To make effective policies to tackle climate change, we need to know what is happening at the grassroots level. We need leaders from these regions, who understand the affects of climate change and can think of out of the box solutions and communicate these to national policy makers.

LEAD India, with the support from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has developed this unique and innovative project to create a network of grassroots CLIMATE LEADERS, trained and empowered to bring forth regional climate change concerns to the national level.

The project covers the environmentally sensitive and important Himalayan region of the country, which influences the climate of entire South Asia; is the source of many glacial fed rivers like the Ganga and Brahmaputra; is rich in biodiversity and extremely sensitive and vulnerable to climate change. We have divided the project area into two parts the Eastern Himalayas, one of the world’s 25 Biodiversity Hotspot Regions, and the Western Himalayas, which are extremely rich in forest ecosystem services.

This compilation of case studies aims to highlight the essence of the case studies developed by the Climate Leaders and share with you their experiences in the field and also to give the reader a first hand account of the grassroots issues relating to climate change in the mountain ecosystem in India.

Local Environmental Governance in India

Since the “Global Training Session”, of the international training of LEAD Fellows in March 2006, LEAD India has been pursuing workable strategies at the local level and also evolving a broad concept of environmental governance at the larger level. To bring the issues to a practical level where LEAD Fellows and other partners can take up possible intervention, it was considered an important step forward to organize a one day consultation with different stakeholders.

This publication is a compilation of case studies presented at the National Consultation on “Local Environmental Governance in India”: Setting the Agenda” held in New Delhi, India on the 15th and 16thMarch 2007.