Authors: Srivastava, Nimisha; Linnell, John D. C.;Sattler, Claudia ;Schröter, Barbara ;Krishnamurthy, Ramesh ;Fürst, Christine ;König, Hannes J.;

Increasing evidence from around the world points to the need for landscape-level governance for large carnivores’ conservation. This expands the spectrum to other inter-connected governance institutions, for ex. agriculture, tourism, rural development, etc. who need to collaborate with conservation institutions to create effective governance solutions. However, due to competing and segregated objectives, human-human conflict hampers effective governance of large carnivores in multi-use landscapes. Therefore, effective collaborations through networking between different institutions (formal and informal) has been recommended. Although it has a huge potential, the dynamics of each institutional system, coupled with the complexity of scales and hierarchies, implies that achieving one in reality is challenging. In our study, we identify challenges in governance of carnivore conservation by interviewing experts from inter-connected institutions in India and Germany. Based on existing literature, and case studies on social networks in socio-political-ecological systems, we develop a framework that aims to map existing networks of governance and informal actors (such as stakeholders), with their motivation and interests, at different scales and levels of functionality of inter-connected institutions. This framework will be able to provide information on the power dynamics and collaborations, and identify possible points of intervention to generate better measures for an effective governance.