Trade-off between conservation of environment and economic development? A case study of East Kolkata Wetland

The debate between conservation of environment and economic development is being discussed worldwide. Several natural resources like; forests, wetlands, agricultural fields are being converted for urban development or industrial de-velopment all over the world. Environmentalists give evidences in the support of environmental conservation as environment yields benefit for future genera-tion if it has been used at its full potential. Often marginal poor depend on the natural resources for their livelihood. Market failure in value discernment of environment goods often does not help them for their social and economic upliftmnet in the process of conservation. On the other hand economic devel-opment provides with new opportunities in terms of livelihoods and better access to markets to the poor people. Applying this debate in the case of East Kolkata Wetland this paper followed the trajectories of broader debate be-tween economic development and environmental conservation focusing on livelihood perspectives of the rural poor and tried to do a comparative analysis across the villages and households located in the wetland area classified ac-cording to their choice of livelihood strategies. Based on primary and secon-dary data analysis the paper showed that the process of economic development in the wetland area improves the quality of life of the people living in the area through upliftmnet in their socio-economic indicators. The paper raises some issues of concern like; uneven integration of rural poor into urban economy and increase in work burden of the female of the household as an outcome of economic development. This paper also argues for a further in depth research to analyze compatibility of conservation of environment and economic devel-opment rather than a trade off between them.