The search for sustainable solutions to the problem of managing natural resources world over is pointing in the direction of peoples' initiatives as a possible source of ideas. The reasons are obvious. The market induced as well as the state influenced interventions have often been guided by short-term interest.
Sustainability requires widening the decision making horizon and extending the time frame.
The local communities and individual innovators who share an eco-compatible world view developed ethical norms and corresponding technological and institutional arrangements which help in achieving sustainable use of resources. However, with passage of time, the erosion of knowledge of such practices took place at faster pace than the erosion of resource itself. There were many other pressures which disrupted the search for sustainable solutions even among those communities including the intervention of subsidies, chemical inputs, weakening of collective institutions and more importantly the bias in education system in favour of certain kind of world view. In this conference, we are trying to pool together examples and insights from innovations tried by individuals or collectives at grassroots level without any outside help. We will include cases where outside agencies or institutions may have added value to peoples' initiatives and innovations.