Prof. Elinor Ostrom in India

Dear All,

2009 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Prof Elinor Ostrom is in India to attend the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study on the Commons. Prior to the conference, she would be attending a series of meetings in Delhi and in Hyderabad.

Following are few of the press clippings from the meetings held in Delhi.


http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Climate-change-should-be-addressed-at-grassroot-level--Nobelist/734209/
Climate change should be addressed at grassroot level: Nobelist
Posted: Jan 06, 2011 at 1744 hrs IST


New Delhi Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom today said countries like India, China and the US should address the issue of climate change at grassroot level by encouraging participation of local people.
There are no ideal solutions to problems like climate change. The locals and communities must be made aware of the ways to manage ecosystems and usage of renewable resources to lessen the burden on environment, Ostrom said at a Foundation for Ecological Security function here.
Ostrom, aged 77 years, shared the Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences with Oliver E Williamson in 2009.
She was the first lady to receive this award and specialise in creation of common pool resources (CPRs) like forests and rivers which could be managed and supervised by the society together.
Asked about how to maintain a balance between development and displacement, she said: "Villagers need to attain a position where they can bargain and fight for their land rights."
"They need to strengthened their voices. Villagers must know the asset value of their land and negotiate than taking Rs 5,000 for a piece of land," Ostrom said.
Working on a paper in Delhi like Forest Rights Act is of no use for the tribes living in Jharkhand, until and unless the initiatives are taken at local level, followed by regional, national and global.
This Act provides restitution of deprived forest rights to millions of tribal and other forest dwellers in different parts of the country.

Q & A
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/interviews/My-country-the-United-States-is-irresponsible-as-heck/articleshow/7231086.cms#ixzz1AKwSZC7k

'My country, the United States, is irresponsible as heck'

Rukmini Shrinivasan, Jan 7, 2011, 12.00am IST

What are the implications for commons governance when people who use common resources neither live in the area of the resources nor own them?

The presumption has been that poor people don't have any knowledge and they shouldn't have any authority. But we find that when poor people have reasonable forms of authority, they frequently - not always - do a much better job than if you have a top-down solution. This is why i very strongly support indigenous people's movements in India. I'm not trying to say that all mines are bad, but i object to this form of organising which is intended purely to help the entry of mining companies into rural areas. But it's also naive to assume that once the communities are given rights through NGOs, they can just be left on their own to negotiate with well-experienced negotiators as has happened in places like Bolivia. We can't romanticise something that worked 500 years ago by saying it's going to work in developed economies. We're going to have to innovate and find new ways of doing these things.

Since the effects of environmental damage are not necessarily felt locally, are we going to need several layers of environmental governance?

The only unit of environmental governance so far has been seen to be the international. I and many other people who have worked in the field are challenging this, and saying that a lot of environmental governance should be taking place at the local level, that is, the community and even the individual level. Even emissions reductions can happen at the local level, if local-level incentives are offered. My country, the United States, is irresponsible as heck and it makes me very angry, but if i sit around yelling at elected officials all day, then that's irresponsible too. The risks of not acting are catastrophic.

Are you encouraged by the fact that indigenous people's rights, environmental concerns and the developmental logic are being contested so vociferously in India?

I hope 10 years from now we can really get the sense that we've moved ahead and indigenous people's rights have been well represented and indigenous people now have more effective rights rather than just paper. I'm encouraged to see that with the Indian Forest Rights Act (FRA), for example, some communities are using it to have their rights
recognized. However, others don't even know about it. I'm against the FRA if it is seen as a panacea, because I’m against panaceas. We have to get away from the notion that top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions always work.

As the first woman to win the Nobel prize in economics, do you think things need to change for women in academia?

I came from a generation where women in academia really had to struggle hard. I was told repeatedly that i should not be in academia and should not teach, that my place was "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen". I didn't take no for an answer and struggled. Fortunately, my early experiences taught me not to be dissuaded and to stand up for my rights, which is why i'm always talking about 'empowering'. And that's what we need for some aspects of this problem. If we preach to people that they are helpless, we make them helpless.

No common solution for development issues, Ostrom tells govt
Amitabh Sinha
Posted online: Fri Jan 07 2011, 00:53 hrs

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/no-common-solution-for-development-issues-ostrom-tells-govt/734369/

New Delhi : For a government struggling to find the right balance between pushing on with development work and the need to protect the rights and interests of people who are adversely affected by such projects, Nobel Prize-winning political scientist Elinor Ostrom has only one piece of advice: don’t look for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.

Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel for Economics, said solutions have to be found at multiple levels and adapted to suit individual cases. The only common ingredient in these solutions has to be the empowerment of local communities, often belonging to socially and economically weaker sections, so they are able to forcefully bargain with the government and industry — thereby protecting their interests and rights.

Ostrom, who won the Nobel for her work on how to effectively govern common properties like forests or rivers, said solutions have to be found mostly at the local level and by the communities themselves. “It is naive to expect one single solution for all cases. But it is important to ensure that indigenous peoples are empowered and made stakeholders in developmental projects. They should be in a position to effectively bargain for themselves,” she said.

A legislation like the Forest Rights Act (FRA), which seeks to recognise the rights of forest-dwellers over forests and their produce, is therefore only an enabling provision and not the solution to the problem. “I would not agree if I am told that FRA is the panacea for all the problems related to people adversely affected by developmental projects. It is a good and powerful first step but not the solution,” she says.

FRA has been used to block some big-ticket projects, including POSCO’s proposed iron and steel plant and Vedanta’s mining and refinery projects in Orissa, citing non-implementation of its provisions.

Ostrom said there is strong statistical evidence to suggest that when local communities are made stakeholders in a project, they become willing partners and make healthy contributions to the project.