My understanding of urban lake governance and sustainability in India is presented through this research. The approach of understanding is intrigued by the usefulness of the social-ecological system framework, which is a legacy of Elinor Ostrom’s theoretical and empirical foundations on long term sustainable resources and their management. Urban lake is a social-ecological system, wherein an ecological system is linked with and affected by one or more social systems in complex manner. Governing and sustaining an urban lake entails investigations and improvements in its social and ecological characteristics such as, the lake ecology, its use and users, governance and the contextual environment (urban- an important criteria) within which they are located. Governing and sustaining these characteristics involve complex problems and processes and understanding them requires sound analytical tool and systematic analysis. The social-ecological system framework with its multivariate classificatory structure proved useful theoretical and methodological opportunity to explore, describe and explain the complexity of urban lake governance and sustainability in India. The framework is applied in multiple stages using multiple methods and multiple cases. The multi-stage findings present a comprehensive (broad to in-depth) overview of what is happening in the governance and sustainability of urban lake systems in India. Learning the theoretical and methodological application of the social-ecological system framework became an integral part of learning about the urban lake systems. The research, therefore, is as much about the application of the social-ecological system framework as it is about the governance and sustainability of urban lake systems in India.

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J.J. Bouma
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam
hdl.handle.net/1765/77643
Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Bal, M. (2015, February 20). Social-Ecological System Framework. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/77643


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