Fostering Social Ecological Resilience in Sensitive Landscapes through Tourism based Approaches: case of Thanga Island, Loktak lake, Manipur

Abstract

Loktak Lake in the Bishnupur district of Manipur is North East India’s largest freshwater lake. Part of the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot (Kangabam, Bhoominathan, & Munisamy, 16). Loktak Lake is home to rich floral and faunal bio-diversity and traditional practices of the communities living in and around it, making it a unique ecosystem (study, 2009). Owing to this, the Loktak lake ecosystem can be considered a living heritage complex. Over the last forty years, Loktak has seen steady ecological deterioration and a shift in land use patterns (Kangabam, Muniswamy, & Govindaraju, 2019). The water levels kept optimum by the Loktak hydro-electric project, built in 1979, for generating electricity has submerged 20,000 hectares of cultivable land (The Hindu, 2016) and changed the ecological patterns of the lake permanently (Kangabam, Bhoominathan, & Munisamy, 16).This has threatened the sustenance of several species dwelling within the eco-system and communities' traditional practices and livelihoods. These changes have resulted in conflicts between several stakeholders over the management and exploitation of resources. Using socioecological model (Ungar, et al., 2020) and toolkits for indicators of socio-ecological resilience of landscape, the relationship and conflicts may be better comprehended. The methods adopted for this research would be stakeholder survey, interviews, change mapping and case studies. By documenting the changes and their implications on the lives of those dependent on this ecosystem and the demands of various stakeholders, this thesis seeks to understand the issues and design solutions and probable pathways towards to conflict mitigation and sustainable natural resource management.