Our vision is to improve the well being of human kind by applying scientific research and education to the Development, Conservation and Sustainable use of Natural resources. Our goal is to make substantive, measurable impact on economic growth and social development in the East and South Asia, and conservation of its natural resources and environment. Our research, teaching and out reach programme shall be our strength. We shall interact closely with national, regional and international organizations and institutions. The designed course curriculum shall enable the students to integrate ecological conservation with economic development and growth.
ASNR&SD has been organizing a number of seminars/training programmes/research and demonstration projects towards this end to build up a conscientious opinion of stakeholders on issues related to management of natural resources. We are now an established national institute of great repute in areas of natural resource management for training research and education.
Many of our alumni occupy key portfolio in profession of forestry and development administration of the country. Many of them are heading reputed institutions and government departments. We are among the few selected educational institute that regularly impart training to the senior officers from IAS (Indian Administrative Service) and IFS (Indian Forest Service).
Our school is unique in having full and diverse support of various schools of Amity Institutions like Amity School of Business Administration, Amity School of Biotechnology, Amity School of Law, Amity School of Mass Communication and several other reputed institutes of Amity.
The institute of Natural Resource and Sustainable Development has MOU with various national and state level institutes and also with various state forest departments and state forest corporations.
We are successfully implementing a number of projects of the various Ministries of Government of India. We have several ongoing collaborative projects with the above Institutes.
India faces a difficult situation on several fronts- food, security, water and energy crisis, urban sprawl, recurrence of flood and drought, despite our hype of 7 percent growth rate. In the ultimate analysis, all these lead as a pointer that all is not well with management of our natural resources. Our life support system (soil, water, air, ecosystems etc.) is crumbling under our skewed economic growth that prevents us to take a long-term view of things and climate change has of course forced us to think differently.
The first link in the management of natural resources is sustainable management of soil and water. Our soil must sustainably produces all the feeds, fodders and grasses needs to support an animal husbandry, adequate to ensure better nutritional standards for the people. It must also produces all the fibers, timbers and other forest produces required by the industry as well as the fuel-wood needed to meet the energy requirement of a population, still overwhelmingly rural in composition. Similarly, despite our long tradition of managing water, increasing demands pose new challenges for quantity and quality of water.
It is my firm belief that education is the answer to the above challenge, for it is the through practically oriented education that youth obtain the awareness, knowledge and the skills and acquire the attitude necessary to pursue successful action for sustainable, environmentally sound development (or to put it in the terms utilized by a recent Council of Europe meeting, “development at acceptable conditions”).
An understanding of the interrelationship among biological, social and economic constraints is rarely evident because few people have training outside their own disciplines. Academic institutions, traditionally the source of new ideas and innovative approaches, have not effectively responded to this intellectual challenge, resulting in a concomitant lack of professionals who are able to integrate ecological conservation with natural resources development. The inability of academic institutions to effectively address complex natural resource issues often stems from their traditional, disciplinary approach that emphasizes specialization. Problem in the real world seldom fall into discrete disciplines. This is particularly true of the major conservation and natural resource development issue facing us today. We need an entirely new breed of leaders and managers in industries, education, public services and in governance to squarely take up this challenge. Our carefully drawn out curriculum would prepare them to face the challenges in management of environment and natural resources.
Prof. B.K.P. Sinha, IFS (Retd.)
Director
