomass availability especially the 5 F's that they have identified food fodder for animals fuel wood for cooking fruits and fiber. These are the 5 things they want to grow in these wastelands. Since most of the degraded lands the wastelands are common pool resources there has been a lot of interest by researchers working on common pool resources that this constitutes a huge chunk of land that can not only be restored ecologically, but that can provide a huge source of income and livelihood to more than 300 million people living below the poverty line in India. So, it has a development use it has an environmental use as well. Just as an example I have given you this book by Vandana Shiva there is also the work by N S Jodha who is one of India's pioneering scholars working on common pool resources and who has written a lot on restoring different kinds of wasteland into commons and how they can provide a source of poverty reduction in India. The pictures below they are examples from my own field research in Maharashtra the one on the left this is from a place called Vagholi near Pune where a lot of legal and illegal small scale mining has resulted in the land becoming very barren you can see hardly any vegetation there now and the water body slowly dying off. These two pictures are from a project in which IIT Bombay was involved different departments and what we did was to take up an area which was completely barren in spite of getting a lot of rainfall because all the water was running off into the Arabian sea. So, we enabled a watershed and today this is a picture that you see whether it is completely covered by vegetation which was not there to that extent earlier. So, you can very clearly see there is a link between wasteland development and watershed development in India. The second aspect which is also one of the important issues in the UGC syllabus which relates to commons or common pool resources is a human wildlife conflict. Now there are of course many different aspects to human wildlife conflict. I wish to focus here on the issue of common pool resources and human wildlife conflict because that helps provides a certain logic to conservation of these resources instead of taking one particular position of only conserving wildlife and nature or only supporting human activities. The commons perspective helps us to arrive at a balance with their reference to these two issues. So, the primary reason why human wildlife conflicts or to use a technical term human wildlife interface conflicts are increasing in India is because the common pool resources such as forests, mangroves, wetlands these are being increasingly encroached upon for urbanization, for residential purposes, for resorts, hotels, entertainment, special economic zones and so on. So, there is a lot of encroachment on these areas or they are becoming privatized. Also we see that there is a necological degradation of mangroves of wetlands of forests and so on. So, increasingly the wildlife such as tigers, leopards and so on are encroaching on human settlements whether these are in villages or in cities and that leads to conflicts where the wildlife come and kill human beings or destroy crops, eat up crops. In response some of these human groups try to kill some of these wildlife which are encroaching into human territory and that results in destruction of both. So, it results in an overall environmental imbalance. Generally we see that there is a conflict between those who want to conserve biodiversity and sustainably reuse resources and those who exclusively support livelihoods and lives of people. However, the point that we need to convey when it comes to human wildlife conflicts is to avoid polarization from a sustainable development approach because political activists or real estate groups or media will tend to polarize the debate by saying that you know we must conserve resources or we must cater to human needs. But both are not viable in the long run because if you protect only human interests in the long run the resources will degrade because if the wildlife do not have prey they are going to die and that will if impact the entire food pyramid and the entire ecosystem will get destroyed. On the other hand we cannot give importance only to conservation of wildlife because then human needs are not met and if human needs are not met and if the destruction of human lives, property and crops and so on by the wildlife is not addressed then the interest in sustainably managing environmental systems is lost. So, local people have to be involved in maintaining and conserving resources. Thus any approach to sustainable management of human wildlife conflicts should recognize that most of the people who are getting affected with some exceptions most of the people whose lives and livelihoods are affected by wildlife are poor and they live in environments which are extremely dangerous. The Sundarbans is one such example where it is estimated that every second day someone is getting killed and they have now even coined this term called tiger widows of Sundarbans where a lot of men who are going for small scale hunting fishing in the Sundarbans in the wetlands mangroves and so on in the delta area are getting killed that is because they do not have other sources of sustainable livelihoods in elsewhere where it is not so dangerous to live. On the other hand you also have cities like Mumbai including IIT Bombay which has been frequently attacked by leopards. There is a very interesting discovery channel documentary which you can see it is called leopards of Bollywood because it is leopards are frequently seen to intervene in Bollywood film shooting in Gorigama film city. It also talks about other kinds of issues in that in that film in that documentary film. What we are trying to say is that because the habitat of the wildlife is increasingly getting encroached upon and getting degraded these wildlife have no choice but to enter into even cities which are which have very high densities of population high movement of people into cities like Mumbai for example. So, it is very important that the commons be less encroached upon and we restore the commons and give it back to the people and the wildlife so that these kinds of problems can be minimized. So, from the previous two examples in addition to the ones I talked about earlier what we see is that there are multiple advantages of maintaining and restoring the commons. And from the examples that I gave in the first class about Wangari Mathai's work on tree planting in Kenya and Africa. From these different examples we can see the commons are related to development issues to governance, address inequality problems and we also see different kinds of commons not only natural resource commons but also information commons, cultural commons, intellectual property rights, biodiversity all of these are affected. So, before I go further on this issue of commons as a form of governance of resources I would like to show a film documentary film now. This is made by an artist called Amar Kanwar working with the foundation for ecological security which is one of India's largest environmental NGOs. This consists of it is a short 8-9 minute film it consists of 7 different aspects of the commons. And after there is no there are no dialogues or voice over or commentary in this there is only background music and the captions are below they appear below. So, after each short film there is a small gap when the screen goes blank do not think the film has ended it is just for us to reflect on the message that has been sent. So, let us see this and then we will come back to the discussion. So, what you see is that on the one hand the commons are extremely important they were they are able to put a monetary value of the commons to the people of our country in terms of the amount and the proportion of the budget and so on. And how it can make a difference to in the context of a very large number of farmers suicides. But what we also see that natural resources or environment is also related to knowledge. So, knowledge is also held in common knowledge related to different kinds of plants which can be used for food for medicinal purposes and so on. We know that there are attempts to patent these by many companies in the world especially American companies patent Basmati patent the use of turmeric patent neem which have been traditionally used for food and for medicinal purposes without us having to pay royalty to any company in the world. So, the protection of biodiversity and plants and other species in the commons is related to certain kinds of knowledge which have value for people. And that knowledge is also knowledge commons just as we have resource commons. But if that knowledge is also privatized then it affects the ability of people to use that knowledge for their own development and this also applies as we saw in the end to what is called as cultural commons to things like music and so on which are also increasingly being privatized. So, that brings us to another issue of the common pool resources which is related to biodiversity. Because normally we think of biodiversity as the diversity of species of different kinds of species and why it is important to protect biodiversity. Because we can they can be of use to us in the future. Now what is not so well known is that the protection of biodiversity is very closely linked to common pool resources whether it is forest or water bodies of pasture mangroves wetlands and so on. So, these are some of the most biodiversity rich or biodiversity hot spots. On the one hand environmental degradation of these hot spots results in loss of biodiversity. On the other hand is privatization of some of these resources which is also termed as biopiracy by firms from around the world who try to patent the use of a particular species and then say nobody else can use them. Which is why it is very important that we maintain what is called as community biodiversity registers. Because the amount of biodiversity is so large the government alone cannot do this. So, it is very important that communities everywhere do surveys and identify what kind of species are available and what are their uses. This also creates an additional incentive to communities to take an interest and have a stake in resources in their own areas. And probably this could be one of the exercises that you can make your students do. It could be a simple biodiversity register in your own college what kind of species of insects, small animals, rodents, plants exist and whether this is increasing or decreasing. Or in areas surrounding your college in nearby localities neighborhoods to map some kind of the biodiversity and maintain it as a register because this can be a nationally important document. So, finally this community biodiversity register in case there is biopiracy in case somebody tries to steal the knowledge and the uses of different kinds of plant species. This kind of a register will allow governments to fight against those companies on behalf of the community by saying that this knowledge already exists these plants existed they have been using them for a very long time. Linking this to a legal aspect we have the biodiversity act of 2000 about which one of you had sent me a question a couple of days ago. But we also have in some countries what is called as bioprospecting laws which try to benefit communities which protect the environment. So, generally we may talk of protection of environment in an abstract or vague manner. But what do communities get especially poor communities they may want to over exploit resources because it relates to their lives they have to eat to live. What if they over exploit? What incentive do they have to maintain biodiversity in their own areas? So, bioprospecting laws are one way of rewarding people for maintaining biodiversity in their own areas. What this means and especially this has been seen in many South American countries and they are trying to introduce it in Southeast Asian countries because countries like Indonesia have allowed millions of hectares of land for us to be completely degraded with enormous destruction of biodiversity. So, in South American and Central American countries what they do is that government scientific agencies or private companies may go into community forests to seek certain plants which can provide which has medicinal uses or pharmaceutical uses they can develop medicines out of these plants to cure different kinds of diseases. Since the local communities are deemed to have been responsible for maintaining the health of biodiversity of these forests a part of the profits that comes from developing and marketing these medicines is shared with the communities or royalty is given to them. So, these are covered under bioprospecting laws. So, you can see here that there are different ways in which the protection of the commons can go hand in hand with environmental conservation but also can provide income to local communities and contribute to their development. So, what we are trying to say here is that there are some sections who argue that development is more important than environment others who argue environment is more important than development but that kind of a polarized approach does not recognize the current and future significance of biodiversity for human beings. So, in general even those who take a balanced view on development versus environment tend to not include or incorporate biodiversity issues in their arguments. So, if you focus purely on development saying that this is what is important for us in the short run the fundamental significance including financial significance and the significance of health of biodiversity is ignored. So, development which goes hand in hand with environmental protection can protect the biodiversity of environments around the world and they yield us future benefits in the form of medicines in the form of cures for many diseases and maybe even many other fundamental scientific discoveries. Therefore, both scientists like all of us and communities have a role and responsibility in ensuring that commons are protected. So, since the common pooled resources are not incorporated in a big way in many of the environmental studies textbooks I want to project it as one of the fundamental issues of environmental conservation and I would like you also to take this in a much more expanded form to the students when you teach. As part of this we can also look at genetic resources as commons because many of you will be aware of increasing controversies around G or genetically engineered crops similarly with GMO or genetically modified organisms. So, you have GM tomato, GM fish, genetically modified brinjal, cotton and so on. So, many environmentalists are worried about the long term effects because there is horizontal transfer of genes from one species to another. So, for example, to increase the shelf life of tomatoes they may transfer a gene from a cold water fish into tomato so that it stays longer even without refrigeration or to increase pest resistance in brinjal they may transfer genes from a bacteria into brinjal or into cotton and so on. So, what these are new areas because we are artificially transforming nature rather than allow nature to gradually adapt to various kinds of transformations that happen naturally. So, these might have long term impacts for the environmental health but what we also see is that there is a link to looking at genetic resources as a different kind of commons because historically in countries like India having many different varieties of the same crop. So, before independence we had more than 100 different varieties of rice we have very few now same thing with wheat and pulses and many other crops. So, the more varieties you have the better you can adapt to problems like climate change. So, if rainfall is less in one particular year or the temperature goes up depending on monsoon variability temperature variability farmers choose different varieties of the same crop so that they can get a better yield. However, what is likely to happen with these genetically engineered or modified crops is that they can lead to monoculture that all and already it is happening with hybridization with hybrid crops that many of the different diversity of crops are disappearing and instead you have very few varieties of the same crop. This makes it easier for insects pests and diseases to move from one variety of the same crop to another leading to greater incidence of pests and diseases of among plants and that leads to huge crop losses for farmers. But also what is happening is there are other kinds of commons which we generally ignore what about air as commons. So, through air we know the pollen moves. We also have in the commons we have different species of birds and butterflies which carry pollen from one plant to another. So, if we introduce genetically engineered genetically modified plants does it disturb this process of cross pollination? Does it lead to different kinds of pollination which may affect other kinds of plants? What implication does it have for farmers freedom to grow different kinds of crops? So, historically farmers could save seed from the harvest of one season use that for next year. But there have been lot of court cases around the world where one farmer or a company is growing a genetically engineered crop and accidentally pollen from this may go and pollinate a farmers plants in a field. And these companies have sued the farmers for illegally using the genetic genetically engineered crops even though it is a farmers who should be suing the companies for because their crops have got contaminated with these varieties. So, these kinds of loss of freedom and sovereignty for farmers are happening and so there are the idea of biodiversity and commons is a very broad one as you can see it can be expanded to look at the controversies and the kind of impacts that these new technologies are having on agriculture. It has an impact on knowledge of farmers. So, if you adopt GE crops for example, farmers are not allowed to save seed and use that same next year because they have to buy the seeds every year from the seed company. So, it makes them dependent on them. So, these kinds of larger implications on the environment of these technological changes are something we need to recognize but they also have links between common lands or what is happening in common with reference to species like butterflies and birds or the movement of Poland how Poland are carried through wind through air and private land what happens on farmers properties. So, that is why we have some of these acts called plant varieties protection act protection of farmers knowledge and so on because farmers rights also need to be protected when we talk of environmental issues and productivity issues. So, Vandana Shiva has written this book called Monocultures of the Mind. So, in this course in my module one of the things I have been saying is that sustainable development can happen if we have more choice. More choice means more options more ways of relating to the environment and finding out which is the most efficient one which is better for us. That means it is not just biodiversity with reference to natural resources but having more technological choices more social choices more economic choices technologies like genetic engineering narrow these choices. So, they tend to lead to some kind of a monoculture where we think only one solution is best that tends to cause huge amounts of ecological degradation loss of biodiversity and so on ultimately destroying the environment and affecting our lives and livelihoods. So, at this point there are two things that I am going to do one just briefly mention the provisions that are identified by Madhav Gadgil and Ramchandra Guha who I have mentioned together have written a lot on environmental issues in India. So, specifically for India since in that video we saw how important commons was they have suggested these strategies. One we need the government to identify common lands because we still do not have at the national level any kind of database to identify how much of area is covered by the commons how these are managed what is planted how these are used who uses them how much they benefit nothing we know and our own colleges and students can also play a role in this by identifying common lands in one zone area and identifying the legal status of this whom does it belong to does it belong to the panchayat to the government to the revenue to the forest department is it used in common but owned by a private agency that kind of a survey can be done by us. We need to ensure that these are managed properly that we give freedom and autonomy to people to design their own rules and regulations so that they can manage it best instead of government imposing its own rules on them. As I mentioned the other day with reference to examples from Haryana and Rajasthan groups outside of village society also need to be considered like pastoral groups groups with cattle who do not belong to village but who are nomadic move from one place to another their needs are to be considered otherwise they will end up illegally exploiting or over exploiting resources outside of village society may also include crafts people. So why we had a student here a couple of years ago who did research on the Saranpur woodcraft industry one of the things she found was that there are two things which led to a decline in this industry one the commons from which they were getting wood a special kinds of wood for their woodcraft for making furniture and so on those forests were getting degraded secondly they were not being allowed to access this forest because that was only given to certain kind of tribal people or people who were classified as dependent on forest or people with cattle not for artisans so their needs also need to be made so what is happening is these people were illegally importing wood from other parts of India and they were also using other qualities of other trees which are much more important for preserving the biodiversity especially mango trees for example. Number five scientists engineers technologies need to give a lot of inputs to find out what kind of resources exist how these can be more efficiently used. So in IIT Bombay for example we have a big project funded by the United Nations Development Program where we identify different kinds of bamboo growing around the country and then provide training to bamboo people working with bamboo crafts and prepare new kinds of tools so that they can use bamboo for their as a source of livelihood but we also make sure that we cultivate different kinds of bamboo not have monoculture make sure that these are adaptable to the local environmental conditions make sure they are not completely over exploited and so on so provision of technical inputs also becomes very important. Finally there must be curbs on market forces because if market forces are allowed that is private companies are allowed to enter the commons they will get very rapidly degraded as we have seen in many parts of the world. So it must be available only for the people who are dependent on them for as a source of livelihood and subsistence and if the health of the commons improves there is surplus available then they can be made available to local village people crafts people artisans and so on who can make and products and sell them instead of giving them to private companies who are likely to overuse these resources. So these are some of the strategies given by these two people for protecting and sustaining the health of the commons in India. So let me go to this quiz now we have some questions here so I would we will do it in the poll mode I will ask each question then we you have to as a center give one answer A, B, C or D four options for each question you have to I have five or six questions given answer to each one we just setting it up it will take a minute. Okay the poll has been created you can start polling the question is Eleanor Ostrom believes that the solution to socio ecological system problems lies in A government or state ownership and management of resources B private ownership and management of resources C common pool resource management and D multiplicity of governance and ownership arrangements for resources. So each center should do a poll within and give one answer either A or B or C or D so please start giving your answers you have 30 seconds the correct answer is D because she says it is a multiplicity of governance and ownership arrangements common pool resource is also correct but it is more accurate to say D because she does say common pool resource management is a better option than private or government but if you remember what I said and if you remember the interview with her on the video the multiplicity of governance and ownership depending on which one is more relevant contextually that is would be the correct answer 24 have given the correct answer okay yeah okay it could be more because some people have still not given it is gone up to about 30 now okay thank you now let us go to the second question okay we have the second one which you have to answer based on the interview with Eleanor Ostrom that I showed you on Saturday in that interview she mentions that the difference between blank or dash or not is a difference between common pool resources and public goods if you recall one of you had also asked me the difference between the two and I had explained in detail so difference between what or not is a difference between common pool resources and public goods start pulling the four options are a subtractibility b exclusion c inclusion d property rights which is the correct answer you have 30 seconds okay let us view the results property rights okay 67 have given property rights how many have given a about 19 the correct answer is 19 subtractibility if you remember in the case of public goods it is not subtractable but in the case of common property rights it is subtractable that is if one individual takes out a ton of fish that is the example she gives that much less is available to others in the commons okay the correct answer is a which is the second most popular answer 30 okay yeah okay so we have the cartoon documentary on the commons which explain the difference between the free rider problem and the common pool resources so in that it says that the idea behind the commons it tells us what is the idea behind the commons how it is different from the free rider so just hold on for a few seconds and we will just start pulling the idea behind the commons as per this cartoon documentary which I showed on Saturday is that a the advantage of one person is also the advantage of another be the advantage of one person is the disadvantage of another see the advantage of one person is both the advantage and disadvantage of another D the advantage of one person has no implication for another okay the answer seems to be neck and neck between A and C advantage of one is also the advantage of another okay most of you have clicked A or C a few people have clicked on C more than a the correct answer is a the advantage of one is also the advantage of another okay that of one person is also the advantage of another not C which is the advantage and disadvantage of another a in free rider problem it can be C but in common pool resources it is a which has been given by roughly the second largest number of participants okay now we have the last question coming up for this quiz before we move ahead okay so about 57 so we have a better record on the answer C where a larger number of people have given the correct answer about 60 people have given the correct answer for the earlier question the next question is based on the video documentary that we just saw the commons by Amal Kanwar and FeS so answer the following question based on the documentary the commons common property resources contribute about dash annually to the incomes of four Indian households a 5 billion dollars b 5.5 billion c 4 billion d 4.5 billion so let us see how many of you remember correctly what you just saw about 15 minutes ago yeah 120 so I think the majority more than 80 have chosen a US 5 billion dollars which is the correct answer and some people have chosen 5.5 for 4.5 and so on okay okay so thank you very much for participating in this quiz so you can also do similar things with your students let us get back to the presentation last 10 minutes will wind up so I want to end by spending a few minutes as I mentioned earlier on teaching strategies for environmental legislation and then I talked to you a little bit about the assignment that you have to submit because this will be my last class a couple of things you had also mentioned in my interaction on Saturday so rather than teach environmental laws directly provision by provision section by section which can get very boring explain why these laws came into existence in first place why do we need to have laws because people do not because people are bent upon destroying the environment they do not have concern for the environment it is over exploited overused people do not follow rules norms and so on. So what are the issues that a law is trying to address whether it is wildlife or biodiversity or environment protection air pollution water pollution ground water and so on so what are the issues and problems with reference to a resource and how does the law attempt to address these in what way successfully unsuccessfully all of those you can discuss so that makes it much more interesting the second is also to focus on violations that is even though we have a lot of laws many of these are violated or not enforced so trying to focus on why this happens enables people to understand the laws better the loop holes in the law the problems with the governance of the law the implementation of the law so that people so that people understand the limitations of legal approaches but also how to strengthen laws number 3 you can also focus on the role of technologies for example how can information technology help facilitate the better implementation of laws suppose we digitize all kinds of resources we digitize information on air pollution water pollution we allow communities to collect information and put them up on a central database we can create all kinds of software programs for analyzing pollution environmental degradation loss of habitat loss of species so how can different kinds of technologies help us to have monitor the implementation of the laws and then we have better implementation so you can discuss various kinds of strategies with reference to this in the classroom number 4 is something that some of you also have mentioned to me in my emails in your emails develop a personal stake that is ask your students to discuss environmental law implementation violation in your own areas and how does the violation or non implementation of laws affect people in your village in your city in your town okay it could be water pollution air pollution loss of biodiversity so that they develop as a personal stake people then become much more interested in the finer principles of law and they begin to read these things make the issues and consequences clear on some issues like air pollution or water pollution or loss of species wildlife habitat destruction of forests things are very much somewhat clearer but the impact of loss of biodiversity sometimes is not very clear so students sometimes find it very difficult to understand what is the implication of loss of biodiversity because this has an implication sometime in the future may not have immediate impact it may not have a visible impact which you can actually see so in such cases to explain something like the biodiversity act of 2000 you have to make the issues and consequences of loss of biodiversity very clear to them then they begin to appreciate the law finally again one or two have mentioned these cases to me so court cases such as the MC Mehta case on pollution the Samatha judgment which I mentioned the Bhopal gas disaster forest rights act in Mumbai there has been a very successful battle against the dumping ground located illegally on a coastal regulation zone in Kanjurmar the shifting of industries small-scale industries outside of Delhi the implementation of CNG gas for public transport all of this happened through court cases so court cases are much more interesting than just reading about acts and laws so explaining the law how this came into existence and how these were implemented in different kinds of court cases may make these issues much more interesting for students so these are different ways in which you can make the teaching of laws much more interesting and you are of course free to come up with more suggestions these are what I could think of you probably will be able to come up with more and better suggestions another pedagogic recommendation that I would give is to use concept maps so concept maps are also referred to as mind maps these make us understand the big picture whether it is air pollution water pollution common pool resources biodiversity wildlife what is the larger context of sustainable development because our objective in this course is to sensitize students about the larger goal of sustainable development how does each of these small themes link to the big picture of sustainable development so concept map is a tool that is used to understand these so to understand what exactly a common concept map is you can go to all these websites they provide guidelines they help you to understand step by step how to prepare a concept map so this is what I am going to give you as an assignment to be submitted by 12th June you can prepare this assignment in electronic format and submit it on model or you can do it on paper with a pen and paper pencil and scan and upload these are some of the examples of concept maps so you can see there is no one model of concept map there are many different ways so it is completely left to your imagination what you wish to do okay so the question that is being given to you for the assignment is what is the significance and protecting of protecting and expanding the use of CPR for sustainable development develop a concept map so this question that is given here what is the significance of protecting and expanding the use of common pool resources for sustainable development so linking the concept of CPR to the big picture of sustainable development you need to prepare a concept map for that in any way in which you want so I will not impose any restriction on you there is no standard model you can do it like this linking sustainability to various kinds of environmental effects another example is here this is a circle of sustainability linking culture different aspects of culture ecology economics and politics or it can be in this way also where you have poverty equity sustainability climate change here how these are linked through different factors related to environment economy and so society so some more examples are given in these sites the first three where you can go and find out about different kinds of common concept maps one of them also has a concept map on air pollution the final one this one bubbles that is a tool so you can go to this website and create your own concept map so it is a tool available where you can take any theme including the theme I have given you about CPR and sustainable development you can develop an electronic concept map here or if you want to do it on paper with a pencil that is fine also okay this is the website concept map tool so some students have made a concept map on sustainability and uploaded it here but you can also use this general tool to develop it so I would like you as an assignment to develop this concept map and submit it to me by 12th June 2015 that is the assignment given to you okay I will create an assignment on Moodle and you have to submit it there any questions on this we just have a couple of minutes but if anyone has any questions on this I can take them Marathwada or Angabad okay do you have any question sir dams and nuclear power project do they come under commons or not or and why okay okay let us just take one more okay GRIT Cook at Palli good morning sir good morning sir my question is like for wasteland development you gave us like increased biomass availability so are there any methods to use this biomass availability like if any deficiency is there only that is wasteland so how can we improve this biomass okay there yeah thank you very quickly to respond dams and nuclear projects are themselves at least in India government projects but they do encroach upon common lands so they do take over a lot of common lands which is why there is a lot of protests against dams and nuclear projects so they take away the commons whether it is fishing commons or grazing commons or cultural commons temples other kinds of commons so they do have a relationship with the use of the commons and the degradation of the commons but they are not commons in themselves okay second question about wasteland it is true that there are certain environmental problems with the wasteland which is why they remain as waste that is only partially true because in many cases wastelands are not completely used they may be used in particular seasons they may be used in particular months as a fallback option by people living around them so some of them may be purposely maintained as wastelands because they do not want to over exploit them but if we have to increase biomass then obviously some kind of inputs have to be given one example I gave you was water providing greater access to water for the wastelands increase vegetative cover and biomass also one could do that is why I mentioned the need for technical inputs one could do tests to assess the soil quality other kinds of technical studies are required to understand what can be done to improve the wastelands to increase biomass to cultivate various kinds of crops or to grow trees plants and so on so there is no standard answer to this depending on where the wasteland is located we may have wastelands in the Himalayas there are glacial wastelands there are wastelands which are affected by salinity salt content depending on each of these we have to identify the specific cause through a scientific study and then try and increase the biomass in this okay okay. So I would keep you from your tea any longer this will be my last class professor city will come back at 11 o'clock but I will be back for the valedictory session meanwhile keep your emails coming and I will respond to them thank you very much.