TERI-KAS conduct Environmental Governance Dialogue focused on the Plateau and Hillock region of India

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) organized a dialogue on 'Environmental Governance in the Context of Sustainable Development in India focused on the Plateau and Hilly region of the country' at Bangalore on the 6th-8th October, 2013. The one and a half day dialogue was attended by various stakeholders from the Deccan Plateau, Chhota Nagpur Plateau, Eastern Ghats and Western Ghats region of the country.

The discussions at the dialogue spanned across the challenges faced by this region in balancing environment and development and the prospective roles stakeholders can play in improving outcomes; the limits of science and on how good politics and institutional capacities in the region can be leveraged to address the development-environmental challenges; and institutional and policy innovations which exist or can be proposed to strengthen environmental governance.

During the course of the dialogue participants discussed in detail the theoretical considerations for environmental governance and concepts of ecosystems and how these play a role in policy making, issues with regard to land use policies and the various trade-offs and multipliers for this region, the instances of judicial overreach in environment related issues; and ways of better communicating science to a varied audience.

This was the fourth in a series of events planned by TERI and KAS to address the various environmental governance issues in the different ecosystems of India. The three dialogues prior to this have focused on the mountain ecosystem, the hot desert ecosystem and the coastal and marine ecosystem of the country. At the conclusion of the series a policy brief based on the discussions would be published and circulated amongst relevant stakeholders, including the government at central, state and local levels, academia, practitioners, business and civil society.