People's Bill on Nature, Health and Education

Abstract

The challenge today is to evolve a system of sustainable use of natural resources, conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of a good public health environment by creating appropriate institutions that would put to good use the potential for genuine motivation and detailed practical ecological knowledge of local communities. Several tentative moves have been made in this direction: joint forest management programmes, village level resource mapping, etc. These need to be consolidated, developed further and linked to the panchayati raj institutions. This article presents and discusses an alternative programme of action which has been formulated as the People's Natural Resource Management Bill.