Lakshmisha, Arvind

Urban transformation of spaces around cities into urban areas, is altering the basic functions of the local ecosystem, especially the commons. Urban development also leads to changes values, perceptions and identifies of communities, loss of local knowledge in addition to the changes in dominant institutional and governance structures. In this paper, we explore how urban transformation and associated changes in governance has influenced the role of community actors in conservation and restoration of five distinct lakes in urban Bangalore. We map the actors involved and the types of interactions, focusing mainly on the role of community in gathering information, local ecological knowledge and financial resources needed for conservation of commons from the larger network of actors including state and private sector. Social network analysis is used to map and visualise the types of interactions and the role of actors for each lake from within the network of actors. Gephi, an open access social network software is used to undertake network analysis and visualise the interactions. We highlight that interactions between actors involved in restoration of lakes are mainly based on institutional landscape enabling exchange of information, knowledge, and resources in addition to building trust between actors. We identify that though the lakes are interconnected, actors responsible are fragmented with limited interactions among them. We conclude that the role of the state though important is not decisive and there is an increasing role played by the community and non-state actors in ensuring conservation and restoration of lakes, especially applying the principles of nature-based solutions leading to an arrangement of ‘governance beyond the state’.

This paper describes the changing institutional arrangements, by analysing and comparing drivers of cooperation between actors in a polycentric governance arrangement for conserving water bodies for a period 1960-2018. The cases are selected to represent a spatial (rural–urban) gradient in Bengaluru, which is severely impacted by urban expansion leading to severe land-use change. This paper applies the COOF framework, developed by Baldwin et al 2022, and investigates how feedback mechanisms have led to changes in the interactions between actors involved in managing and conserving six lakes in the greater Bengaluru metropolitan region. We see that the outcomes in terms of emergent patterns of behaviour, interactions and effective coordination varies based on the dependence of the actors on the common property resource. Further, we highlight that contextual characteristic such as location of the lake, the institutions governing them have influenced the way actors interact with predominantly cooperative management in the urban cases whereas in the peri-urban lakes it was predominantly conflicts and passive agreement to the status quo. We conclude that the role of the state though important is not decisive and there is an increasing role played by the community and non-state actors in ensuring conservation and restoration of lakes.