TY - JOUR
T1 - Perceptions of priority issues in the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems in India
AU - Varma, Varun
AU - Ratnam, Jayashree
AU - Viswanathan, Vinatha
AU - Osuri, Anand M.
AU - Biesmeijer, Jacobus C.
AU - Madhusudan, M. D.
AU - Sankaran, Mahesh
AU - Krishnadas, Meghna
AU - Barua, Deepak
AU - Budruk, Megha
AU - Isvaran, Kavita
AU - Jayapal, Rajah
AU - Joshi, Jahnavi
AU - Karanth, Krithi K.
AU - Krishnaswamy, Jagdish
AU - Kumar, Raman
AU - Mukherjee, Shomita
AU - Nagendra, Harini
AU - Niphadkar, Madhura
AU - Owen, Nisha
AU - Page, Navendu
AU - Prasad, Soumya
AU - Quader, Suhel
AU - Nandini, R.
AU - Robin, V. V.
AU - Sait, Steven M.
AU - Shah, Manzoor A.
AU - Somanathan, Hema
AU - Srinivasan, Umesh
AU - Sundaram, Bharath
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding for this work was provided by the UK–India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI grant to JCB, MS and MDM) and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India (grant to MS). The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to the survey respondents who gave willingly of their time to participate in this exercise. We would also like to thank the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, for logistical support for conducting the survey and the workshop, the NCBS Institute Ethics Committee for study approval, and Hari Sridhar and Amit Kurien for their participation in this project. We also acknowledge the voluntary contribution of Sitanshu Shukla who designed the project logo which was used on the survey form and publicity material. Finally, we thank three anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have substantially improved this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2015/7/1
Y1 - 2015/7/1
N2 - We report on the results of a country-wide survey of people's perceptions of issues relating to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems in India. Our survey, mainly conducted online, yielded 572 respondents, mostly among educated, urban and sub-urban citizens interested in ecological and environmental issues. 3160 "raw" questions generated by the survey were iteratively processed by a group of ecologists, environmental and conservation scientists to produce the primary result of this study: a summarized list of 152 priority questions for the conservation of India's biodiversity and ecosystems, which range across 17 broad thematic classes. Of these, three thematic classes-"Policy and Governance", "Biodiversity and Endangered Species" and "Protection and Conservation"-accounted for the largest number of questions. A comparative analysis of the results of this study with those from similar studies in other regions brought out interesting regional differences in the thematic classes of questions that were emphasized and suggest that local context plays a large role in determining emergent themes. We believe that the ready list of priority issues generated by this study can be a useful guiding framework for conservation practitioners, researchers, citizens, policy makers and funders to focus their resources and efforts in India's conservation research, action and funding landscape.
AB - We report on the results of a country-wide survey of people's perceptions of issues relating to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems in India. Our survey, mainly conducted online, yielded 572 respondents, mostly among educated, urban and sub-urban citizens interested in ecological and environmental issues. 3160 "raw" questions generated by the survey were iteratively processed by a group of ecologists, environmental and conservation scientists to produce the primary result of this study: a summarized list of 152 priority questions for the conservation of India's biodiversity and ecosystems, which range across 17 broad thematic classes. Of these, three thematic classes-"Policy and Governance", "Biodiversity and Endangered Species" and "Protection and Conservation"-accounted for the largest number of questions. A comparative analysis of the results of this study with those from similar studies in other regions brought out interesting regional differences in the thematic classes of questions that were emphasized and suggest that local context plays a large role in determining emergent themes. We believe that the ready list of priority issues generated by this study can be a useful guiding framework for conservation practitioners, researchers, citizens, policy makers and funders to focus their resources and efforts in India's conservation research, action and funding landscape.
KW - Biodiversity
KW - Conservation
KW - Ecosystems
KW - India
KW - Perceptions
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U2 - 10.1016/j.biocon.2015.04.031
DO - 10.1016/j.biocon.2015.04.031
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84929417795
SN - 0006-3207
VL - 187
SP - 201
EP - 211
JO - Biological Conservation
JF - Biological Conservation
ER -