Research projects 2

Bringing together advanced mobile voice-based technology, service providers and rural people of India in a tailored ecosystem is a unique project both in scale and in approach. Our project – RuralVoice – focuses on the development and deployment of voice-based services in agriculture, healthcare, education, entertainment and banking for the 220 million illiterate and underprivileged Indians that reside in the rural area. In our Indo-Finnish project consortium we are also building sustainable development and inclusive business opportunities for service- and technology companies both in India and in Europe. Keywords: Sustainable development, India, base of the pyramid, frugal innovations, voice-based services, illiterate people, mobile applications, participation, collaboration, localisation

Team

Mikko Ruohonen, Markku Turunen, Juhani Linna, Sumita Sharma, Nicholas Mavengere, Gururaj Mahajan, Jaakko Hakulinen, Pekka Kallioniemi, Vivek Kumar, Himadri Das (India), Amit Nanavati (India), Nitendra Rajput (India)

The main innovation of this research project is to approach and analyse REDD+ not only as a climate change mitigation measure, but as a new environmental governance mechanism that can lead to major changes in the forest governance and through it, distribution of benefits, costs, risks and opportunities of land use and forest management between the actors and groups involved. The main interest in this research is on how the notion of responsive forest governance is addressed in the processes. In this case,the responsive forest governance is concerned with issues of negotiation power, participation in planning and implementation of REDD+ and allocation of costs and benefits among the stakeholders and groups involved. The research results are expected to assist in designing socially equitable and environmentally appropriate options for REDD+ and further developing selected approaches to sustainable forestry that can help to achieve the goals of REDD+. Internationally, this proposed research could contribute significantly to policy-relevant research and empirical knowledge as well as theoretical debates on the nexus of social, economic and environmental sustainability and responsive and deliberative forest governance in developing world.

Team

Irmeli Mustalahti, PI Salla Rantala ja Melis Ece (2012-2013), Post doc researchers Sabaheta Ramcilovic-Suominen (2015-2018), Post doc researcher Daniel Hinojosa Flores, PhD student (on-going) Bishnu Devkota, PhD student (on-going) Maija Hyle, PhD student (on-going) Dipjoy Chakma, PhD student (on-going, externally funded) Mathias Cramm, research assistant (periodical) Phetsamone Soulivong, research assistant (periodical)