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Trends and future directions in the conservation social sciences
No full textThis special issue commemorates the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Society for Conservation Biology's (SCB) Social Science Working Group (SSWG). In these 2 decades, the SSWG has grown into a global, interdisciplinary professional community. Our membership represents close to 60 countries and offers a home to a diverse group of social scientists, natural scientists, and conservation practitioners. The SSWG has been instrumental in legitimizing and mainstreaming the social sciences within SCB, elevating standards for conservation social sciences research and practice, and applying social science insights to conservation theory, practice, and policy. The special issue coincides with 2 other important recent milestones: the inaugural Conservation Social Science Conference, held online in November 2024, and the development of SSWG's new strategic plan (2025–2030)
Technological Assessment of Select Light Water Reactors to Accelerate Nuclear Power Expansion in India (NIAS/NSE/EECP/R/RR/01/2025)
Get PDFTwenty-four countries in the World have signed a pledge to triple their nuclear power by 2050. Studies conducted by NIAS and IIM-A indicate the need to accelerate nuclear capacity additions to achieve Net Zero with Energy Security in addition to meeting our Human Development Goals. The scenarios developed by IIM-A indicate that the Net Zero 2070 scenario with a thrust on nuclear power (NZ1) has the lowest Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) followed by the scenario with a thrust on renewable energy (NZ3). The installed capacities of nuclear power by 2070 in NZ1 and NZ3 scenarios are 331 GWe and 207 GWe, respectively. While DAE has announced a target of 100 GWe for India’s nuclear power generation capacity by 2047, the action plans for reaching this target are still under preparation. Further, the Government of India has announced a Carbon Market mechanism that involves a compliance mechanism with specific emission intensity targets for energy-intensive sectors and a voluntary credit mechanism for the non-obligated entities to incentivize GHG emission reduction. The rapid expansion of NPPs is a reliable and efficient way to reduce the emission intensity of energy-intensive industries and achieve multiple SDGs since nuclear power can generate firm, zero-carbon electricity at affordable tariffs while providing important co-benefits such as high-skill jobs in technology, manufacturing, and operations, besides enhancing community development. Large-sized nuclear power plant (NPP) units with a rated capacity of 700 MWe or more are crucial for the civilian nuclear sector since they enable efficient land utilization, and provide economies of scale, facilitating rapid capacity enhancement.
However, since commercial nuclear reactors are envisaged to supply clean and affordable baseload power to the utilities, the possible technological options should be evaluated in detail through a multi-disciplinary lens. This report provides a detailed comparative evaluation of five prominent variants of large light water reactors (LWRs) of foreign origin and an indicative ranking among the studied reactor technologies is provided as input to policymakers and eligible Indian energy companies interested in putting up large LWRs
Long-term Growth and Energy Transition Roadmap for Personal Passenger Mobility in India
No full textThis policy brief prescribes the interventions pertinent to fuel diversification of the Indian passenger vehicles utilised for personal mobility, two- and four-wheelers. India’s two-wheeler adoption is slowly plateauing, but its high-volume sales call for mass-adoption of cleaner alternatives as early as feasible. Whereas India’s four-wheelers are slated to grow exponentially, granting an opportunity for multiple clean powertrains to coexist. The analyses consider sub-segmentations of two- and four-wheelers to recommend a set of interventions on fuel diversification of India’s personal mobility
A Shifting River, Shifting Narratives: The Sacred Landscape of Mahabodhi
No full textBodh Gaya, located on the western bank of the river Lilajan in south Bihar, India, is renowned as the place where the Buddha had achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. As Mahābodhi, it held a pre-eminent position in the Buddhist sacred geography of pre-modern Asia for nearly two thousand years. Yet, despite its tremendous religious significance, the historical expanse of its sacred landscape remains uncertain. This paper analyses historical, archaeological, geospatial, and geomorphological data to reveal how Mahābodhi’s landscape was significantly larger than the three excavated sites within the Bodh Gaya area: Mahabodhi temple-complex, Taradih mound, and Sujata Kuti stūpa. It identifies 40 archaeological features that together demonstrate how Mahābodhi’s precincts extended in all directions from the Mahabodhi Temple, and across the river. Notable findings include a monastic complex with a moat to the north, various enclosures to the south, and a significant complex with several structures and a large tank to the east, across the river. A major hypothesis is that the current course of the Lilajan differs from the historical Nirañjanā, thereby suggesting that all these features were originally on one side of the river. The paper also provides key insights for future archaeological research at Bodh Gaya
Nanocrystalline Cookeite from Lithium Mineral Deposits of Jammu, India: A Multianalytical Characterization
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Innovation and Institutional Development for Public Policy: Complexity Theory, Design Thinking and System Dynamics Application
No full textThis book offers a comprehensive perspective on policy theories, policy formulation and implementation, and alternative paradigm for dealing with complex social and economic systems. It presents insights into policies on major development sectors, including health, education, urbanization, climate change, innovation, advanced manufacturing, and economic growth. It delves into why public policies matter more than resources and are crucial for shaping the future of a country. It attempts a pioneering effort and delineates a complexity theory framework to deal with uncertainty, nonlinearity, emergence, and evolution. It comprises systems thinking, design thinking, complexity thinking, and tools for complexity analysis. Applicable to a policy system, economy, business, and organization, the complexity theory relies on phenomena like emergence, self-organizing property, adaptation, coevolution, and path dependency, in a clear departure from reductionism and Newtonian paradigm. Through academic rigor, it makes a convincing case for better understanding of application of complexity theory. It covers real-world examples and case studies related to evolution of economies of silicon valleys – Bengaluru (India) and San Francisco Bay (USA). These cases underscore the essentiality of complexity theory.
In terms of policy formulations, the book contains a policy design framework covering the science of policymaking, innovative approaches, and methodology for policy design. To deal with dynamic systems, it includes a step-by-step guide for the application of system dynamics. It articulates alternative paradigm – adaptive policies and policy design; alternative theory – complexity theory; and new public organizations and institutional development for meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
Aiming to reduce fuzziness, the book combines both researcher’s in-depth analysis as well as practitioner’s perspective, thus serving as a vital read for scholars of public policy, management, and economics. It emphasizes the primacy of policy process to discern deep understanding from the ground and to integrate micro-level realities and macro-level requirements. It argues for change from Weberian bureaucratic model to adaptive approaches and recommends policy system reforms, highlighting that countries should make the right policy choices early to steer ahead. In doing so, the book serves the requirements of policymakers and thought leaders
Adivasi (Tea Tribe) worldviews of living close to wild Asian elephants in Assam, India
Get PDFIn Assam state, northeastern India, human–elephant conflict mitigation has included technocentric measures, such as installation of barriers, alternative livelihoods, and afforestation. Such measures treat conflict as a technical problem with linear cause–effect relations and are usually ineffective over the long term because they do not consider how historical conditions have shaped present interactions between humans and elephants. Human–elephant encounters in South Asia, including in Assam, have arisen from colonial and postcolonial land-use policies, ethnic relations, and capital extraction. To disentangle these relations, we conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Udalguri district of Assam among the Adivasi (Tea Tribe) to examine their interactions with wild elephants. Through socioecological ruptures, caused by displacement and deforestation, Adivasi (Tea Tribe) and elephant lives have intersected through space and time. Adivasi (Tea Tribe) life narratives and observations of daily encounters with elephants revealed that their interactions are multifaceted and motivated by multiple factors. Myths and oral testimonies revealed that the community has created conceptualizations of the elephant by closely observing their behavior, especially their movements, diets, vocalizations, and interactions with humans. These conceptualizations are filled with vignettes of shared marginalized lives, caused by the loss of homeland, food poverty, and uncertain ways of living. The empathy, expressed by the Adivasi (Tea Tribe), highlights ways of living with elephants that are affective and reach beyond technocentric interventions. For Adivasi (Tea Tribe) members, cohabitation could thus be achieved by living close to elephants as uneasy neighbors. Concepts of cohabitation, we suggest, could be harnessed to inform conservation policy and bring into focus the critically important—and yet often underutilized—values, encompassed by bottom-up, place-centric understandings of what elephants are and how coexistence may be possible in increasingly anthropogenic landscapes