DELIBERATING ENVIRONMENT POLICY IN INDIA: PARTICIPATION AND THE ROLE OF ADVOCACY

As one of the world’s largest and most bio-diverse countries, India’s approach to environmental policy will be very significant in tackling global environmental challenges. This book explores the transformations that have taken place in the making of environmental policy in India since the economic liberalization of the 1990s. It investigates if there has been a slow shift from top-down planning to increasingly bottom up and participatory policy processes, examining the successes and failures of recent environmental policies. Linking deliberation to collective action, this book contends that it is crucial to involve local actors in framing the policies that decide on their rights and control over bio-resources in order to achieve the goal of sustainable human development.The first examples of large-scale participatory processes in Indian environmental policy were the 1999 National Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan and the 2006 Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act.