Harnessing Wisdom for Managing Watersheds: Honey Bee Perspective on Innovations, Institutions and Policies for Marginal Environments

Participatory approaches for watershed management are now considered essential for sustainable natural resources management and yet there is very little opportunity for intellectual participation by the people. This requires understanding of the local knowledge systems and their institutional context. In this paper, we provide an overview of the conceptual framework which can facilitate such participation. The full report being published separately includes case studies of farmers’ innovations in natural resources management.

Cost of Conservation of Agrobiodiversity

The cost of conservation of germplasm stored in gene banks i.e., ex-situ collections has been studied in other parts of the world to estimate direct and indirect contributions by various actors involved in conservation. This is the first study of its kind in India done in collaboration with National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi. This was part of a sponsored research by Centre for Development Research, Germany. The limitations of this study are also listed so that future research in this regard can be pursued better. One of the costs not included is the cost of sharing data with local communities for enabling them to access germplasm in times of need. This is an important component of conservation and would require translation of gene bank and associated database in local language, making them available through public kiosks. This cost has not been included in any study on the subject so far. Separately, studies are underway to look at the conservation of germplasm under in-situ conditions.

Should we save, what servesonly human ends? A review on Environmental Ethics

Ethical dilemma arise in pursing conservation of environment at different levels. In this paper, we review various ethical philosophies and identify the determinants of responsibility. Boundary of pain, responsibility arising out of greater human purpose, eco centrism or deep ecological ethics, and socio-psychological roots of ethical consciousness are some of the guiding forces generating this responsibility. The paper concludes by identifying the process of internal commands replacing the external demands as a dominant institutional process for resolving ethical dilemma. The emergence of global responsibility, invariably generates pressure for evolving ethical norms with universal application. A discourse on ecological ethics we argue, must become much more pervasive if environmental conservation has to move beyond the concern of urban, intellectual advocates and become a grassroots movement.

Building Upon Grassroots Innovations: Agticulating Social And Ethical Capital

The healthy growth of democracy depends upon the emergence of decentralized, dispersed, polycentric spurs of social, ecological and economic entrepreneurship. Networking among these seemingly disparate cross currents some times gives enough momentum to the civil society initiatives to transform the social and cultural values of the society. There is always networking taking place among stronger economic and cultural forces, not withstanding the nature of state. But some times, this transformation also takes place through subtle networking among the grassroots deviants, innovators, and other marginal but creative forces in society. Gerlach and Palmer (1981) called these forces as SPIN (segmented, polycentric, integrated networks) while I tend to view these SPLICES that need attention today since these have the potential to take the society by surprise when their real power manifests, if it does. It is true that due to loose coordination, may times these forces remain on the margin and thus their potential does not get realized for a long time. I want to take the case of HoneyBee network that has helped provide a sort of loose platform to converge creative, but uncoordinated individuals across not only Indian states having varying cultural, language and social ethos but also in 75 other countries around the world. What it is trying to do in a rather quiet manner may transform the way the resources in which poor people are rich are used in future. These resources are their knowledge, innovations and sustainable practices. I first argue that classical concept of social capital does not distinguish between the trust in society created for social good versus social ‘bad’. For instance, the trust among members of mafia and other socially undesirable networks does not constitute social capital. I am also trying to distinguish that part of social trust which is guided by higher ethical values which may not have become social norms as yet. This is being distinguished as ethical capital. Finally, I conclude that Honey Bee Network has tried to articulate the social and ethical capital of the society at the grassroots.

Cost of Conservation of Agrobiodiversity

The cost of conservation of germplasm stored in gene banks i.e., ex-situ collections has been studied in other parts of the world to estimate direct and indirect contributions by various actors involved in conservation. This is the first study of its kind in India done in collaboration with National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi. This was part of a sponsored research by Centre for Development Research, Germany. The limitations of this study are also listed so that future research in this regard can be pursued better. One of the costs not included is the cost of sharing data with local communities for enabling them to access germplasm in times of need. This is an important component of conservation and would require translation of gene bank and associated database in local language, making them available through public kiosks. This cost has not been included in any study on the subject so far. Separately, studies are underway to look at the conservation of germplasm under in-situ conditions.

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN