This book presents a socio-economic analysis of the issues linking technological innovation in providing arsenic-safe drinking water in rural areas. It presents concrete field based experiences of experiments and case studies depicting the plight and sufferings of people due to failed technological deployment strategies over the past two decades in West Bengal, the most arsenic-exposed state in India and also the first to act for remediation of the crisis. One of the greatest challenges in arsenic-exposed zones is to provide sustainable access to reliably arsenic-safe free water. For nearly twenty years the Government of India and national water distribution institutions in collaboration with multi-lateral funding agencies have sought to pump in money, push technology collected through global tenders, and enlist the support of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but their efforts have yielded little success. This book is the outcome of the authors' intensive fieldwork, guided by the conceptual framework of the latest literature on environmental economics and consumer behaviour. It presents a framework and estimates based on field level primary data. Secondary official source-based data are also collated from various scattered sources into a valuable, comprehensive collection. Lastly, the book includes a revealing analysis of factors affecting households' participation.

This book evaluates local conservation successes of global south in the climate milieu, as an empirical evidence of ‘Bio-rights’ of commons at community-ecosystem interface for sustainable intensification of nature’s goods and services. Bio-rights is a right-based neo-economic conservation paradigm that compensates the opportunity costs incurred in conservation efforts by the marginal communities, living near globally important ecosystems and dependent on it for their livelihood, through payments from environment services. The book would bring forth the true value of circular economic interventions in socio-ecological conservation, shaped through sustainable human interactions with nature. This multilevel study of conservation science serves an interdisciplinary academia, consistent with conventions on climate change, bio-diversity and sustainable development, to establish links between conservation priorities and development objectives. Herein, Bio-rights is introduced as a ‘design approach’ for production linked sustainable development, supplemented with case studies from the east.

This book presents a socio-economic analysis of the issues linking technological innovation in providing arsenic-safe drinking water in rural areas. It presents concrete field based experiences of experiments and case studies depicting the plight and sufferings of people due to failed technological deployment strategies over the past two decades in West Bengal, the most arsenic-exposed state in India and also the first to act for remediation of the crisis. One of the greatest challenges in arsenic-exposed zones is to provide sustainable access to reliably arsenic-safe free water. For nearly twenty years the Government of India and national water distribution institutions in collaboration with multi-lateral funding agencies have sought to pump in money, push technology collected through global tenders, and enlist the support of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but their efforts have yielded little success. This book is the outcome of the authors' intensive fieldwork, guided by the conceptual framework of the latest literature on environmental economics and consumer behaviour. It presents a framework and estimates based on field level primary data. Secondary official source-based data are also collated from various scattered sources into a valuable, comprehensive collection. Lastly, the book includes a revealing analysis of factors affecting households' participation.

This book evaluates local conservation successes of global south in the climate milieu, as an empirical evidence of 'Bio-rights' of commons at community-ecosystem interface for sustainable intensification of nature's goods and services. Bio-rights is a right-based neo-economic conservation paradigm that compensates the opportunity costs incurred in conservation efforts by the marginal communities, living near globally important ecosystems and dependent on it for their livelihood, through payments from environment services. The book would bring forth the true value of circular economic interventions in socio-ecological conservation, shaped through sustainable human interactions with nature. This multilevel study of conservation science serves an interdisciplinary academia, consistent with conventions on climate change, bio-diversity and sustainable development, to establish links between conservation priorities and development objectives. Herein, Bio-rights is introduced as a 'design approach' for production linked sustainable development, supplemented with case studies from the east.