Western Ghats: Biodiversity & Justice Trade-offs

This program situates students in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots to examine conservation politics, forest governance, indigenous rights, and livelihood trade-offs.

Students begin in Kochi with seminars on political ecology, biodiversity governance, and stakeholder mapping. Field immersion in the Western Ghats focuses on forest systems, plantation economies, eco-tourism, and forest rights frameworks.

Through community dialogue, conservation practitioner engagement, and trade-off modeling workshops, students interrogate how ecological protection redistributes opportunity and constraint.

The program culminates in a Justice-Centered Biodiversity Adaptation Proposal.

Students will:

Apply environmental justice frameworks to conservation regimes.
Map biodiversity systems alongside livelihood structures.
Analyze forest governance and indigenous rights legislation.
Evaluate eco-tourism and plantation economy impacts.
Model conservation–livelihood trade-offs using stakeholder analysis.
Produce a feasibility-based biodiversity justice proposal.

Political Ecology

Anthropology

Public Policy

Sustainability

Development Studies

Ecology

Kochi

Western Ghats Forest Zones

Community Settlements

Conservation Offices

Day	Location	Academic Engagement	Learning Emphasis
1	Kochi	Seminar: Biodiversity hotspots & political ecology theory	Conceptual framing
2	Kochi	Stakeholder mapping & participatory research workshop	Methods toolkit
3	Kochi	Conservation governance seminar; forest rights overview	Institutional grounding
4	Western Ghats	Forest ecosystem immersion; biodiversity mapping	Ecological systems
5	Western Ghats	Community dialogue on livelihood constraints	Justice lens
6	Western Ghats	Forest rights & land tenure discussion	Governance
7	Western Ghats	Eco-tourism & plantation economy inquiry	Political economy
8	Western Ghats	Trade-off modeling lab	Policy evaluation
9	Western Ghats	Documentation & evidence studio	Data synthesis
10	Kochi	Biodiversity governance roundtable	Institutional scale
11	Kochi	Proposal drafting workshop I	Translation
12	Kochi	Peer critique & revision lab	Academic rigor
13	Kochi	Final presentations; departures	Closure