Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

My project focuses on the Western Ghats, a mountainous region along India’s southeast coast. These Ghats are at the forefront of international and national forest conservation attention as one of the originally named biodiversity hotspots – due to high levels of species endemism and forest loss. National and state governments have created 39 formal protected areas in the region and the population supports an unknown quantity of informal protected areas. Together, these constitute the forest conservation mechanisms of the region, but integrating protection objectives across protected area types remains a challenge. Several recommendations have been advanced to improve protections to forests while encouraging sustainable development throughout the region: two government commissions and numerous academic publications have sought to reconcile conservation and development goals. Importantly, sacred forests distributed throughout the region amidst the formal protected areas, tree plantations, agricultural land, and urban areas suggest an important institutional locus for building upon endogenous mechanisms of informal protection. My project will utilize differential adoption of forest conservation strategies between the state and religious organizations in this region to identify effects of religious networks on forest conservation. With the results of my study, I intend to inform governance for sustainability initiatives that engage religions in resolving tradeoffs between forest conservation and economic development in biodiversity hotspots among forest dependent communities.