Unruly commons : contestations around Sampangi lake in Bangalore

Common pool resources (such as lakes and green spaces) are particularly contested in the urban context, representing unruly environments. Lakes in Bangalore provide a particularly illustrative example of such messiness in environment, social use and in governance. These lakes, initially created by local communities to support agricultural and domestic uses, find their role transformed in the urban context. They support a highly diverse set of user groups often with conflicting interests, deriving benefit from different consumptive and non-consumptive characteristics of the resource. This heterogeneity creates a landscape of contestation where different stakeholders seek to maximize stakes through selectively highlighting different positive traits of the resource. Using an example of a “lost lake”, Sampangi Lake within Bangalore, this paper draws attention to landscape changes around the lake as depicted in maps between 1884 and the present day and relates changes in and around the lake with archival data between 1883 and 1935. These documents demonstrate how environmental characteristics of the lake such as the availability of water, location of siltation and the seasonality of the lake generated different challenges and opportunities for user groups such as gardeners, polo players and brewery owners, resulting in contestations that needed resolution by the colonial government of Mysore. These disagreements are representative of deeper underlying conflicts between commons as recreational resources, and as provisioning sources that are essential for local livelihoods. Such conflicts continue to resonate in Bangalore’s lakes even today, though with a different cultural manifestation and with changes in governance. The paper ends with a reflection on how resolution of these differences for governance provides a reflection of unequal power relations between different traditional and “modern” user groups

Urban commons in a globalizing city

HUMANITY is said to now live in the Anthropocene,1 an epoch with a heavily pervasive human footprint. Landscapes are continuously transforming and processes of urbanization drive a large part of this transformation.2 In fast growing countries such as India, the influence of urbanization is highly visible, particularly with respect to the distribution of urban centres that often grow by engulfing rural spaces into themselves. One such example is the rapidly globalizing south Indian city of Bengaluru, the country’s second largest city in terms of area and third largest by population.

The Problem of Institutional Fit: Uncovering Patterns with Boosted Decision Trees

Complex social-ecological contexts play an important role in shaping the types of institutions that groups use to manage resources, and the effectiveness of those institutions in achieving social and environmental objectives. However, despite widespread acknowledgment that “context matters”, progress in generalising how complex contexts shape institutions and outcomes has been slow. This is partly because large numbers of potentially influential variables and non-linearities confound traditional statistical methods. Here we use boosted decision trees – one of a growing portfolio of machine learning tools – to examine relationships between contexts, institutions, and their performance. More specifically we draw upon data from the International Forest Resources and Institutions (IFRI) program to analyze (i) the contexts in which groups successfully self-organize to develop rules for the use of forest resources (local rulemaking), and (ii) the contexts in which local rulemaking is associated with successful ecological outcomes. The results reveal an unfortunate divergence between the contexts in which local rulemaking tends to be found and the contexts in which it contributes to successful outcomes. These findings and our overall approach present a potentially fruitful opportunity to further advance theories of institutional fit and inform the development of policies and practices tailored to different contexts and desired outcomes

Redefining the role of urban studies Early Career Academics in the post-COVID-19 university

We are an international collective of Early Career Academics (ECAs) who met throughout 2020 to explore the implications of COVID-19 on precarious academics. With this intervention, our aims are to voice commonly shared experiences and concerns and to reflect on the extent to which the pandemic offers opportunities to redefine Higher Education and research institutions, in a context of ongoing precarity and funding cuts. Specifically, we explore avenues to build solidarity across institutions and geographies, to ensure that the conduct of urban research, and support offered to ECAs, allows for more inclusivity, diversity, security and equitability. *The Urban ECA Collective emerged from a workshop series described in this article which intended to foster international solidarity among self-defined early career academics working within urban research.ITESO, A.C

Quantity does not always mean quality: the importance of qualitative social science in conservation research

Qualitative methods are important in gaining a deep understanding of complex problems and poorly researched areas. They can be particularly useful to help explain underlying conservation problems, as in Rust et al. (2016). However, the significance in choosing and justifying appropriate methodological frameworks in conservation studies should be given more attention to ensure data are collected and analysed appropriately. We thank Potgieter et al. (2017) for their critical analysis of Rust et al. (2016), but they appear unaware of when, why and how such methods should be used. We clarify the methods described in Rust et al. (2016) and explain sampling strategies in qualitative studies. To improve familiarity with qualitative methods among natural scientists we recommend expanded training in social sciences and collaborating with social scientists. Given the scale of human impacts on the environment, this type of nuanced analytical skill is critical for moving conservation forward

Ten people‐centered rules for socially sustainable ecosystem restoration

As the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration begins, there remains insufficient emphasis on the human and social dimensions of restoration. The potential that restoration holds for achieving both ecological and social goals can only be met through a shift toward people-centered restoration strategies. Toward this end, this paper synthesizes critical insights from a special issue on “Restoration for whom, by whom” to propose actionable ways to center humans and social dimensions in ecosystem restoration, with the aim of generating fair and sustainable initiatives. These rules respond to a relative silence on socio-political issues in di Sacco et al.'s “Ten golden rules for reforestation to optimize carbon sequestration, biodiversity recovery and livelihood benefits” on socio-political issues and offer complementary guidance to their piece. Arranged roughly in order from pre-intervention, design/initiation, implementation, through the monitoring, evaluation and learning phases, the 10 people-centered rules are: (1) Recognize diversity and interrelations among stakeholders and rightsholders'; (2) Actively engage communities as agents of change; (3) Address socio-historical contexts; (4) Unpack and strengthen resource tenure for marginalized groups; (5) Advance equity across its multiple dimensions and scales; (6) Generate multiple benefits; (7) Promote an equitable distribution of costs, risks, and benefits; (8) Draw on different types of evidence and knowledge; (9) Question dominant discourses; and (10) Practice inclusive and holistic monitoring, evaluation, and learning. We contend that restoration initiatives are only tenable when the issues raised in these rules are respectfully addressed

Privatizing the commons: impact on ecosystem services in Bangalore’s lakes

The incipient megapolis of Bangalore, India, has historically been dependent on ecosystem services provided by an extensive network of lakes. Today, many of these lakes have disappeared or been degraded due to pressures of development and urbanization. This paper assesses the impact of governance through Private-Public-Partnerships (PPPs) in three lakes, by examining the impacts on provisioning and cultural ecosystem services, by comparison with adjacent, state managed (public) lakes. Public lakes support a greater diversity of traditional livelihoods, non-commercial uses and cultural services as compared to privatized lakes. PPPs thus appear to exacerbate inequities in access, in particular for users dependent on traditional livelihood services and cultural ecological services from lakes. Results indicate that implementation of PPP approaches need reconsideration from an equity perspective in cities of the global South