Balakrishna, Raksha

Leveraging collective action for resource sustainability has become increasingly important in a context of high climate uncertainty, and continued resource exploitation. But engaging in collective action requires coordination and communication among individuals in order to make and implement resource allocation, use and management decisions. Institutions, or the set of formal and informal rules and regulations that govern human behavior, play a crucial role in mediating collective responses to shared resource governance challenges. Rapid urbanization leads to social and institutional transitions, often creating uncertainty and impacting the ways in which people interact and engage in collective action for meeting sustainability goals. This study aims to understand how urban transitions influence collective decision-making for shared resource governance using the case of groundwater in India, the largest user in the world. With a focus on peri-urban Bangalore, one of the fastest urbanizing regions in the country, the study applies the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework to investigate shifts in institutional factors that impact the appropriation, provisioning and management of groundwater in a peri-urban setting. We will employ content analysis to analyze data obtained via semi-structured interviews with key actors – farmers, residents, government officials, local representatives – who are closely involved in decision-making around groundwater use and management. In addition, policy documents that outline rules and regulations around groundwater access, use and management will be analyzed to understand the formal institutional arrangements that inform groundwater decision-making. We hypothesize that urban transition exacerbates institutional uncertainty, creating confusion around shared goals, actors involved, and rules in use, thereby reducing propensity for collective action. Understanding these dynamics is essential for developing strategies to manage natural resources sustainably amid urban growth and development pressures.

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’.

Urbanization is a pervasive global phenomenon that continues to significantly transform human-nature interactions, accelerate resource exploitation and pose challenges to effective resource governance. It leads to changes in institutions - or the set of rules and regulations that govern human behavior; fundamentally altering the ways in which people interact and engage in collective action for addressing resource management challenges. Understanding these shifts is crucial for managing the complexities of resource governance in rapidly urbanizing contexts. Behavioral experiments have been valuable in studying individual and collective action, providing deeper insights into the factors that shape social interaction patterns governing shared resource management. However, their potential to elucidate how macro-level phenomenon like urbanization may shape local-level resource governance dynamics is yet to be fully explored.

This study uses experimental data from the implementation of the groundwater game - a resource dilemma game that simulates the effects of individual and collective crop choices on groundwater management. The game was implemented in 300+ villages across 3 arid states in India, the largest user of groundwater in the world. The paper examines the effects of factors like proximity to towns and cities, along with access to road infrastructure and markets, and land holding on cooperation within the game. Results from preliminary analysis show that there is a significant negative relationship between urbanization and cooperation within the game. In other words, communities that are closer to urban centers had lower levels of cooperation for maintaining the shared resource when compared to communities farther away from urban areas. These findings suggest that as urbanization continues to accelerate, it is important to investigate its implications on human behavior, and collective action for addressing environmental challenges.