Author(s): Mansee Bhargava
Email (s): manseebal@hotmail.com
Institution or organization of origin: Amity University Chhattisgarh, Raipur
Country: India
Abstract:
Studies on wetland/lake management pose a basic question: why resources that are expected to generate exceedingly valued functions, fail to provide the expected results? Several governance and sustainability factors characterise the failure, many of which are established theories, models and arguments. The presentation highlights a book content of a compilation of the popularly used theories, models and arguments that attribute to governance fail- ure/success where, governance is at the input and process sides. The governance failures are linked to several societal and ecosystem behaviours. Using the case of urban lake management in India, the standard narratives for the poor state of the urban lakes are attributed to the generic failures of the community, the government and/or the market besides the complex bio-physical characteristics of the resource. A research question guiding the study is: what do we know about why resource governance fails to perform in the case of urban lakes in India? Each of the theory/model/argument is briefly discussed to find ways to avert the failure. The presentation concludes that the isolated theory/model/argument though portray a pessimistic picture of the resource governance, they remain crucial to understand the society better and to solve the governance problems towards good/better governance. It is realised that to solve resource problems looking beyond the isolated theory/model/argument into the emerging complexity literature will be crucial, since urban lake governance involves complex problems and processes and thus seek no linear but comprehensive understanding before solutions.