: Integrated Natural Resource Management

Semester and Year Offered: Semester 2

Course Coordinator and Team: Dibyendu Chaudhry, Parijat Ghosh and Dr Imran Amin

Email of course coordinator: imran@aud.ac.in

Pre-requisites:

Course Objectives/Description:

Building on the course ‘Environment and Natural Resources Management’, this course would focus on providing learners the opportunity to understand institutions, natural phenomena and natural processes and its interaction with lives and livelihoods of the villagers. This course will build on the learner’s field experience to equip them with different approaches to interventions. It would cover aspects related to natural processes- the interaction of the elements, resource use and development, sustainability, production systems and technology and resource economics in the villages.

It helps the students to understand the basic natural processes that constitute soil, sunshine, water and atmosphere; interaction of the villagers with these processes and its effect upon both and help them students move from broad understanding to specific and concrete observations in the villages, questioning them, develop deeper understanding on the inter-linkages among different elements and actors and search for possibilities through interaction with the villagers.

For example, looking at a piece of land can give rise to many observations: a land surface does not form crack when dry – this tells it has little clay – meaning lower water holding capacity – meaning poor microbial activity – meaning poor self rejuvenation– meaning it must have formed out of poor weathering/ decomposition– meaning historically there was no good vegetation ever – or it must be suffering from severe erosion,- if it is used to grow crop there is a need to add more organic manure and fertilizer… - how is the slope of the land – where is it located in the terrain…is there a forest above.. Thousands of such questions would come to interact with the soil. And at every question there is potential opportunity to discover something new. This will help to come out with required innovations to help the piece of land to rejuvenate its carrying capacity to impact the life of the villagers.

Course Outcomes:

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

1. Understanding about the components of natural resources, their complex inter-relationship and trends of its conditions
2. Ability to jointly diagnose problems faced by the community and explore the possibilities

Brief description of modules/ Main modules: It’s a field based workshop at actual site of soil, water, vegetation, and animal management and its interface with the rural life-world

Assessment Details with weights:

• Reflective Report: Plan for resource management in your village immersion site (50%)
• Presentation: Managing natural resources: challenges and possibilities in my village immersion site (50%).

Reading List: Based on Learning by Doing in field.