The forest discourse in India has shifted decisively from questions of management to questions of governance. The essays in this book highlight and explore how this shift is occurring and what the challenges to democratic forest governance are. It covers questions of local management, wildlife conservation and forest conversion, as well as the changing socio-economic context of forestry in India.

Modern Forests is an environmental, institutional, and cultural history of forestry in colonial eastern India. By carefully examining the influence of regional political formations and biogeographic processes on land and forest management, this book offers an analysis of the interrelated social and biophysical factors that influenced landscape change. Through a cultural analysis of powerful landscape representations, Modern Forests reveals the contention, debates, and uncertainty that persisted for two hundred years of colonial rule as forests were identified, classified, and brought under different regimes of control and were transformed to serve a variety of imperial and local interests. The author examines the regionally varied conditions that generated widely different kinds of forest management systems, and the ways in which certain ideas and forces became dominant at various times. Through this emphasis on regional socio-political processes and ecologies, the author offers a new way to write environmental history. Instead of making a sharp distinction between third-world and first-world experiences in forest management, the book suggests a potential for cross-continental comparative studies through regional analyses. The book also offers an approach to historical anthropology that does not make apolitical separations between foreign and indigenous views of the world of nature, insisting instead that different cultural repertoires for discerning the natural, and using it, can be fashioned out of shared concerns within and across social groups. The politics of such cultural construction, the book argues, must be studied through institutional histories and ethnographies of statemaking. In conclusion, the author offers a genealogy of development as it can be traced from forest conservation in colonial eastern India.

We live in a time of serious environmental catastrophes. Every year we lose thousands of species, even as others slip deeper into danger. The extinction crisis is well known; what is not are stories of people trying to turn the tide. In Rewilding, environmental journalist Bahar Dutt documents stories of hope for India's natural world. She meets people who are trying to conserve species not just by replenishing their dwindling numbers, but also by restoring their habitats in the wild. This means going to great lengths, from airlifting corals from coast to coast, to going undercover as a spy to check the availability of toxic drugs that wiped out a bird. In the process, Bahar learns that though it may not offer easy answers, rewilding can offer great rewards. And that news about the environment doesn't always have to be bad.

Learn from this integrated approach to the management and restoration of ecosystems edited by an international leader in the field The Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering delivers a comprehensive overview of the latest research and practical developments in the rapidly evolving fields of ecological and ecosystem engineering. Beginning with an introduction to the theory and practice of ecological engineering and ecosystem services, the book addresses a wide variety of issues central to the restoration and remediation of ecological environments. The book contains fulsome analyses of the restoration, rehabilitation, conservation, sustainability, reconstruction, remediation, and reclamation of ecosystems using ecological engineering techniques. Case studies are used to highlight practical applications of the theory discussed within. The material in the Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering is particularly relevant at a time when the human population is dramatically rising, and the exploitation of natural resources is putting increasing pressure on planetary ecosystems. The book demonstrates how modern scientific ecology can contribute to the greening of the environment through the inclusion of concrete examples of successful applied management. The book also includes: A thorough discussion of ecological engineering and ecosystem services theory and practice An exploration of ecological and ecosystem engineering economic and environmental revitalization An examination of the role of soil meso and macrofauna indicators for restoration assessment success in a rehabilitated mine site A treatment of the mitigation of urban environmental issues by applying ecological and ecosystem engineering A discussion of soil fertility restoration theory and practice Perfect for academic researchers, industry scientists, and environmental engineers working in the fields of ecological engineering, environmental science, and biotechnology, the Handbook of Ecological and Ecosystem Engineering also belongs on the bookshelves of environmental regulators and consultants, policy makers, and employees of non-governmental organizations working on sustainable development.

India’s forest area has come down below one fifth of total geographical area, due to indiscriminate alienation of forest land for non-forestry purposes and deforestation leading to rapid loss in biodiversity and forest natural resources. An outdated Indian Forest Act, 1927, the most important legal instrument for forest management and administration, with a colonial mindset, influenced by Locke and monetization of forest resources for financial profiteering by the British colonial administration, has been found to be inadequate for conservation of valuable forest environment and resources and alienated local stakeholders in natural resource management. Higher judiciary has started intervening by issuing several judgements and orders, keeping in tune recent developments in the field of international environment law, to save forest land and forest resources, in absence of a strong legal frame work. Global initiatives for conservation of natural resources and mitigation of damaging effects of Climate Change, Sustainable Development Goals etc. have catalysed swift action on part of the government and other stake holders towards achieving conservation goals. A paradigm shift in the system for forest conservation and management, supported by a new law, based on sound scientific forestry, such as landscape level management etc. is the need of the hour.