Promoting outreach through conservation education programmes – Case study from Indian Himalayan Region

The UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992) helped to mobilize international understanding on promoting the awareness component for conservation and sustainable use of biological resources. As a result, two broad initiatives received focused attention: (i) orientation of education towards improving the capacity of the people to address environment and development issues, and (ii) integrating human dimension component into biological conservation programmes. On account of vastness of the area and prevailing eco-cultural diversity of the country, it is increasingly realized that there is an urgent need to develop programmes to address location/region-specific concerns. In this context, the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) which represents a unique biogeographic entity, unfortunately, has not received due attention under the changing perspective of conservation science. Nevertheless, a few initiatives, including the present one, have yielded positive results. This paper analyses the results of a systematic conservation education programme (initiated by G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development) and highlights its potential of becoming a model for the entire IHR.