It is probably the most important battle of our times, the battle for natural resources like land, natural gas, telecom spectrum and coal mines. Who owns them-the state, citizens or private players? How to make the best use of them? A series of supreme court judgements on one hand several parliamentary bill on the other answer the questions differently. Both need to come to terms with finer nuances of various sectors.

Community-based conservation reverses top-down, centre driven conservation by focusing on the people who bear the costs of conservation. In the broadest sense then, community-based conservation includes natural resource or biodiversity protection by, for, and with local communities. Nepal has joined hands with international communities and embarked on the modern era of biodiversity conservation since the 1970s.

Healthy ecosystems provide us with fertile soil, clean water, timber, and food. They reduce the spread of diseases. They protect against flooding. Worldwide, they regulate atmospheric concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide. They moderate climate. Without these and other “ecosystem services,” we’d all perish.

Exploring the prospects of the ecosystem services approach for natural resource management and poverty alleviation in India, this paper points out that it is vital to have an understanding of the political economy of negotiations over natural resource use. An appreciation of the synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services is equally important to develop better strategies for pro-poor ecosystem management.

A two-day workshop, titled “Fishery-dependent Livelihoods, Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity: The Case of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas in India”, was held in New Delhi during 1-2 March 2012. The workshop was a follow-up to the one held in Chennai in 2009, which was titled “Social Dimensions of Marine Protected Area (MPA) Implementation in India: Do Fishing Communities Benefit?”.