Role of Authority, Information and Resources in Co-management of lakes in areas under urban transformation: Cases from Greater Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (GBMR), India

Co-management is increasingly seen as the way forward especially, when it comes to management of urban commons. Co-management entails not just sharing of power between government and users but includes exchange of information, allocation of resources and numerous other forms of coupling including changes in regulations and development of common goal among actors. In this paper, we identify and analyse how authority, information and resources (financial and human) influence collaboration between diverse actors engaged in lake management in areas under urban transformation. Drawing from cases located in Greater Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (GBMR), India, we highlight that collaboration mainly between state and non-state actors can range from state sponsorship to bottom-up citizen collective movement with minimal government involvement. To understand how this process unravels in the face of urban transformations, we analyse five lakes, within a single watershed along a rural-urban gradient GBMR. Our analysis suggests that actors tend to work within their administrative boundaries in terms of collaborations between state and non-state actors, both in urban and rural contexts. This we suppose is mainly to overcome incapacities as is seen in our urban case (resources) and rural case (information), sometimes in the presence of third-sector organisations who facilitate collaborations. Our research highlights how collaborations between actors vary across the rural-urban gradient, based on actor legitimacy, shared understanding and access to resources, and how these interconnections are shaped by community dependence on these commons along a rural-urban gradient.