Author(s): Ravleen Kaur
Issue: Feb 28, 2011 (http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/33020)
Supreme Court asks states to evict illegal occupants of village commons
Jagpal Singh constructed the house on the common land claiming he lived there since the time of his forefathers JAGPAL SINGH and Dev Singh of Jagir Rohar village in Patiala have little idea that their enmity has resulted in a landmark judgement by the Supreme Court that would bear implications for the rural population of the country.
In its January 28 decision in the case concerning encroachment of common land by Jagpal Singh, the apex court directed all state governments to prepare schemes for the eviction of those occupying village commons and restore them to the community. It asked the states to submit compliance reports by May.
Activists have hailed the judgement. Common property resources, which constitute 15 per cent of the country’s total area, are shrinking at the rate of 1.9 per cent every five years due to encroachment, as per the National Sample Survey Organisation. Since Independence, more than 834,000 hectares of village commons have been encroached. Village commons include everything from pastures, forests and common threshing grounds to ponds, irrigation channels and rivers, and play an important role in rural economy (see ‘India’s commons’).
India’s commons
Dependence of rural households For firewood collection: 45% For fodder collection: 13% For grazing land: 20% Water for livestock: 30% Water for irrigation: 23% Source: National Sample Survey Organisation
“We cannot allow the common interest of villagers to suffer merely because the unauthorised occupation has subsisted for many years,” the court said in its ruling, rejecting Singh’s claim over a little more than one hectare (ha) of the village common land.
It all began in 2003 when the gram sabha of Jagir Rohar approached the district collector against Jagpal Singh who was constructing a house on the common land that extends over 6.8 ha. The revenue records list the land as gair mumkin toba or village pond, though just a patch of it shows signs of a pond, covered with water hyacinth.
Residents said the waterhole acts as a sink for stormwater from the village and is used by cattle. People use the rest of the land for tending cattle and storing fodder. Gujjar families who visit the area in winters also camp there.
“The collector sided with Jagpal,” said Baldev Singh, a resident of the village. “So my relative Dev Singh and I took the matter to the deputy commissioner of Patiala. But Jagpal went ahead with the construction work and approached the high court against the commissioner’s order. The high court ruled in our favour,” he said. Following this, Jagpal filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the high court ruling.
“As many as 77 families live on the land but the case was filed only against me. Dev Singh and his relative influenced the panchayat to do so owing to a previous grudge,” Jagpal alleged. “I have been staying here since the time of my forefathers. If they committed a mistake, I am ready to pay for it. But it’s not easy to construct a house these days,” he said, appalled by the judgement.
Most people in the village have houses on the land, said Gurnam Singh, a resident. They first set up a cattle shed and eventually convert it into a pucca house. This usually happens when the population increases. So no one had ever objected to it, not even the panchayat, he added. Jasveer Singh, another resident, said, “The case started as a fight between two parties in the village. Poor people like us are now being dragged into it.”
The panchayat, now under a new sarpanch, Narendra Singh, who happens to be Jagpal Singh’s relative, recently appealed to the high court saying action should also be taken against others living in the panchayat land. It submitted a list of 77 people to the court that includes names of Dev Singh and Baldev Singh.
“The list just names people randomly,” clarified Jaswant, Dev Singh’s son. Some poor people do stay there but most have just fodder sheds. Jagpal Singh influenced the panchayat to do this to save his own skin, he alleged. The district development and panchayat officer of Patiala said his department is carrying out demarcation of the commonland in Jagir Rohar that has been encroached.
This is not a one-off case in Punjab, but the government hardly takes action against such encroachers, said forest rights activist Madhu Sarin. The scene has changed after the Green Revolution. People now do not seem to depend on the commons. They are encroaching land for cultivation. In some cases people have comfortably divided the gram sabha land among themselves, she said.
“Regularising such illegalities must not be permitted because it is gram sabha land which must be kept for the common use of villagers,” the Supreme Court noted in its ruling. “Our ancestors were not fools. They knew that in certain years there may be droughts or water shortages and water was also required for cattle to drink and bathe in etc. Hence they built a pond attached to every village, a tank to every temple.
These were their traditional rain water harvesting methods which served them for thousands of years,” the ruling noted. Regularisation, however, should be permitted in exceptional cases, for example, where lease has been granted under some government notification to landless labourers or members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes, or where there is already a school, dispensary or other public utility, the court said.
A precedent
“The judgement came as a pleasant surprise,” said Jagdeesh Rao of the Foundation for Ecological Securities, a nonprofit in Gujarat. “It would not be easy to take the commons back from encroachers. However, the ruling gives some basis on which people can fight for their rights,” he said.
“About 200 ha of grazing land in Mundra in Gujarat on which Maldharis and other native villagers used to depend has gone into the special economic zone. We hope the order will help us get the land back,” said Bharat Patel of Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Samiti, a non-profit that opposes industrialisation in Kachchh. As per an estimate, livestock in the state face a deficit of 2.5 million ha of grazing land.
The judgement has ignited hope among residents of Kalpavalli village in Ananthpur district of Andhra Pradesh as well. A wind firm is eyeing 2,832 ha of wasteland which people have revived over 17 years. “Every day 40,000 sheep cross the area. But it is designated as revenue wasteland,” said Mary Vattamattam of Timbaktu Collective, a nonprofit that helped regenerate vegetation on the wasteland. She hopes the judgement would help Kalpavalli community get ownership over the revived land.
“It is a laudable order,” said Supreme Court advocate Rajiv Dhavan. It asks the government to restore the common land and evict people who are illegally occupying it but still preserves orders that have allotted land for public institutions like schools. Its implementation seems difficult, though.
On the one hand, it is an exhortation to restore common land and on the other, an invitation to litigations from those who would lose encroached land, Dhavan said. He was referring to part of the order that says all government orders allotting gram sabha land to individuals or commercial enterprises on payment are illegal and should be ignored. The order implicitly says the government has no power over the commons, he added.
One fear is this judgement might be used against the poor rather than getting hold of the big fish, said Viren Lobo of the Society for Promotion of Wasteland Development, a non-profit in Delhi. For instance, the government removed slums to save the Yamuna bed but constructed the Commonwealth Games village at the same site, he said.
“The judgement says very little about acquisition of the commons by the State,” said Sarin. For instance, in places like Delhi and Chandigarh, the governments took over villages for urban development. Punjab and Haryana governments are now following suit. How can such government orders be ignored after they have been implemented?
The judgement would still be handy for fighting cases like Jaitapur nuclear power project where the government is acquiring common grazing land, said Sarin, adding, “Then it will be law versus the government.”
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
India's Rural Commons at Odds with Surging Industrialization
By Christopher D. Cook
02.07.11
One issue largely absent from the agenda of this January’s global commons conference in Hyderabad, India was the idea of limits to consumption and material accumulation. There were presentations aplenty on how commons are being limited and threatened by development, land-grabbing, and ecological decay, but little discussion of how global consumption, notions of material ‘progress,’ and ‘development’ factor into the evolving equation of how humans and the planet will survive.
With Indian media reporting the likelihood of its nation producing the world’s seven-billionth human sometime this year, the 'inconvenient' question must be addressed forthrightly: how many cars, cell phones, satellite dishes, television sets, and other emblems of material ‘progress’ can the globe withstand? Beyond the more obvious urgency of climate change — the immediate need for radical emissions reductions and greatly expanded carbon sinks, among others — how much more room do the earth and the sky have for the material advancement of our ballooning populace?
I have long resisted the population question myself, rooted as it has been in subtle and sometimes blatant racism as well as echoes of imperialism. The blaming of poorer, developing nations for overpopulation neglects America’s vastly higher per-capita (and until recently, aggregate) carbon footprint — and the profound unfairness of limiting growth in these nations after the industrial and carbon-spewing excesses of the U.S. and Europe must be addressed.
But the facts of climate chaos and the dire need to cut global emissions require an aggressively honest assessment of limits starting with U.S. and other ‘first world’ nations’ concepts of growth and materialism, but also more critically re-defining ‘developing world’ growth in the context of ironclad climatological and earthly limits.
This challenge is acutely of the moment, not only in climate change negotiations, but for another reason that is as inspiring as it is distressing: the agrarian and pastoral commons of India and other developing nations are still with us, and their survival holds the key not only to rural livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people across the world, but very possibly for the planet itself.
While the survival struggles of small Indian farming villages may seem remote to our global future, these are, in fact, contested terrains that the planet-threatening industrialization process has not yet conquered — where there’s actually something left to fight for.
These are the very commons that more than 600 activists and scholars from across the globe defended at the International Association for the Study of the Commons 13th biannual conference in India — common pasture lands, forests, and arable lands upon which millions have relied for basic survival for centuries, under threat now from the unrelenting growth imperative.
Just as the U.S. features deep poverty and undernourishment amid phenomenal wealth and technological advancement, India's development is wildly uneven. A 2010 report by the United Nations found India has far more cell phones than toilets — 45 percent have cell phone access, while just 31 percent are afforded basic sanitation. ''It is a tragic irony to think that, in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones," so many do not have "the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,'' said Zafar Adeel, Director of United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health.
The core problem is this: how do ‘developing’ nations, and the rural poor within those countries, improve their livelihoods and opportunities for a more comfortable and stable existence without replicating unsustainable Western-style ‘progress’? How can India, Bangladesh, and other nations with huge, largely impoverished agrarian populations find a new path for growth that does not entail climate-battering industrialization and mass material consumption?
These questions percolated as a smaller group of conference-goers ventured deep into the south Indian countryside to visit tribal villages dealing with ecological scarcity and the encroaching pressures of industrialization.
We thunder across India’s porous and shredded rural highways for hours in a huge, air-conditioned tour bus, blurring past a kaleidoscope of ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’ — dust-coated shacks and tents made of plastic bags, businessmen on cell phones alongside ox carts, and bicycles laden with firewood and fruit, gaunt children, and elderly people staring into a malnourished fog.
The villages we visit — showcased by our host, the Foundation for Ecological Security, which funded my trip — are visibly poor and on a short ecological (and, it would appear, nutritional) leash. In some settlements, people are thinner and more anemic-looking; in others, there is an indeterminate mix that keeps you guessing: people are thin, flies are everywhere, yet children sprint gleefully in the dust and swim and shriek joyously in an irrigation pond.
Farm plots here are tiny, some just a few hundred square feet, but produce a bustling mix of foods: wheat, greens, bananas, pigeon peas and other pulses, tomatoes and mangoes in some areas, and squares of bright green rice paddies glistening in the sun. In these villages, in India’s southern province of Andra Pradesh, there is at least enough food to eat, if little more.
But I’m aware we are seeing the villages favored by assistance from FES and other support, and wonder about the people and communities between these commons. What about all the shacks and roads and villages we pass that do not benefit from any protected ecological status?
Everywhere, the question hangs in the air and remains unanswered: how can these fragile yet resilient villages survive the ongoing encroachments of industry, new market streams, and land incursions from a government that appears increasingly responsive to big business interests? How long can these villages possibly survive in the furious mix of global industrial capitalism?
I weigh this as we hurtle through the Indian countryside from one village to the next, past long columns of lumbering semi-trucks, buzzing parades of auto-rickshaws, and small highway towns bustling with chai stalls, cell phone ads, stores peddling bright plastic pouches of candy and snacks. The countryside is all green, grass, coconut, palm and Neem trees, forests of Teak and invasive Eucalyptus, water buffaloes (and people) pulling loads of fodder along the roadside. Everywhere, the 'modern' passes the pastoral in a loud mashing thunder — yet the pastoral keeps trudging along, insistent and persistent.
* * * * *
India is at once rising and crumbling. Even as the reminders of British colonialism are everywhere (from accents and a troubling economic and social subservience to an obsession with rules and hierarchy), India is surging economically, relentlessly growth-hungry, energetic, seemingly tossing away the final shackles of imperialism. There is an impatient industriousness in the air, furious activity, and plenty of pollution.
There is also a clear and decisive trajectory of industrialization and GDP growth at rates hovering around 9 percent, unheard of outside China. It’s true, as one businessman insists on a flight to Mumbai, that India is growing so rapidly in part because there’s so much room for growth. But there’s no denying that India is on a fast-track to Western-style development replete with booming industrialization, rising corporate power (both economic and political), and a ravenous thirst for middle- and upper-class lifestyles.
And India’s thirst for growth is nearly unrestrained; there is a significant state presence, but no communist- or socialist-style central planning to, at least, potentially check capitalism’s feverishly anarchic path (though state planning in China hasn’t led to any serious checks on air-choking industrial pollution, either).
Instead, what stands in hyper-development’s path are some concerned NGOs like my host and guide, the Foundation for Ecological Security, and a handful of politicians such as Jairam Ramesh, India’s controversial and erudite Minister of Environment and Forests who has blocked a number of dams on the upper Ganges River, much to the fury of fast-growth advocates and big business.
Perhaps the gravest internal threat to India’s growth rush has come from Maoist “Naxalite” rebels, whose campaigns of violence (primarily in the eastern states of Orissa and West Bengal) have slowed investment in some areas. As Reuters reported in August of 2010, “India's growing Maoist violence is worrying investors, forcing authorities to fight back aggressively in hopes of luring up to $7 billion in funds needed to boost coal and iron ore output vital for growth.”
The question that simmers throughout my trip is how can India (not to mention China) possibly continue to ‘grow’ and ‘develop’ in the Western industrial manner, mining its earth and waters and farmlands for GDP and middle-class consumption without destroying itself, eroding its rich and vital agrarian lands, and hastening our ecological demise?
It is profoundly unfair to demand restrictions on India, China, and other emerging nations after the U.S. and Europe have sucked the planet dry for the past century and a half. But this is where we stand now, and reams of climate-change evidence show there is no turning back the ecological clock.
And as 'emerging' nations pursue the classic 'modernization' model of favoring industrial manufacture over agriculture, how will this undermine domestic and global food security? How do we create a new economic system that promotes sustainable agrarian and pastoral lands and livelihoods — beyond preserving selected commons even as the rest of the countryside is imperiled?
How can we ask India to restrain itself as it hurtles ahead to the very material comforts, profits, and pleasures that so many Americans and Europeans take for granted? The U.S. has zero — actually negative — credibility when it comes to setting ecologically responsible global standards, or for relinquishing any of its material excesses which contribute mightily to climate chaos. Not only have we already ‘had our fun’ plundering the planet, we continue to do so with the world’s largest per-capita carbon footprint, even as we pressure India and China to restrain their emissions.
Before demanding slower growth or less industrialization from India and China, it’s essential that the U.S. show some leadership in diminishing both production and consumption of non-essential goods mined from the earth. But that would require a direct confrontation with capitalism’s growth imperative (the unrelenting need for new markets and products, for ‘built-in obsolescence,’ and maximum profit). And that would run counter to the central underpinning of the once-vaunted American economy, now being replicated and steadily surpassed by other nations, eager to join the party.
Will anyone — can anyone — challenge the growth and consumption imperative, before it consumes us all?
##
Christopher D. Cook is an award-winning journalist and writer who has written for Harper's, The Economist, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. He is author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. See more of his work at www.christopherdcook.com.
02.07.11
One issue largely absent from the agenda of this January’s global commons conference in Hyderabad, India was the idea of limits to consumption and material accumulation. There were presentations aplenty on how commons are being limited and threatened by development, land-grabbing, and ecological decay, but little discussion of how global consumption, notions of material ‘progress,’ and ‘development’ factor into the evolving equation of how humans and the planet will survive.
With Indian media reporting the likelihood of its nation producing the world’s seven-billionth human sometime this year, the 'inconvenient' question must be addressed forthrightly: how many cars, cell phones, satellite dishes, television sets, and other emblems of material ‘progress’ can the globe withstand? Beyond the more obvious urgency of climate change — the immediate need for radical emissions reductions and greatly expanded carbon sinks, among others — how much more room do the earth and the sky have for the material advancement of our ballooning populace?
I have long resisted the population question myself, rooted as it has been in subtle and sometimes blatant racism as well as echoes of imperialism. The blaming of poorer, developing nations for overpopulation neglects America’s vastly higher per-capita (and until recently, aggregate) carbon footprint — and the profound unfairness of limiting growth in these nations after the industrial and carbon-spewing excesses of the U.S. and Europe must be addressed.
But the facts of climate chaos and the dire need to cut global emissions require an aggressively honest assessment of limits starting with U.S. and other ‘first world’ nations’ concepts of growth and materialism, but also more critically re-defining ‘developing world’ growth in the context of ironclad climatological and earthly limits.
This challenge is acutely of the moment, not only in climate change negotiations, but for another reason that is as inspiring as it is distressing: the agrarian and pastoral commons of India and other developing nations are still with us, and their survival holds the key not only to rural livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people across the world, but very possibly for the planet itself.
While the survival struggles of small Indian farming villages may seem remote to our global future, these are, in fact, contested terrains that the planet-threatening industrialization process has not yet conquered — where there’s actually something left to fight for.
These are the very commons that more than 600 activists and scholars from across the globe defended at the International Association for the Study of the Commons 13th biannual conference in India — common pasture lands, forests, and arable lands upon which millions have relied for basic survival for centuries, under threat now from the unrelenting growth imperative.
Just as the U.S. features deep poverty and undernourishment amid phenomenal wealth and technological advancement, India's development is wildly uneven. A 2010 report by the United Nations found India has far more cell phones than toilets — 45 percent have cell phone access, while just 31 percent are afforded basic sanitation. ''It is a tragic irony to think that, in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones," so many do not have "the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,'' said Zafar Adeel, Director of United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health.
The core problem is this: how do ‘developing’ nations, and the rural poor within those countries, improve their livelihoods and opportunities for a more comfortable and stable existence without replicating unsustainable Western-style ‘progress’? How can India, Bangladesh, and other nations with huge, largely impoverished agrarian populations find a new path for growth that does not entail climate-battering industrialization and mass material consumption?
These questions percolated as a smaller group of conference-goers ventured deep into the south Indian countryside to visit tribal villages dealing with ecological scarcity and the encroaching pressures of industrialization.
We thunder across India’s porous and shredded rural highways for hours in a huge, air-conditioned tour bus, blurring past a kaleidoscope of ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’ — dust-coated shacks and tents made of plastic bags, businessmen on cell phones alongside ox carts, and bicycles laden with firewood and fruit, gaunt children, and elderly people staring into a malnourished fog.
The villages we visit — showcased by our host, the Foundation for Ecological Security, which funded my trip — are visibly poor and on a short ecological (and, it would appear, nutritional) leash. In some settlements, people are thinner and more anemic-looking; in others, there is an indeterminate mix that keeps you guessing: people are thin, flies are everywhere, yet children sprint gleefully in the dust and swim and shriek joyously in an irrigation pond.
Farm plots here are tiny, some just a few hundred square feet, but produce a bustling mix of foods: wheat, greens, bananas, pigeon peas and other pulses, tomatoes and mangoes in some areas, and squares of bright green rice paddies glistening in the sun. In these villages, in India’s southern province of Andra Pradesh, there is at least enough food to eat, if little more.
But I’m aware we are seeing the villages favored by assistance from FES and other support, and wonder about the people and communities between these commons. What about all the shacks and roads and villages we pass that do not benefit from any protected ecological status?
Everywhere, the question hangs in the air and remains unanswered: how can these fragile yet resilient villages survive the ongoing encroachments of industry, new market streams, and land incursions from a government that appears increasingly responsive to big business interests? How long can these villages possibly survive in the furious mix of global industrial capitalism?
I weigh this as we hurtle through the Indian countryside from one village to the next, past long columns of lumbering semi-trucks, buzzing parades of auto-rickshaws, and small highway towns bustling with chai stalls, cell phone ads, stores peddling bright plastic pouches of candy and snacks. The countryside is all green, grass, coconut, palm and Neem trees, forests of Teak and invasive Eucalyptus, water buffaloes (and people) pulling loads of fodder along the roadside. Everywhere, the 'modern' passes the pastoral in a loud mashing thunder — yet the pastoral keeps trudging along, insistent and persistent.
* * * * *
India is at once rising and crumbling. Even as the reminders of British colonialism are everywhere (from accents and a troubling economic and social subservience to an obsession with rules and hierarchy), India is surging economically, relentlessly growth-hungry, energetic, seemingly tossing away the final shackles of imperialism. There is an impatient industriousness in the air, furious activity, and plenty of pollution.
There is also a clear and decisive trajectory of industrialization and GDP growth at rates hovering around 9 percent, unheard of outside China. It’s true, as one businessman insists on a flight to Mumbai, that India is growing so rapidly in part because there’s so much room for growth. But there’s no denying that India is on a fast-track to Western-style development replete with booming industrialization, rising corporate power (both economic and political), and a ravenous thirst for middle- and upper-class lifestyles.
And India’s thirst for growth is nearly unrestrained; there is a significant state presence, but no communist- or socialist-style central planning to, at least, potentially check capitalism’s feverishly anarchic path (though state planning in China hasn’t led to any serious checks on air-choking industrial pollution, either).
Instead, what stands in hyper-development’s path are some concerned NGOs like my host and guide, the Foundation for Ecological Security, and a handful of politicians such as Jairam Ramesh, India’s controversial and erudite Minister of Environment and Forests who has blocked a number of dams on the upper Ganges River, much to the fury of fast-growth advocates and big business.
Perhaps the gravest internal threat to India’s growth rush has come from Maoist “Naxalite” rebels, whose campaigns of violence (primarily in the eastern states of Orissa and West Bengal) have slowed investment in some areas. As Reuters reported in August of 2010, “India's growing Maoist violence is worrying investors, forcing authorities to fight back aggressively in hopes of luring up to $7 billion in funds needed to boost coal and iron ore output vital for growth.”
The question that simmers throughout my trip is how can India (not to mention China) possibly continue to ‘grow’ and ‘develop’ in the Western industrial manner, mining its earth and waters and farmlands for GDP and middle-class consumption without destroying itself, eroding its rich and vital agrarian lands, and hastening our ecological demise?
It is profoundly unfair to demand restrictions on India, China, and other emerging nations after the U.S. and Europe have sucked the planet dry for the past century and a half. But this is where we stand now, and reams of climate-change evidence show there is no turning back the ecological clock.
And as 'emerging' nations pursue the classic 'modernization' model of favoring industrial manufacture over agriculture, how will this undermine domestic and global food security? How do we create a new economic system that promotes sustainable agrarian and pastoral lands and livelihoods — beyond preserving selected commons even as the rest of the countryside is imperiled?
How can we ask India to restrain itself as it hurtles ahead to the very material comforts, profits, and pleasures that so many Americans and Europeans take for granted? The U.S. has zero — actually negative — credibility when it comes to setting ecologically responsible global standards, or for relinquishing any of its material excesses which contribute mightily to climate chaos. Not only have we already ‘had our fun’ plundering the planet, we continue to do so with the world’s largest per-capita carbon footprint, even as we pressure India and China to restrain their emissions.
Before demanding slower growth or less industrialization from India and China, it’s essential that the U.S. show some leadership in diminishing both production and consumption of non-essential goods mined from the earth. But that would require a direct confrontation with capitalism’s growth imperative (the unrelenting need for new markets and products, for ‘built-in obsolescence,’ and maximum profit). And that would run counter to the central underpinning of the once-vaunted American economy, now being replicated and steadily surpassed by other nations, eager to join the party.
Will anyone — can anyone — challenge the growth and consumption imperative, before it consumes us all?
##
Christopher D. Cook is an award-winning journalist and writer who has written for Harper's, The Economist, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. He is author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. See more of his work at www.christopherdcook.com.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Change attitude towards tribesmen: Jairam Ramesh
Expressbuzz Feb 7, 2011
THIRUVANATHAPURAM: Union Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh said that forest officials would be living in a fool's paradise if they thought that they could keep people and cattle out of forest areas.
'The challenge of the forest officials is to find a way to regenerate forests even while recognising biotic pressures. Forest officials have never reconciled to the Forest Rights Act, they still consider it a threat,' Jairam Ramesh said while inaugurating the Conference of Southern State Forest Ministers here on Sunday.
The Union Minister said that there should be a fundamental three pronged transformation in the functioning of forest departments if forest conservation efforts across the country were to be strengthened.
''Business as usual will not work,'' Jairam Ramesh said. The first big transformation he has in mind is the attitude of forest officials towards tribesmen and forest dwellers.
''The forest officials should look upon the Forest Rights Act as a historic opportunity to redefine their relationship with the local community,'' he said.
Forest Act to be redone
He said there were many ''colonial relics'' in the Forest Act 1927 that needs to be redone.
''Thousands of cases have been slapped on tribesmen for violating certain sections of the Forest Act,'' the Minister said. Jairam Ramesh wants local communities to be in the forefront of conservation efforts.
Green India Mission
He said the Green India Mission, which intends to increase forest cover in the country by five million hectares, will be carried out through grama sabhas and joint forest management committees, the legally sanctified bodies of grama sabhas.
''Five million hectares of nonforest land will be added to the forest cover and the quality of another five million hectares of forest land will be improved with the help of grama sabhas, especially women,'' he said and added: ''The Forest Department will provide technical support.''
Recruitment to be revamped
The second radical transformation should happen to the recruitment system of forest departments.
''In the past 10 to 15 years there has hardly been any significant recruitment at the cuttingedge level such as forest guards and rangers. The average age of forest guard in the country is 53 years. It is to such a man that we are entrusting the protection of the forest,'' the Union Minister said.
Concerted efforts needed
The third radical departure in the functioning of forest departments should be in their concerted efforts to stop what Jairam Ramesh called the ''degreening of India''.
He said that though the country could claim that it had increased its forest cover it could not be denied that the proportion of open degraded forest (ODF) in the total forest cover was high.
Over 40 percent of the forest cover in the country is ODF.
''A thick forest is where you stand and look up and cannot see the sun. A medium forest is where you stand and look up and see half the sun.
"An ODF is a forest area where you stand and look up and see nothing else but the sun,'' Jairam Ramesh said.
© Copyright 2008 ExpressBuzz
THIRUVANATHAPURAM: Union Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh said that forest officials would be living in a fool's paradise if they thought that they could keep people and cattle out of forest areas.
'The challenge of the forest officials is to find a way to regenerate forests even while recognising biotic pressures. Forest officials have never reconciled to the Forest Rights Act, they still consider it a threat,' Jairam Ramesh said while inaugurating the Conference of Southern State Forest Ministers here on Sunday.
The Union Minister said that there should be a fundamental three pronged transformation in the functioning of forest departments if forest conservation efforts across the country were to be strengthened.
''Business as usual will not work,'' Jairam Ramesh said. The first big transformation he has in mind is the attitude of forest officials towards tribesmen and forest dwellers.
''The forest officials should look upon the Forest Rights Act as a historic opportunity to redefine their relationship with the local community,'' he said.
Forest Act to be redone
He said there were many ''colonial relics'' in the Forest Act 1927 that needs to be redone.
''Thousands of cases have been slapped on tribesmen for violating certain sections of the Forest Act,'' the Minister said. Jairam Ramesh wants local communities to be in the forefront of conservation efforts.
Green India Mission
He said the Green India Mission, which intends to increase forest cover in the country by five million hectares, will be carried out through grama sabhas and joint forest management committees, the legally sanctified bodies of grama sabhas.
''Five million hectares of nonforest land will be added to the forest cover and the quality of another five million hectares of forest land will be improved with the help of grama sabhas, especially women,'' he said and added: ''The Forest Department will provide technical support.''
Recruitment to be revamped
The second radical transformation should happen to the recruitment system of forest departments.
''In the past 10 to 15 years there has hardly been any significant recruitment at the cuttingedge level such as forest guards and rangers. The average age of forest guard in the country is 53 years. It is to such a man that we are entrusting the protection of the forest,'' the Union Minister said.
Concerted efforts needed
The third radical departure in the functioning of forest departments should be in their concerted efforts to stop what Jairam Ramesh called the ''degreening of India''.
He said that though the country could claim that it had increased its forest cover it could not be denied that the proportion of open degraded forest (ODF) in the total forest cover was high.
Over 40 percent of the forest cover in the country is ODF.
''A thick forest is where you stand and look up and cannot see the sun. A medium forest is where you stand and look up and see half the sun.
"An ODF is a forest area where you stand and look up and see nothing else but the sun,'' Jairam Ramesh said.
© Copyright 2008 ExpressBuzz
Saturday, February 5, 2011
News from IASC 2011 (Down to Earth)
Dear All,
For your reading.
Subrata Singh
http://downtoearth.org.in/node/32971
Common concerns
Author(s): Latha Jishnu
Issue: Feb 15, 2011
As the commons come under increasing assault, academics, practitioners and policymakers come together to devise ways to protect shared resources
On a cold January night in Hyderabad, a fortnight ago, Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment and Forests, was led to an open-air dinner by folk drummers and body-painted tiger dancers as an appreciative audience of international academics and grassroots workers cheered and milled around him. Ramesh had become the toast of the evening after he asked the world’s top scholars working on issues related to the commons to help shape his ministry’s thinking.
It was a gesture that could be construed as bold, or politic, as around 600 delegates to the biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) got down to work, sharing experiences on saving (or losing the commons) and discussing new theoretical frameworks to understand the dynamics of the commons.
The big draw at the five-day event that ended on January 15 was, of course, Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, whose unflagging energy galvanised the plenary sessions and panel discussions. But it was the presence of dynamic policymakers that helped elevate the event to a more pragmatic level. Ramesh’s invitation along with a more earnest appeal from Herman Rosa Chavez, El Salvador Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, to the knowledge community to treat his country as a laboratory for their work, set the tone for IASC 2011.
Two things have happened to the commons of late. The assaults on common pool resources (CPRs), both by state and the private sector, have become intense on account of “development imperatives”. Conflict over the appropriation of common resources, particularly those belonging to indigenous communities, has become more frequent, leading to violent confrontation at times. India and Peru are just two examples of this trend. India, in fact, has earned notoriety for the appropriation of the commons by the government by a simple ruse: declaring them wastelands and then handing them over to private enterprise.
Simultaneously, and in seeming contradiction, the study of the commons has gained in stature and impact globally. The most significant has been the Nobel Prize for Economics that was awarded in 2009 to American academic Ostrom for her work on economic governance related to common property.
Ostrom, who shared the prize with fellow American William E Dickinson, was honoured for her work that demonstrated how common property can be successfully managed by user associations. The Nobel committee noted that Ostrom “has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatised. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterises the rules that promote successful outcomes”.
As such, IASC devoted much of its time to retailing success stories from across the world, starting with Ostrom herself, at the high-profile inaugural event. In a study of 226 sophisticated irrigation systems designed by engineers and run by the government and primitive systems constructed and managed by farmers, Ostrom reported that “only 42 per cent of the government irrigation systems were high-performing, even with fancy engineering,” whereas 75 per cent of farmer-run irrigation projects were working well.
But given the challenge thrown by Ramesh and Chavez, IASC was under pressure to prove that its work could influence policy and have an impact on livelihoods. Outgoing IASC president Ruth Meinzen-Dick said that although it was difficult for development policy research institutes, much less a network alliance like IASC, to draw a linear path from research to policy to impact, the association could claim some success in this regard. One such was in Mongolia which in 2009 moved away from a heavy and ineffectual government regulation to a decentralised system of managing its vast pastoral lands. “IASC member played a role in fostering this change,” she said. Another was the earmarking of one million hectares in Niger for the nomadic community.
The fundamental lesson that Ostrom repeatedly dinned into the conference was that there are no panaceas. Her other dictum was that the institutional mono-culture in governance of CPRs had to be replaced by a plurality of approaches or polycentric solutions. Rapping both policymakers and practitioners who tend to have rigid approaches to governing the commons, the prize-winning economist advised: “We should think of all our policies as experiments. We should be learning at all levels instead of thinking something as the policy.”
Speakers at different sessions underlined the importance of this lesson. Hijaba Ykhanbai, director of JASIL, an environmental and development association based in Ulaanbaatar, pointed that a multi-institutional holistic programme worked best with “a bottom-up approach for co-management” of Mongolia’s pasture and forest resources. Another variation was offered by Leticia Merino Perez, incoming IASC president and professor of Institute of Social Investigation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Although forests are mainly owned by local communities, degradation in the Oaxaca region had been severe between 1970 and 1990. Her findings: “Communities with a relatively developed forest economy tend to be those with solid local governance, social capital and incentives to protect the forest because they have the knowledge and technical capacity to do so.”
But for India, which has its own success stories, the real concern is the fast vanishing commons. The alienation of village communities from their commons has been accelerating over the years. A study by Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment reveals that CPRs are being degraded at an alarming rate and thus depriving rural communities of their CPR which contributes substantially to their livelihoods.
In 1900, CPRs comprised accounts for as much as 44.38 per cent of India’s geographical area is now a mere 15 per cent—and is being depleted at almost two per cent annually. It did not help that Ramesh told the conference that India’s growth imperatives would result in trade-offs while balancing GDP growth rates of nine to 10 per cent with environmental concerns. But what was disquieting was his declaration that these tough choices would be made not on scientific or technical evaluations but on political considerations.
That did take away the sheen from the fact that the Hyderabad biennial of IASC was the first to be held in South Asia—and the first to be hosted by a practitioner organisation, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES). However, the experience of FES on the management and governance of common property land resources—it works in over 1,800 villages in six states and reaches out to a million people— indicates that all is not lost on the commons front.
In fact the bitterest, and so far successful, battles over land alienation such as the struggle of the Dongria Kondh tribal people against the mining of their hills are against the appropriation of CPRs by both state and commercial interests.
Besides, Jagdeesh Rao Puppala, FES executive director, promised that IASC 2011 would trigger processes that would gain recognition for the commons and improve their governance by feeding into the preparation process for the 12th Five Year Plan which starts in 2012. To help influence policy, the conference secretariat has kicked off the Commons Initiative, an attempt to build strategic alliances between practitioners and their networks, policymakers and scholars. The idea is to launch a long-term campaign to promote the commons.
This might mark the beginning of a new chapter in the struggle to preserve India’s commons but Ashish Kothari, founder of well-known Delhi environmental group Kalpavriksh, was not sanguine about such prospects. He predicted “collapse and degradation of the commons for some time to come, and many false starts”. Only radical ecological democracy would ensure people’s rights to the commons.
http://downtoearth.org.in/node/32973
Net gain lies in community management
Fisheries regulations need a rethink
Breakdown of the traditional management system of fisheries and its subsequent replacement by the government’s weak and inefficient regulations has contributed to the depletion of fish stock in the country.
The level of worldwide depletion of fish stock is alarming. As per the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) statistics of 1997, 60 per cent of the global fisheries were over-exploited by the 1990s. This is a marked change from the 60 per cent underexploitation in the early 1950s. Stock depletion is seen In India as well. At least three million Indians, spread along 8,000 km of the coastline, depend on marine fisheries. A 2009 study by Bathal and Pauly shows that Indians are fishing down the food web. A part of this problem lies in the government’s takeover of the management system from the traditional management system.
This is true in other countries as well. A case study of the Malala- Ebllakela lagoon of southern Sri Lanka illustrates the collapse of the government’s regulation system.
Erwin Rathnaweera, project manager of non-profit Practical Action in Sri Lanka said earlier it was the fishers who regulated fishing. The fishers had an agreement with the farmers that during monsoons, they would cut open the lagoon to allow excess water out. Done during a specified period, it helped paddy fields from getting flooded.
The lagoon was declared a bird sanctuary in 1969, and later in 1992, a national wildlife park. Control of fisheries then shifted to the wildlife department. It introduced a management system that banned fishing at night and gave the fishers identity cards and specified the type of nets to be used. But soon migrants entered the profession by procuring fake identity cards. This led to over-exploitation of fish stocks. As this system gained ground, the community regulation system collapsed, said Rathnaweera.
In India, efforts are being made to revive the traditional management system, and involve the community. One such effort is the fisheries management council on the Tamil Nadu- Puducherry coastline. Facilitated by the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies (SIFFS) and supported by the FAO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the plan is to promote sustainable fisheries management.
The SIFFS project aims to improve the existing village councils that once governed the fisheries commons, but decayed after the state took control of fisheries regulation. The council is now working to address the common concerns within the community.
—SUMANA NARAYANAN
For your reading.
Subrata Singh
http://downtoearth.org.in/node/32971
Common concerns
Author(s): Latha Jishnu
Issue: Feb 15, 2011
As the commons come under increasing assault, academics, practitioners and policymakers come together to devise ways to protect shared resources
On a cold January night in Hyderabad, a fortnight ago, Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment and Forests, was led to an open-air dinner by folk drummers and body-painted tiger dancers as an appreciative audience of international academics and grassroots workers cheered and milled around him. Ramesh had become the toast of the evening after he asked the world’s top scholars working on issues related to the commons to help shape his ministry’s thinking.
It was a gesture that could be construed as bold, or politic, as around 600 delegates to the biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) got down to work, sharing experiences on saving (or losing the commons) and discussing new theoretical frameworks to understand the dynamics of the commons.
The big draw at the five-day event that ended on January 15 was, of course, Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, whose unflagging energy galvanised the plenary sessions and panel discussions. But it was the presence of dynamic policymakers that helped elevate the event to a more pragmatic level. Ramesh’s invitation along with a more earnest appeal from Herman Rosa Chavez, El Salvador Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, to the knowledge community to treat his country as a laboratory for their work, set the tone for IASC 2011.
Two things have happened to the commons of late. The assaults on common pool resources (CPRs), both by state and the private sector, have become intense on account of “development imperatives”. Conflict over the appropriation of common resources, particularly those belonging to indigenous communities, has become more frequent, leading to violent confrontation at times. India and Peru are just two examples of this trend. India, in fact, has earned notoriety for the appropriation of the commons by the government by a simple ruse: declaring them wastelands and then handing them over to private enterprise.
Simultaneously, and in seeming contradiction, the study of the commons has gained in stature and impact globally. The most significant has been the Nobel Prize for Economics that was awarded in 2009 to American academic Ostrom for her work on economic governance related to common property.
Ostrom, who shared the prize with fellow American William E Dickinson, was honoured for her work that demonstrated how common property can be successfully managed by user associations. The Nobel committee noted that Ostrom “has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatised. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterises the rules that promote successful outcomes”.
As such, IASC devoted much of its time to retailing success stories from across the world, starting with Ostrom herself, at the high-profile inaugural event. In a study of 226 sophisticated irrigation systems designed by engineers and run by the government and primitive systems constructed and managed by farmers, Ostrom reported that “only 42 per cent of the government irrigation systems were high-performing, even with fancy engineering,” whereas 75 per cent of farmer-run irrigation projects were working well.
But given the challenge thrown by Ramesh and Chavez, IASC was under pressure to prove that its work could influence policy and have an impact on livelihoods. Outgoing IASC president Ruth Meinzen-Dick said that although it was difficult for development policy research institutes, much less a network alliance like IASC, to draw a linear path from research to policy to impact, the association could claim some success in this regard. One such was in Mongolia which in 2009 moved away from a heavy and ineffectual government regulation to a decentralised system of managing its vast pastoral lands. “IASC member played a role in fostering this change,” she said. Another was the earmarking of one million hectares in Niger for the nomadic community.
The fundamental lesson that Ostrom repeatedly dinned into the conference was that there are no panaceas. Her other dictum was that the institutional mono-culture in governance of CPRs had to be replaced by a plurality of approaches or polycentric solutions. Rapping both policymakers and practitioners who tend to have rigid approaches to governing the commons, the prize-winning economist advised: “We should think of all our policies as experiments. We should be learning at all levels instead of thinking something as the policy.”
Speakers at different sessions underlined the importance of this lesson. Hijaba Ykhanbai, director of JASIL, an environmental and development association based in Ulaanbaatar, pointed that a multi-institutional holistic programme worked best with “a bottom-up approach for co-management” of Mongolia’s pasture and forest resources. Another variation was offered by Leticia Merino Perez, incoming IASC president and professor of Institute of Social Investigation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Although forests are mainly owned by local communities, degradation in the Oaxaca region had been severe between 1970 and 1990. Her findings: “Communities with a relatively developed forest economy tend to be those with solid local governance, social capital and incentives to protect the forest because they have the knowledge and technical capacity to do so.”
But for India, which has its own success stories, the real concern is the fast vanishing commons. The alienation of village communities from their commons has been accelerating over the years. A study by Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment reveals that CPRs are being degraded at an alarming rate and thus depriving rural communities of their CPR which contributes substantially to their livelihoods.
In 1900, CPRs comprised accounts for as much as 44.38 per cent of India’s geographical area is now a mere 15 per cent—and is being depleted at almost two per cent annually. It did not help that Ramesh told the conference that India’s growth imperatives would result in trade-offs while balancing GDP growth rates of nine to 10 per cent with environmental concerns. But what was disquieting was his declaration that these tough choices would be made not on scientific or technical evaluations but on political considerations.
That did take away the sheen from the fact that the Hyderabad biennial of IASC was the first to be held in South Asia—and the first to be hosted by a practitioner organisation, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES). However, the experience of FES on the management and governance of common property land resources—it works in over 1,800 villages in six states and reaches out to a million people— indicates that all is not lost on the commons front.
In fact the bitterest, and so far successful, battles over land alienation such as the struggle of the Dongria Kondh tribal people against the mining of their hills are against the appropriation of CPRs by both state and commercial interests.
Besides, Jagdeesh Rao Puppala, FES executive director, promised that IASC 2011 would trigger processes that would gain recognition for the commons and improve their governance by feeding into the preparation process for the 12th Five Year Plan which starts in 2012. To help influence policy, the conference secretariat has kicked off the Commons Initiative, an attempt to build strategic alliances between practitioners and their networks, policymakers and scholars. The idea is to launch a long-term campaign to promote the commons.
This might mark the beginning of a new chapter in the struggle to preserve India’s commons but Ashish Kothari, founder of well-known Delhi environmental group Kalpavriksh, was not sanguine about such prospects. He predicted “collapse and degradation of the commons for some time to come, and many false starts”. Only radical ecological democracy would ensure people’s rights to the commons.
http://downtoearth.org.in/node/32973
Net gain lies in community management
Fisheries regulations need a rethink
Breakdown of the traditional management system of fisheries and its subsequent replacement by the government’s weak and inefficient regulations has contributed to the depletion of fish stock in the country.
The level of worldwide depletion of fish stock is alarming. As per the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) statistics of 1997, 60 per cent of the global fisheries were over-exploited by the 1990s. This is a marked change from the 60 per cent underexploitation in the early 1950s. Stock depletion is seen In India as well. At least three million Indians, spread along 8,000 km of the coastline, depend on marine fisheries. A 2009 study by Bathal and Pauly shows that Indians are fishing down the food web. A part of this problem lies in the government’s takeover of the management system from the traditional management system.
This is true in other countries as well. A case study of the Malala- Ebllakela lagoon of southern Sri Lanka illustrates the collapse of the government’s regulation system.
Erwin Rathnaweera, project manager of non-profit Practical Action in Sri Lanka said earlier it was the fishers who regulated fishing. The fishers had an agreement with the farmers that during monsoons, they would cut open the lagoon to allow excess water out. Done during a specified period, it helped paddy fields from getting flooded.
The lagoon was declared a bird sanctuary in 1969, and later in 1992, a national wildlife park. Control of fisheries then shifted to the wildlife department. It introduced a management system that banned fishing at night and gave the fishers identity cards and specified the type of nets to be used. But soon migrants entered the profession by procuring fake identity cards. This led to over-exploitation of fish stocks. As this system gained ground, the community regulation system collapsed, said Rathnaweera.
In India, efforts are being made to revive the traditional management system, and involve the community. One such effort is the fisheries management council on the Tamil Nadu- Puducherry coastline. Facilitated by the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies (SIFFS) and supported by the FAO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the plan is to promote sustainable fisheries management.
The SIFFS project aims to improve the existing village councils that once governed the fisheries commons, but decayed after the state took control of fisheries regulation. The council is now working to address the common concerns within the community.
—SUMANA NARAYANAN
News from IASC 2011
Dear All,
Sharing with all of you some articles that have come after the IASC 2011 conference for your reading. Hope you find the same interesting too..
Best,
Subrata Singh
Understanding The Concept Of Commons: A Shared Responsibility
By Marianne de Nazareth
04 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
How many of us who sit in the comfort of our homes typing or surfing the net on our computers in one of the bigger metropolises in the country, are aware of the ‘commons’. What ARE the commons was the question that came to my mind when I first heard about the IASC Conference held in Hyderabad in January 2011. What did the term commons actually mean to us the common man?
Listening in to several key note speakers and panel discussions during the IASC conference, realisation dawned that the commons are areas which include forests, water bodies and grazing lands which sustain the large rural community in our country. I heard erudite speakers like Elinor Ostrom the American political scientist who was awarded the nobel laureate for Economics in 2009 say in her keynote address that “ In forests across the world people who use the commons, monitor it better than government agencies. One can find a synergy between the local people and the great job of carbon sequestration by the forests. If they are made responsible to handle the rules governing the forest, it will work.” She felt Collective Action theory was at the core of social sciences and policy making. Collective Action Theory seeks to understand how groups of people are able to cooperate to overcome social dilemmas.
Several panel discussions focussed on certain areas in the country where traditional pastoral communities reared cattle, sheep and goats depending on the commons like forests, revenue lands, agricultural fallows and tanks and lakes for grazing and feeding their livestock. However when land is now becoming scarce with surging population figures our cities have begun to burgeon outwards into rural areas bringing with that, several new laws that are coming into force throwing out of balance old customs and practices which supported rural communities.Ghotge Nitya S and Pandharipande Kaustubh of Anthra shared their paper called ‘Unequal rights on Common lands’ from which I have been able to glean a lot for this piece about the commons.
“While owner ship of land is most often central to the agricultural debate many migratory and nomadic communities including migratory pastoralists do not necessarily subscribe to the concept of private ownership of land or the fact that the earths natural resources or nature can be owned. This being quite in contrast to the attempts in recent times to privatize our water ways and even the air we breathe. When these opposing values come face to face they lead to conflicts over use and abuse, rights and responsibilities and iniquities surface,” they state.
In their paper interestingly Ghotge and Pandharipande go back to Mughal times when the practice of the land tenure stystem which the British strenghtened by creating the Land Acquisition Act enabled them to transfer any land they desired to the British Crown. This was discontinued after independence, but the government has been unable to help these nomadic pastoralists who constitute 7% of the population, graze and manage their live stock on common land.
Interestingly the nomadic pastoralists provided agriculturists with animals and animal produce, which were used to plough the land and manure it as well. Non pastoral nomads whom we are more familiar with in our towns, “ provided salt , trinkets, medicinal plants , spices ,animal manure and even entertainment and sometimes cash. Most of these communities did not own private land , they migrated annually using resources otherwise considered waste or useless by others such as land unsuitable for agriculture , dry lands and fallows ,wet lands and swamps and dried up rivers beds,” explain Ghotge and Pandharipande.
As each decade passed new development plans and programmes were initiated by the government blurring the lines between revenue, forest and waste land. India’s population has grown alarmingly and with it, agriculture has expanded and encroached on what was considered common property thereby reducing open lands.
The paper went on to say that with the growth of so many more mouths to feed, the fallows which traditionally served as village commons to graze animals earlier, were turned into agricultural holdings and crops began to be grown on them, keeping the pastoralists out. Then new irrigation schemes came about and to feed a growing population, and the birth of the green revolution led to an enormous increase in agriculture.
That was not all - to contol droughts the government formulated the DPAP or the Drought Prone Area Programme which was initiated as a land and water conservation programme which evolved into the Watershed programmes. With this programme, bans were imposed on grazing on the fallows which for centuries were used as the village commons to graze animals.
With the water shed programmes coming into force,bans also were imposed besides on grazing , on the cutting of firewood and fodder as well. Thus, those communities who were land less and depended on the commons migrated out of these water shed areas. The government also began to green barren areas thus bringing village forest lands under social forestry programmes.This move cut out the pastoralist completely as the fast growing species, which were planted did not have any special value as fodder or firewood and grazers were kept out of these areas. Eucalyptus was the species widely planted which benefited the paper industry but destroyed the ground water table and native species of plants. To combat desertification in Rajasthan and Gujarat the forest department planted Prosopis juliflora or the babool which is a very thorny species which lifestock find hard to eat.
Over time, the wildlife protection act of 1972 and Project Tiger also further displaced these marginal communities, pushing them below the conservation efforts of biodiversity. Certain tribes who were hunters by tradition were forced out of the lands they found their sustenance from.This turned them into poachers making them ‘criminals’ in the eyes of the law. Instead their hands on awareness of biodiversity and wildlife in the forests could have been used profitably by the government to understand complex eco systems of the jungles.
However it is all not negative and there is a possibilty of both the government and the pastoralists working together as Sagari Ramdas explained in her talk , “Working for the common good’ at the IASC 2011. Her presentation focussed on the shepherds and other livestock rearers of the Rishi Valley Special Development Area in AP. The region had been notified by the government of Andhra Pradesh as the Rishi Valley Special Development Area (RVSDA) and was given to the Rishi Valley Education Centre to re-vegetate this drought prone and dry area in 2008. This order covered 33 hamlets in the area. These pastoralists according to Ramdas were harassed by the Forest Department to pay fines of Rs 2 lakhs to enter the Horsely Hills with no receipts given for the payment. Gopaligutta was identified as the alternate hillock where they could graze their animals but the access route was blocked by the RVEC and the sarpanch holdings. After discussions, in March 2010 a five foot acess route was given to the herders. Since June 2009, Anthra and organization that Ramdas works with in association with the RVEC have begun to work on a common property resource (CPR) management in the area to support the herders. Using the FRA 2006 (Forest Rights Act), Anthra has been able to confirm the pastoralists grazing rights in forests. Now along with NREGS support the hillock Darimindigutta is being protected and re -vegetated according to the shepherd’s community plan which includes local plant species.
So therefore, for ecological sustainibility of these grazing lands and the future of the communities that depend on them, Anthra suggests a more inclusive approach where the communities are included in the protection of the area for the future. Alienating the pastoralists has proved counter productive, so the government must look at age old grazing and watering practices to develop a shared and evolving strategy for the overall development of the commons which will lead to a win- win situation for both the commons and the environment.
(The writer attended the IASC2011 as a media fellow of the FES and is the former Assistant Editor of the Deccan Herald and teaches Journalism to Mass Media students in St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore)
Protect The Commons
17th January 2011 - Marianne de Nazareth, Countercurrents
The 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) 2011 held in the heritage city of Hyderabad from the 10-14th January 2011 was an eye opener with regard to the critical role that the commons such as forests, water bodies, and grazing lands play in sustaining the rural economy in any country in the world including India. The reason Andhra Pradesh was chosen as the venue was because the government is piloting a regional programme that will integrate the development and restoration of what is known as common lands in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Community Forest Management arrangements in AP are also path breaking in terms of scale, initiative and institutional design. In urban minds, common lands are treated as ‘waste lands’ but they are most often the only means of livelihood to the poor.
“Often commons face neglect or are unappreciated for discussions around them, and fall between the cracks in our reductionist approach to understanding natural resources. While in reality strikingly similar issues are faced by forests, water, pastures and other common regimes. To address a diversity of issues across resources and across disciplnes there are eleven panel series around seven sub-themes planned. Some of which are: The commons, Poverty and social exclusion; Globalisation, commercialisation and the commons,” said Jagdeesh Rao Puppala the Co-chair of the conference.
At the opening ceremony on 10 January at Shilparamam, the guest of honour was Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests and the Keynote address was made by Dr. Elinor Ostrom, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences (2009).
Minister Jairam Ramesh in his signature green jacket over a white kurta was the star of the evening saying that ministers have a hard job bridging the gap between the academic world and the real world. Academics measure anything they do slowly in years while he has to work in months, maybe days, to take decisions. When asked what is standing in the way of implementing the laws of the land when it comes to managing common pool resources, Ramesh explained that archaic laws in the country need to be re-examined. “The Indian Forest law came into force in 1927. We have not challenged that intellectual edifice and we should. Unless you have the local forest community given an economic stake in the forest to look after them at a local level you cannot be successful. At the moment forest dwellers are looked at like criminals.”The statement drew a round of applause from an audience with representatives from 69 different countries.
“All our laws to do with the environment are national, therefore if anyone asks me about pollution or forests or water, I say ask that particular state government. We need to have split responsibilities only then we can come to grips with problems.”The minister felt that the country needed to give recognition to those states that implement environment laws seriously so that they are lauded for their efforts. The biggest constraint he felt was in the mindset of the people implementing the laws. He felt if that changed, everything would change.
In her keynote address Dr. Ostrom, explained that “In forests across the world people who use it, monitor it better than government agencies. One can find a synergy between the local people and the great job of carbon sequestration by the forests. If they are made responsible to handle the rules governing the forest, it will work.” She felt Collective Action theory was at the core of social sciences and policy making. Collective Action Theory seeks to understand how groups of people are able to cooperate to overcome social dilemmas.
Ruth Meinzen-Dick, the President of the IASC and Herman Roza Chavez the new minister of the environment of El Salvadore delvered the key note addresses on the second day. Dick revealed this was her dream to come back to India where she grew up in Tamil Nadu and did her thesis on tank irrigation. But today she looks back in analysis of how not an individual, but a group like the IASC can make an impact made on governing the commons equitably.
“Today the commons has been given recognition only because of the work of Dr. Elinor Ostrom, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences (2009). It is because of her work and the Nobel prize that the commons are being recognised and laws are being enacted to save them.”In November 2010 there was a meeting in Berlin on the new commons which include urban digital and electronic and any other shared resource that is commons or a common pool resource. New areas of commons such as culture, health and global resources are also being explored. She felt the collective expertise that the association can mobilise from over 90 countries fuels policy debates of global significance. Whether the issue is intellectual property, network neutrality, global warming, land reform, legal empowerment of the poor, or reforming the international financial system, the association strongly believes that research and lessons from working in and with commons regimes are important in shaping governance systems that will benefit as many people as possible, simultaneously preserving resources at hand for future generations.
Then the newly appointed minister of the Environment and Natural Resources in El Salvadore, Herman Roza Chavez, in his address said, “I also have a strong sense of urgency at the problems affecting our planet and our developing world countries. I have newly been appointed and the expectations of change by my countrymen are very high. I also have to be careful and look at risk reduction rather than threaten the growth of our economy. Risk reduction is the only way forward and I try to use the knowledge community’s research in my work. El Salvadore is just a small country of 2 million hectares which is a perfect laboratory for Professor Ostrom, to consider!”
Quoting from Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: A Framework For Assessment (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Series) by Gretchen Daily, he said, and that all ecosystems provide critical eco services for human well being. In El Salvadore builders are given guidelines to minimise impacts and corporate responsibility goes beyond just green washing he said. In conclusion he requested fervently that Elinor Ostrom help him and El Salvadore make the right policy decisions which were paramount for the environment.
The third day of 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons began in Hyderabad with the key note speeches made by David Bollier and Bina Agarwal. David Bollier is a journalist, activist and consultant from the US.
According to Bollier there are two general types of commons. The finite and the infinite- the twin area of neo liberal economic policy says Bollier are scarce commons which are air, water and land which are treated as infinite. And limitless commons which are creative works, which are treated as scarce due to copyright and patent laws. Bollier talked of the commons as being the new political culture. Mankind has to look at a new narrative to reclaim what is free and unfettered and belonging to all. “The attitude towards the commons should be- this land is our land and let us fight to regain the commons. We have to build better public policy to build a better commons. The state and market look at how they can exploit the commons, and many common pool resources are being privatised. Some people talk about privatisation but enclosure is the right way to describe it,” he said.
Bollier revealed that he is going back into the history of the commons which is forgotten. “Without legislature it is hard for commoners to argue in court about the commons, so we want to regenerate a body of common laws and I am convinced that recognition of the history of the commons can help us understand the victims of enclosure and those who depend on the commons for subsistence,” he explained.
He ended his lecture with urging scholars and activists to support and strengthen each others work. “Let us step away from the fringes and open new conversations and build new alliances,” he urged the gathering.
Bina Agarwal the second speaker is the Director and Professor of Economics, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi. In her address she said, “Economists studying environmental collective action and green governance have paid little attention to gender. Research on gender and green governance in other disciplines has focused mainly on women's near absence from forestry institutions. In my newest book, Gender and Green governance, I ask if women's inclusion in forest governance, undeniably important for equity, also affect decisions on forest use and outcomes for conservation and subsistence,” she said.
Bina talked about her work and how it showed that if women were given more responsibility of looking after tracts in the forest those tracts would fare better than the others in a year. She revealed that women allow limited extraction,they would patrol forests with more vigilance and women’s knowledge of species and extraction without denuding a resource was all superior to men. By allowing some forest extraction it is beneficial to remove incendiary undergrowth which prevents forest fires and leads to a win- win situation she said. As a result, according to Bina, this leads to a positive outcome, with a thicker forest canopy, rather than a patchy one, which is more effective to control Green House Gas emissions.
The floor was then thrown open to questions and it led to a lively debate which included climate change and its effects on the commons.
The fourth and final day of 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons began with Ashish Khotari as the key note speaker. Khotari is the Founder member of Kalpavriksh, a 30 year environmental research and action group in India which is involved in people’s movements against destructive development projects including the Narmada dams.
“My first lesson about the commons was 25 years ago when I walked in the Himalayan foothills along with the Chipko movement, which was a resistance to the destruction of forests in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. That was my first lesson about how the common man can galvanise positive action to safeguard the commons.”
He went on to say that the commons are becoming increasingly uncommon and there is a continuous erosion of the commons due to various reasons. Khotari is concerned that the juggernaut of ‘development’ will erode them over the next few decades until we as humans dig in our heels and reassert our rights over the commons. There is no accurate answer as to when the revival may begin, but it a question we have to mull over and discuss he said. From 1985 to 2000 there has been a doubling of the forest area under community ownership and governance which is helping to bring back a lot of the bio-diversity that we have lost. It is the indigenous people who have now begun to save wetlands, mountain areas and forests by reasserting their spiritual connection with nature and their historical rights over decades. He reiterated that this was a more ‘grass roots’ democracy which is more effective than bureaucracy.
An increased voice in retaining control and regaining what was lost with colonial policies or government exclusion is an important global trend which has been strengthened by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the assembly in 2007. Movements to encourage reassertion of common rights are growing he said. Mongolia opened up pastoral rights to shepherds in 2007, Dalit women working toward reasserting rights on seed production critical to the poor and marginalised in India, El Salvador’s repatriation of 250 different varieties of potatoes in Peru, pastoralists in the Niger claiming a million hectares of land for pastoralism were some of the actual successful empirical examples he cited.
To conclude Khotari asked if there was hope for the commons? He stated that all the fake new market mechanisms like bio-fuels, geo-engineering and REDD could cause a lot of erosion of the commons and the eco labels put on them are not the real solution. Instead he urged people to look at decentralization and get the local communities embedded in managing the landscape. This would bring back a sense of responsibility to the human race, towards the planets resources, a radical ecological democracy where we value reciprocity and non- violence and go by the principles of equity and sharing.
The conference concluded on a more positive note since the Indian minister of environment showed a willingness and an enthusiasm to work towards a more inclusive commons in India. If handled right these commons could reduce poverty levels of the marginalised and the poor who depend on them for their livelihood and sustenance.
Global Commons Idea Navigates Public Private Split
14th January 2011 - Christopher D. Cook
America’s bitterly divided discourse about government and the public sector is all but absent here at the global commons conference in Hyderabad, India where criticisms of government seem driven more by an impulse to protect communities from state-corporate takings of common lands than by the urge to eliminate taxes and regulation.
The question of who can best preserve common resources — and defining what these ‘commons’ are — is a prevailing theme here, with widespread criticism heaped on governments in India and other ‘developing’ nations for prioritizing GDP and large-scale industrial growth over community-based economic survival.
In the Tamil Nadu province in India’s south, for instance, the Adivasi forest tribes have battled government agencies — often representing private industrial interests — for their survival in traditional forest harvesting areas. “The state forest department has systematically undermined traditional rights and uses,” explained Kunjam Pandu Dora, a forest tribes activist presenting at the conference.
Indian pastoralists and forest tribes have been summarily kicked out of new national parklands, and their traditional harvesting has become illegal, creating new pressures for tribes to enter the agrarian economy while spurring clashes with other pastoralists and farmers.
Such contested terrains and colliding interests are everywhere; how, for instance, does India supply power, technological and industrial development to its ever-rising middle-class (and even peasant communities) without radically scouring and imperiling its resources and increasing its carbon footprint?
“You have a middle class in India that’s as large as the population of the U.S. and they want electricity 24 hours a day. Gee, imagine that,” said outgoing IASC president Ruth Meinzen-Dick.
The commons concept is hard to pin down: it incorporates an intriguing (if sometimes confusing) blend of state, community, and market forces, and doesn’t eschew any of them. “There’s no one breakfast,” said Meinzen-Dick in her keynote speech, “but there are many elements of a good breakfast” for the movement to borrow from — a smorgasbord of ideas and practices that cross disciplines and ideologies.
In a speech at the IASC’s inaugural event, Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom critiqued the “dominant policy paradigm” of turning resources over to either government or private forces. In one study of 450 irrigation management cases, Ostrom reported, “Only 42 percent of the government irrigation systems were high-performing, even with fancy engineering.” Meanwhile, 75 percent of farmer-run irrigation projects created favorable results.
Ostrom, a key intellectual architect whose Nobel has helped elevate the commons movement profile, argues that the key is not public or private control, but community engagement, communication, trust, and sustained cooperation. “Panaceas are not to be recommended. We need to deal with complexity.”
In a flashy picturesque video following the inaugural speeches, the screen flashed these words in defining what the commons is not: “Not private. Not public. Not government. Not business. Not communist. Not yours. Not mine.” So the question becomes, whose is it? What are the commons, why are they important, how do we preserve them, and for whom?
“The question is how do you get collective action and how do you get it working with the state?” Meinzen-Dick said in an interview. It’s “not about shunting government aside. It’s not even always shunting market aside.”
Throughout the conference, I asked participants this: How can India, China, and other nations ‘develop’ U.S.-style, with ever-expanding growth and industrial production and consumption, without plunging the planet deeper into climatologic and social-economic chaos. And what role can the public sector play in preventing rather than encouraging this downward spiral?
India’s erudite and controversial Minister of Environment and Forests, Shri Jairam Ramesh, has endured “severe criticism and opposition” for blocking major hydro projects that would dam the upper Ganges River, and lamented that, in India, merely implementing the law creates big, splashy headlines and trouble. He told a rapt conference crowd, “It is time for India to accept that 9 percent economic growth has ecological consequences. There is a trade-off.”
Ramesh added, “The first thing standing in the way of implementing our laws is the development imperative.”
Yet in the same speech, Minister Ramesh cited an “army of regulators who have become part of the problem” getting in the way of sustainable, community-based development. He asked the crowd, “Do regulations require regulators?”
While Ramesh is considered somewhat of a hero for environmental and common lands protection, the minister said he also encountered “huge resistance by civil society groups” when he released a paper advocating market-based approaches to environmental management.
“Our laws are based on institutional monocultures,” Ramesh told the commons crowd. “We need to allow for different ways.” India is “enormously diverse” both economically and ecologically, “yet we still insist on the primacy of the state.”
In my sampling of numerous workshops and dozens of interviews, the commons conference appeared to emphasize more criticism of the public sector than the private. Several delegates I spoke with expressed frustration about this tilt. One attendee remarked, “I’m surprised we hear nothing about capitalism here, nothing about the larger underlying forces.” This sentiment was repeated several times in discussions with delegates.
“Too often we focus on getting the rules just right, but we don’t focus on the larger political environment and context,” said Ben Cousins, a land reform expert and activist in South Africa.
But the IASC conference marked significant progress on numerous fronts. With the appearance of environmental ministers from India and El Salvador, Ostrom’s Nobel Prize, and several instances of the commons movement gaining audiences with government leaders and key policymakers, it’s clear the commons movement has grown from a largely intellectual and academic station to playing a significant role influencing policy and practices on the ground.
Despite ongoing threats to common lands that are critical to both ecologies and communities, the commons movement is providing answers.
In Oaxaca Mexico, which suffered 50 percent deforestation between 1970-1990, community forest management efforts emphasizing control by forest village groups has proven “more effective than top-down schemes,” reported activist and scholar Leticia Merino, who says the approach has produced at least as much forest recovery as government-protected conservation areas.
Throughout the conference there has been a strong emphasis on human-nature relationships — moving away from the idea of nature as an idyll that must be segregated from human activity. Report after report suggested at least anecdotal evidence that when communities are engaged and entrusted with lands, rather than separated from them, both the people and the land benefit.
***
I ask Meinzen-Dick about the dilemma of ‘developing’ economies and expanding opportunities in the context of global climate change and the need to radically reduce emissions. “We cannot become frozen by that,” she says, “then it becomes an excuse not to do anything.”
Over a late dinner of daal, chicken masala, and potato curry, a woman from the Bangalore region of India tells me about her project, run through the Catholic church and funded by India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (whose program associates include the World Bank, OPEC, and rural agricultural credit programs), which she says is boosting incomes and opening new options for destitute peasants in 260 villages. It sounds genuinely remarkable and laudable — using a self-help model, training, and employment, the program provides small farming plots and helps people grow their own food and build income. “They are now buying televisions,” she says as a marker of progress.
On our way home from dinner, I ask a Ghanaian delegate about his country’s economy. He boasts proudly of 7 percent GDP growth, “one of the strongest in all of Africa.” I ask him which key sectors are driving the boom. Along with agriculture, he ticks off timber, mining, and an expanding oil industry as the chief engines of growth there. “Hopefully the oil is going to keep growing,” he says, though adding a moment later without much irony, “Sometimes oil can be a curse.”
***
(A group of us visited two area pastoral villages that are encountering land encroachment from large sugar cane plantations and power plants fueling Hyderabad’s ongoing growth. In an upcoming report, I’ll tell the tale of a fascinating and eye-opening trip to these villages, which feature the contrasts of cell phones and satellite dishes alongside chickens and oxen parading through dirt paths and pastoral villager tents made of cloth and plastic bags. The villagers are working with the Foundation for Ecological Security and other groups to find new markets for their wool and milk in order to survive.)
Christopher D. Cook is an award-winning journalist and writer who has written for Harper's, The Economist, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. He is author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. See more of his work at www.christopherdcook.com.
Sharing with all of you some articles that have come after the IASC 2011 conference for your reading. Hope you find the same interesting too..
Best,
Subrata Singh
Understanding The Concept Of Commons: A Shared Responsibility
By Marianne de Nazareth
04 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
How many of us who sit in the comfort of our homes typing or surfing the net on our computers in one of the bigger metropolises in the country, are aware of the ‘commons’. What ARE the commons was the question that came to my mind when I first heard about the IASC Conference held in Hyderabad in January 2011. What did the term commons actually mean to us the common man?
Listening in to several key note speakers and panel discussions during the IASC conference, realisation dawned that the commons are areas which include forests, water bodies and grazing lands which sustain the large rural community in our country. I heard erudite speakers like Elinor Ostrom the American political scientist who was awarded the nobel laureate for Economics in 2009 say in her keynote address that “ In forests across the world people who use the commons, monitor it better than government agencies. One can find a synergy between the local people and the great job of carbon sequestration by the forests. If they are made responsible to handle the rules governing the forest, it will work.” She felt Collective Action theory was at the core of social sciences and policy making. Collective Action Theory seeks to understand how groups of people are able to cooperate to overcome social dilemmas.
Several panel discussions focussed on certain areas in the country where traditional pastoral communities reared cattle, sheep and goats depending on the commons like forests, revenue lands, agricultural fallows and tanks and lakes for grazing and feeding their livestock. However when land is now becoming scarce with surging population figures our cities have begun to burgeon outwards into rural areas bringing with that, several new laws that are coming into force throwing out of balance old customs and practices which supported rural communities.Ghotge Nitya S and Pandharipande Kaustubh of Anthra shared their paper called ‘Unequal rights on Common lands’ from which I have been able to glean a lot for this piece about the commons.
“While owner ship of land is most often central to the agricultural debate many migratory and nomadic communities including migratory pastoralists do not necessarily subscribe to the concept of private ownership of land or the fact that the earths natural resources or nature can be owned. This being quite in contrast to the attempts in recent times to privatize our water ways and even the air we breathe. When these opposing values come face to face they lead to conflicts over use and abuse, rights and responsibilities and iniquities surface,” they state.
In their paper interestingly Ghotge and Pandharipande go back to Mughal times when the practice of the land tenure stystem which the British strenghtened by creating the Land Acquisition Act enabled them to transfer any land they desired to the British Crown. This was discontinued after independence, but the government has been unable to help these nomadic pastoralists who constitute 7% of the population, graze and manage their live stock on common land.
Interestingly the nomadic pastoralists provided agriculturists with animals and animal produce, which were used to plough the land and manure it as well. Non pastoral nomads whom we are more familiar with in our towns, “ provided salt , trinkets, medicinal plants , spices ,animal manure and even entertainment and sometimes cash. Most of these communities did not own private land , they migrated annually using resources otherwise considered waste or useless by others such as land unsuitable for agriculture , dry lands and fallows ,wet lands and swamps and dried up rivers beds,” explain Ghotge and Pandharipande.
As each decade passed new development plans and programmes were initiated by the government blurring the lines between revenue, forest and waste land. India’s population has grown alarmingly and with it, agriculture has expanded and encroached on what was considered common property thereby reducing open lands.
The paper went on to say that with the growth of so many more mouths to feed, the fallows which traditionally served as village commons to graze animals earlier, were turned into agricultural holdings and crops began to be grown on them, keeping the pastoralists out. Then new irrigation schemes came about and to feed a growing population, and the birth of the green revolution led to an enormous increase in agriculture.
That was not all - to contol droughts the government formulated the DPAP or the Drought Prone Area Programme which was initiated as a land and water conservation programme which evolved into the Watershed programmes. With this programme, bans were imposed on grazing on the fallows which for centuries were used as the village commons to graze animals.
With the water shed programmes coming into force,bans also were imposed besides on grazing , on the cutting of firewood and fodder as well. Thus, those communities who were land less and depended on the commons migrated out of these water shed areas. The government also began to green barren areas thus bringing village forest lands under social forestry programmes.This move cut out the pastoralist completely as the fast growing species, which were planted did not have any special value as fodder or firewood and grazers were kept out of these areas. Eucalyptus was the species widely planted which benefited the paper industry but destroyed the ground water table and native species of plants. To combat desertification in Rajasthan and Gujarat the forest department planted Prosopis juliflora or the babool which is a very thorny species which lifestock find hard to eat.
Over time, the wildlife protection act of 1972 and Project Tiger also further displaced these marginal communities, pushing them below the conservation efforts of biodiversity. Certain tribes who were hunters by tradition were forced out of the lands they found their sustenance from.This turned them into poachers making them ‘criminals’ in the eyes of the law. Instead their hands on awareness of biodiversity and wildlife in the forests could have been used profitably by the government to understand complex eco systems of the jungles.
However it is all not negative and there is a possibilty of both the government and the pastoralists working together as Sagari Ramdas explained in her talk , “Working for the common good’ at the IASC 2011. Her presentation focussed on the shepherds and other livestock rearers of the Rishi Valley Special Development Area in AP. The region had been notified by the government of Andhra Pradesh as the Rishi Valley Special Development Area (RVSDA) and was given to the Rishi Valley Education Centre to re-vegetate this drought prone and dry area in 2008. This order covered 33 hamlets in the area. These pastoralists according to Ramdas were harassed by the Forest Department to pay fines of Rs 2 lakhs to enter the Horsely Hills with no receipts given for the payment. Gopaligutta was identified as the alternate hillock where they could graze their animals but the access route was blocked by the RVEC and the sarpanch holdings. After discussions, in March 2010 a five foot acess route was given to the herders. Since June 2009, Anthra and organization that Ramdas works with in association with the RVEC have begun to work on a common property resource (CPR) management in the area to support the herders. Using the FRA 2006 (Forest Rights Act), Anthra has been able to confirm the pastoralists grazing rights in forests. Now along with NREGS support the hillock Darimindigutta is being protected and re -vegetated according to the shepherd’s community plan which includes local plant species.
So therefore, for ecological sustainibility of these grazing lands and the future of the communities that depend on them, Anthra suggests a more inclusive approach where the communities are included in the protection of the area for the future. Alienating the pastoralists has proved counter productive, so the government must look at age old grazing and watering practices to develop a shared and evolving strategy for the overall development of the commons which will lead to a win- win situation for both the commons and the environment.
(The writer attended the IASC2011 as a media fellow of the FES and is the former Assistant Editor of the Deccan Herald and teaches Journalism to Mass Media students in St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore)
Protect The Commons
17th January 2011 - Marianne de Nazareth, Countercurrents
The 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) 2011 held in the heritage city of Hyderabad from the 10-14th January 2011 was an eye opener with regard to the critical role that the commons such as forests, water bodies, and grazing lands play in sustaining the rural economy in any country in the world including India. The reason Andhra Pradesh was chosen as the venue was because the government is piloting a regional programme that will integrate the development and restoration of what is known as common lands in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Community Forest Management arrangements in AP are also path breaking in terms of scale, initiative and institutional design. In urban minds, common lands are treated as ‘waste lands’ but they are most often the only means of livelihood to the poor.
“Often commons face neglect or are unappreciated for discussions around them, and fall between the cracks in our reductionist approach to understanding natural resources. While in reality strikingly similar issues are faced by forests, water, pastures and other common regimes. To address a diversity of issues across resources and across disciplnes there are eleven panel series around seven sub-themes planned. Some of which are: The commons, Poverty and social exclusion; Globalisation, commercialisation and the commons,” said Jagdeesh Rao Puppala the Co-chair of the conference.
At the opening ceremony on 10 January at Shilparamam, the guest of honour was Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests and the Keynote address was made by Dr. Elinor Ostrom, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences (2009).
Minister Jairam Ramesh in his signature green jacket over a white kurta was the star of the evening saying that ministers have a hard job bridging the gap between the academic world and the real world. Academics measure anything they do slowly in years while he has to work in months, maybe days, to take decisions. When asked what is standing in the way of implementing the laws of the land when it comes to managing common pool resources, Ramesh explained that archaic laws in the country need to be re-examined. “The Indian Forest law came into force in 1927. We have not challenged that intellectual edifice and we should. Unless you have the local forest community given an economic stake in the forest to look after them at a local level you cannot be successful. At the moment forest dwellers are looked at like criminals.”The statement drew a round of applause from an audience with representatives from 69 different countries.
“All our laws to do with the environment are national, therefore if anyone asks me about pollution or forests or water, I say ask that particular state government. We need to have split responsibilities only then we can come to grips with problems.”The minister felt that the country needed to give recognition to those states that implement environment laws seriously so that they are lauded for their efforts. The biggest constraint he felt was in the mindset of the people implementing the laws. He felt if that changed, everything would change.
In her keynote address Dr. Ostrom, explained that “In forests across the world people who use it, monitor it better than government agencies. One can find a synergy between the local people and the great job of carbon sequestration by the forests. If they are made responsible to handle the rules governing the forest, it will work.” She felt Collective Action theory was at the core of social sciences and policy making. Collective Action Theory seeks to understand how groups of people are able to cooperate to overcome social dilemmas.
Ruth Meinzen-Dick, the President of the IASC and Herman Roza Chavez the new minister of the environment of El Salvadore delvered the key note addresses on the second day. Dick revealed this was her dream to come back to India where she grew up in Tamil Nadu and did her thesis on tank irrigation. But today she looks back in analysis of how not an individual, but a group like the IASC can make an impact made on governing the commons equitably.
“Today the commons has been given recognition only because of the work of Dr. Elinor Ostrom, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences (2009). It is because of her work and the Nobel prize that the commons are being recognised and laws are being enacted to save them.”In November 2010 there was a meeting in Berlin on the new commons which include urban digital and electronic and any other shared resource that is commons or a common pool resource. New areas of commons such as culture, health and global resources are also being explored. She felt the collective expertise that the association can mobilise from over 90 countries fuels policy debates of global significance. Whether the issue is intellectual property, network neutrality, global warming, land reform, legal empowerment of the poor, or reforming the international financial system, the association strongly believes that research and lessons from working in and with commons regimes are important in shaping governance systems that will benefit as many people as possible, simultaneously preserving resources at hand for future generations.
Then the newly appointed minister of the Environment and Natural Resources in El Salvadore, Herman Roza Chavez, in his address said, “I also have a strong sense of urgency at the problems affecting our planet and our developing world countries. I have newly been appointed and the expectations of change by my countrymen are very high. I also have to be careful and look at risk reduction rather than threaten the growth of our economy. Risk reduction is the only way forward and I try to use the knowledge community’s research in my work. El Salvadore is just a small country of 2 million hectares which is a perfect laboratory for Professor Ostrom, to consider!”
Quoting from Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: A Framework For Assessment (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Series) by Gretchen Daily, he said, and that all ecosystems provide critical eco services for human well being. In El Salvadore builders are given guidelines to minimise impacts and corporate responsibility goes beyond just green washing he said. In conclusion he requested fervently that Elinor Ostrom help him and El Salvadore make the right policy decisions which were paramount for the environment.
The third day of 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons began in Hyderabad with the key note speeches made by David Bollier and Bina Agarwal. David Bollier is a journalist, activist and consultant from the US.
According to Bollier there are two general types of commons. The finite and the infinite- the twin area of neo liberal economic policy says Bollier are scarce commons which are air, water and land which are treated as infinite. And limitless commons which are creative works, which are treated as scarce due to copyright and patent laws. Bollier talked of the commons as being the new political culture. Mankind has to look at a new narrative to reclaim what is free and unfettered and belonging to all. “The attitude towards the commons should be- this land is our land and let us fight to regain the commons. We have to build better public policy to build a better commons. The state and market look at how they can exploit the commons, and many common pool resources are being privatised. Some people talk about privatisation but enclosure is the right way to describe it,” he said.
Bollier revealed that he is going back into the history of the commons which is forgotten. “Without legislature it is hard for commoners to argue in court about the commons, so we want to regenerate a body of common laws and I am convinced that recognition of the history of the commons can help us understand the victims of enclosure and those who depend on the commons for subsistence,” he explained.
He ended his lecture with urging scholars and activists to support and strengthen each others work. “Let us step away from the fringes and open new conversations and build new alliances,” he urged the gathering.
Bina Agarwal the second speaker is the Director and Professor of Economics, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi. In her address she said, “Economists studying environmental collective action and green governance have paid little attention to gender. Research on gender and green governance in other disciplines has focused mainly on women's near absence from forestry institutions. In my newest book, Gender and Green governance, I ask if women's inclusion in forest governance, undeniably important for equity, also affect decisions on forest use and outcomes for conservation and subsistence,” she said.
Bina talked about her work and how it showed that if women were given more responsibility of looking after tracts in the forest those tracts would fare better than the others in a year. She revealed that women allow limited extraction,they would patrol forests with more vigilance and women’s knowledge of species and extraction without denuding a resource was all superior to men. By allowing some forest extraction it is beneficial to remove incendiary undergrowth which prevents forest fires and leads to a win- win situation she said. As a result, according to Bina, this leads to a positive outcome, with a thicker forest canopy, rather than a patchy one, which is more effective to control Green House Gas emissions.
The floor was then thrown open to questions and it led to a lively debate which included climate change and its effects on the commons.
The fourth and final day of 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons began with Ashish Khotari as the key note speaker. Khotari is the Founder member of Kalpavriksh, a 30 year environmental research and action group in India which is involved in people’s movements against destructive development projects including the Narmada dams.
“My first lesson about the commons was 25 years ago when I walked in the Himalayan foothills along with the Chipko movement, which was a resistance to the destruction of forests in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. That was my first lesson about how the common man can galvanise positive action to safeguard the commons.”
He went on to say that the commons are becoming increasingly uncommon and there is a continuous erosion of the commons due to various reasons. Khotari is concerned that the juggernaut of ‘development’ will erode them over the next few decades until we as humans dig in our heels and reassert our rights over the commons. There is no accurate answer as to when the revival may begin, but it a question we have to mull over and discuss he said. From 1985 to 2000 there has been a doubling of the forest area under community ownership and governance which is helping to bring back a lot of the bio-diversity that we have lost. It is the indigenous people who have now begun to save wetlands, mountain areas and forests by reasserting their spiritual connection with nature and their historical rights over decades. He reiterated that this was a more ‘grass roots’ democracy which is more effective than bureaucracy.
An increased voice in retaining control and regaining what was lost with colonial policies or government exclusion is an important global trend which has been strengthened by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the assembly in 2007. Movements to encourage reassertion of common rights are growing he said. Mongolia opened up pastoral rights to shepherds in 2007, Dalit women working toward reasserting rights on seed production critical to the poor and marginalised in India, El Salvador’s repatriation of 250 different varieties of potatoes in Peru, pastoralists in the Niger claiming a million hectares of land for pastoralism were some of the actual successful empirical examples he cited.
To conclude Khotari asked if there was hope for the commons? He stated that all the fake new market mechanisms like bio-fuels, geo-engineering and REDD could cause a lot of erosion of the commons and the eco labels put on them are not the real solution. Instead he urged people to look at decentralization and get the local communities embedded in managing the landscape. This would bring back a sense of responsibility to the human race, towards the planets resources, a radical ecological democracy where we value reciprocity and non- violence and go by the principles of equity and sharing.
The conference concluded on a more positive note since the Indian minister of environment showed a willingness and an enthusiasm to work towards a more inclusive commons in India. If handled right these commons could reduce poverty levels of the marginalised and the poor who depend on them for their livelihood and sustenance.
Global Commons Idea Navigates Public Private Split
14th January 2011 - Christopher D. Cook
America’s bitterly divided discourse about government and the public sector is all but absent here at the global commons conference in Hyderabad, India where criticisms of government seem driven more by an impulse to protect communities from state-corporate takings of common lands than by the urge to eliminate taxes and regulation.
The question of who can best preserve common resources — and defining what these ‘commons’ are — is a prevailing theme here, with widespread criticism heaped on governments in India and other ‘developing’ nations for prioritizing GDP and large-scale industrial growth over community-based economic survival.
In the Tamil Nadu province in India’s south, for instance, the Adivasi forest tribes have battled government agencies — often representing private industrial interests — for their survival in traditional forest harvesting areas. “The state forest department has systematically undermined traditional rights and uses,” explained Kunjam Pandu Dora, a forest tribes activist presenting at the conference.
Indian pastoralists and forest tribes have been summarily kicked out of new national parklands, and their traditional harvesting has become illegal, creating new pressures for tribes to enter the agrarian economy while spurring clashes with other pastoralists and farmers.
Such contested terrains and colliding interests are everywhere; how, for instance, does India supply power, technological and industrial development to its ever-rising middle-class (and even peasant communities) without radically scouring and imperiling its resources and increasing its carbon footprint?
“You have a middle class in India that’s as large as the population of the U.S. and they want electricity 24 hours a day. Gee, imagine that,” said outgoing IASC president Ruth Meinzen-Dick.
The commons concept is hard to pin down: it incorporates an intriguing (if sometimes confusing) blend of state, community, and market forces, and doesn’t eschew any of them. “There’s no one breakfast,” said Meinzen-Dick in her keynote speech, “but there are many elements of a good breakfast” for the movement to borrow from — a smorgasbord of ideas and practices that cross disciplines and ideologies.
In a speech at the IASC’s inaugural event, Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom critiqued the “dominant policy paradigm” of turning resources over to either government or private forces. In one study of 450 irrigation management cases, Ostrom reported, “Only 42 percent of the government irrigation systems were high-performing, even with fancy engineering.” Meanwhile, 75 percent of farmer-run irrigation projects created favorable results.
Ostrom, a key intellectual architect whose Nobel has helped elevate the commons movement profile, argues that the key is not public or private control, but community engagement, communication, trust, and sustained cooperation. “Panaceas are not to be recommended. We need to deal with complexity.”
In a flashy picturesque video following the inaugural speeches, the screen flashed these words in defining what the commons is not: “Not private. Not public. Not government. Not business. Not communist. Not yours. Not mine.” So the question becomes, whose is it? What are the commons, why are they important, how do we preserve them, and for whom?
“The question is how do you get collective action and how do you get it working with the state?” Meinzen-Dick said in an interview. It’s “not about shunting government aside. It’s not even always shunting market aside.”
Throughout the conference, I asked participants this: How can India, China, and other nations ‘develop’ U.S.-style, with ever-expanding growth and industrial production and consumption, without plunging the planet deeper into climatologic and social-economic chaos. And what role can the public sector play in preventing rather than encouraging this downward spiral?
India’s erudite and controversial Minister of Environment and Forests, Shri Jairam Ramesh, has endured “severe criticism and opposition” for blocking major hydro projects that would dam the upper Ganges River, and lamented that, in India, merely implementing the law creates big, splashy headlines and trouble. He told a rapt conference crowd, “It is time for India to accept that 9 percent economic growth has ecological consequences. There is a trade-off.”
Ramesh added, “The first thing standing in the way of implementing our laws is the development imperative.”
Yet in the same speech, Minister Ramesh cited an “army of regulators who have become part of the problem” getting in the way of sustainable, community-based development. He asked the crowd, “Do regulations require regulators?”
While Ramesh is considered somewhat of a hero for environmental and common lands protection, the minister said he also encountered “huge resistance by civil society groups” when he released a paper advocating market-based approaches to environmental management.
“Our laws are based on institutional monocultures,” Ramesh told the commons crowd. “We need to allow for different ways.” India is “enormously diverse” both economically and ecologically, “yet we still insist on the primacy of the state.”
In my sampling of numerous workshops and dozens of interviews, the commons conference appeared to emphasize more criticism of the public sector than the private. Several delegates I spoke with expressed frustration about this tilt. One attendee remarked, “I’m surprised we hear nothing about capitalism here, nothing about the larger underlying forces.” This sentiment was repeated several times in discussions with delegates.
“Too often we focus on getting the rules just right, but we don’t focus on the larger political environment and context,” said Ben Cousins, a land reform expert and activist in South Africa.
But the IASC conference marked significant progress on numerous fronts. With the appearance of environmental ministers from India and El Salvador, Ostrom’s Nobel Prize, and several instances of the commons movement gaining audiences with government leaders and key policymakers, it’s clear the commons movement has grown from a largely intellectual and academic station to playing a significant role influencing policy and practices on the ground.
Despite ongoing threats to common lands that are critical to both ecologies and communities, the commons movement is providing answers.
In Oaxaca Mexico, which suffered 50 percent deforestation between 1970-1990, community forest management efforts emphasizing control by forest village groups has proven “more effective than top-down schemes,” reported activist and scholar Leticia Merino, who says the approach has produced at least as much forest recovery as government-protected conservation areas.
Throughout the conference there has been a strong emphasis on human-nature relationships — moving away from the idea of nature as an idyll that must be segregated from human activity. Report after report suggested at least anecdotal evidence that when communities are engaged and entrusted with lands, rather than separated from them, both the people and the land benefit.
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I ask Meinzen-Dick about the dilemma of ‘developing’ economies and expanding opportunities in the context of global climate change and the need to radically reduce emissions. “We cannot become frozen by that,” she says, “then it becomes an excuse not to do anything.”
Over a late dinner of daal, chicken masala, and potato curry, a woman from the Bangalore region of India tells me about her project, run through the Catholic church and funded by India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (whose program associates include the World Bank, OPEC, and rural agricultural credit programs), which she says is boosting incomes and opening new options for destitute peasants in 260 villages. It sounds genuinely remarkable and laudable — using a self-help model, training, and employment, the program provides small farming plots and helps people grow their own food and build income. “They are now buying televisions,” she says as a marker of progress.
On our way home from dinner, I ask a Ghanaian delegate about his country’s economy. He boasts proudly of 7 percent GDP growth, “one of the strongest in all of Africa.” I ask him which key sectors are driving the boom. Along with agriculture, he ticks off timber, mining, and an expanding oil industry as the chief engines of growth there. “Hopefully the oil is going to keep growing,” he says, though adding a moment later without much irony, “Sometimes oil can be a curse.”
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(A group of us visited two area pastoral villages that are encountering land encroachment from large sugar cane plantations and power plants fueling Hyderabad’s ongoing growth. In an upcoming report, I’ll tell the tale of a fascinating and eye-opening trip to these villages, which feature the contrasts of cell phones and satellite dishes alongside chickens and oxen parading through dirt paths and pastoral villager tents made of cloth and plastic bags. The villagers are working with the Foundation for Ecological Security and other groups to find new markets for their wool and milk in order to survive.)
Christopher D. Cook is an award-winning journalist and writer who has written for Harper's, The Economist, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. He is author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. See more of his work at www.christopherdcook.com.
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