The property right is one of the most vital factors determining the sustainable governance and utilization of the wetlands. The paper analyses property right issues and institutional arrangements of a rural man-made wetland in dryland areas of West Bengal, India. It uses Participatory Rural Appraisal, Key-Informant’s Interview, Focus Group Discussion, and household interview to accomplish this objective. The wetland, being located in the dryland landscape, serves as the primary freshwater source for surrounding communities and is used for multiple purposes. However, the conflict among the stakeholders on property right has caused the dissolution of the traditional local institution. Lack of regulation on water and fish extraction from the wetland affected essential human activities like household use, irrigation, and fishery. Moreover, conflict among the stakeholders adversely eroded any form of collective action for maintenance and renovation of the wetland. The study suggests that decentralized conflict resolution through dialogue is the pre-requisite for encouraging collective action and development of institutional arrangements which are vital for the restoration and sustainable utilization of the wetland.

The third chapter, 'Justice and the Jungle: Contextualizing the Central Capabilities in Singalila and Senchal Landscapes', locates three capabilities in Martha Nussbaum's list in Singalila's Srikhola and Senchal's Rampuria. These include 'control over material and political environment' capability, 'practical reasoning' capability and 'affiliation' capability. The chapter assesses thresholds for these three capabilities and argues for their environmentally just application in stressful conservation contexts. The chapter seeks to substantiate the residents' own understanding of forests and also address the challenges of collective well-being that Nussbaum's framework of justice poses. It gauges justice and disparity by shifting focus from people and individuals to structures and institutions in the region.

The sixth chapter, 'Our Village Would Have Been Heaven: What the Families of Gorkhey Value', analyzes the politics of forest conservation using the capabilities framework. It compares the capabilities of families of Gorkhey, a hamlet in Singalila. Nussbaum's and Sen's philosophy of well-being, when verified in a forested Himalayan hamlet, yields interesting well-being and conservation insight. Co-production of services is explored as a possibility of forging stronger links between the ecosystem services and capabilities frameworks.

This paper makes an attempt to identify and analyse the factors that influence the household use of wetlands in West Bengal, India. Three wetlands were selected from three physiographically distinct regions of West Bengal, which are used by local people for multiple purposes. Logit and Tobit models are used for the identification of the factors explaining household dependency on wetland. The results indicate that there is spatial difference in the mode and extent of use of wetland resources across the three wetlands. Households belonging to poor, landless, lower social caste, and low education level are more likely to use wetland resources compared to their counterparts. Households having larger family size are likely to extract bigger amounts of wetland products. However, upper caste households have more access to the wetlands for irrigation. The results indicate that wetland plays a vital role for the livelihood of marginalized sections of the community. Therefore, it is needed to device appropriate policy for equitable distribution of the benefits of the wetlands among different sections of the society.

The objective of present paper is to identify and analyze various socio-economic, livelihood and demographic factors that are likely to influence the house perception of conservation of wetland biodiversity in the Indian state of West Bengal. For this the study uses the primary data collected from 233 randomly sampled households in three wetlands. The data was gathered during the period 2011. Ordered logit model was employed to estimate the determinants of household perception of biodiversity score in the wetlands. The results indicate that economic value of wetland products collected by households found to be an important determinant to higher household perception of biodiversity score. Poorer households who are critically dependent on wetlands for their daily livelihoods activities, households having less number of month food insecurity, are more likely to have higher biodiversity perception score. Households that are using wetland for irrigation are more likely to have perceived higher biodiversity perception. Wetlands that are having less number of active village level institutions are having higher biodiversity score. The results clearly suggest that biodiversity conservation is critical for the promotion of human livelihoods and at the same time it is also necessary to maintain ecological balance so that wetland ecosystem can continue to supply ecosystem services.