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SD Conferences
Missing Links in Sustainable Development: South Asian Perspectives
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AbstractsSub-theme: Environment Panel 2: Forest degradation, resource rights and livelihoods: The institutional context
Poverty, Private Property, and Collective Action in Common Pool Resource Management: The Case of Irrigation Tanks in South India Poverty, low agricultural production, and natural resource degradation are severe interrelated problems in the less-developed areas of the tropics. In India, environmental degradation has manifested itself in the rapid rate of natural capital depletion as exemplified by forest degradation and soil erosion. To this, one can add the problem of the degradation of common property water resources–both surface and underground. Since common property water resources play a vital role in providing income and employment to rural people in many different ways, the degradation of these resources has a direct negative impact on the livelihoods of the poor. One of the most important common property resources in the relatively resource poor regions of South India is irrigation tanks. Until recently, irrigation tanks accounted for more than one third of the area irrigated in the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The tanks are ancient, and serve the needs of the poor. Unfortunately, tank irrigation has been in a process of rapid decline over the last several decades. Much of this decline can be attributed to macro-economic changes and institutional failures. Traditional communitarian institutions have come under tremendous pressures because of state and market interventions, person-oriented political patronage, and political encouragement for encroachment However, the complex nexus among poverty, private coping mechanisms and collective action in tank management has not been systematically addressed by researchers. This paper is a modest attempt to bridge this gap in tank irrigation literature by analyzing the factors responsible for tank degradation at macro level, and to more systematically address the issue of the factors affecting collective action for tank management at the micro level. We also address the issue of the relationship between exit options and collective action. This paper is based on the econometric analysis of secondary, time-series data as well as an exclusive survey of tank irrigated areas in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. * Dr. R. Balasubramanian is professor of Agricultural Economics at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India. Assessing the Poverty-Environment Nexus: Evidence from Swat, Pakistan Forest mismanagement has contributed to alarming degradation of the natural resource base, especially primary forests in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Northern Areas of Pakistan. In addition to the conventional environmental services these forests -- perhaps more crucially -- provide livelihoods for local communities. Deforestation continues to occur even though institutions were set up to protect the forests; therefore institutional failures are evident. The analysis begins by examining the paradigm that poor forest-dependent communities, being vulnerable, are forced to degrade the resource base they depend upon. In this context, we quantify resource dependence in the Mata and Swat-Kohistan valleys. The statistical tabulations show that resource dependence, increases for the four defined income quartiles as one moves into the higher eco-zones. Resource dependence also, counter-intuitively, varies inversely across income quartiles. The econometric analysis confirms that eco-zones rather than poverty or relative poverty levels are consistently the best estimator of resource dependence, and by several factors compared to the other variables. The income estimator is positive but small and insignificant. The statistical analysis, thus, points to other causes for resource degradation. An historical analysis, supplemented with visual imagery, highlights the central role of resource rights in forest conservation. Specifically, over time, the disjuncture between de jure and de facto resource rights has contributed to the extensive deforestation. It underscores the need to define these rights clearly, to institute community management systems and to formalize these rights and systems within a statutory law framework. * Dr. Shaheen Rafi Khan is a Research Fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the Columbia University, USA. Conceptualising Sustainable Farm-livelihood Systems in the Era of Globalisation: A Study of Rubber Integrated Farm Livelihood Systems in North East India The effectiveness of shifting cultivation in achieving sustainable livelihoods in the mountainous terrains in general and tribal societies in particular still continue to be a major source of debate among researchers and policy makers with mutually contrasting and balanced views. However, there are growing evidences demonstrating the agrarian transition taking place even in the traditional shifting cultivation societies in terms of emergence of dynamic land use systems in the context of globalisation. The evolution of new farming systems are considered as responses and coping mechanisms towards the nascent free trade regime, wherein, the traditional farm-livelihood systems have not been able to cope with the drastic changes taking place; hence they have become less resilient, less efficient and economically unsustainable as per se. It is with this macro perspective of the emerging dynamic farming systems throughout the mountainous regions of the world, that the paper is set out to examine the rationale, scope and the need for conceptualising sustainable cash crop based dynamic farm-livelihood systems in the shifting agriculture dominant tribal societies in the North Eastern region (NER) in India. In particular, the paper develops indicators for assessment of sustainable livelihoods of rubber smallholders based on the livelihood asset pentagon comprising the five livelihood capital assets, viz., natural capital, physical capital, human capital, financial capital and social capital. The paper is based on empirical data collected from about 300 rubber small growers in the three NE states of Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura in India. While examining the current scenario of expansion of smallholder rubber cultivation in the region followed by a comparative assessment of the rubber versus co-existing farm-livelihood systems, the paper also dwells upon the institutional contexts within which the sustainable rubber integrated farm livelihood systems can be scaled up in the NE region facilitating empowerment and capacity building for collective action and mobilisation of social capital among the tribal communities in the region. The fact that India’s NER is strategically located in close proximity to the S& SE Asian countries, like Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Tibetan Region of China, also underscores the economic rationale and need for evolving sustainable rubber based farm livelihood systems for the region, which in turn, would act as a source of dynamism for growth in the tribal economies as also for carrying forward the process of economic integration of the NE region with the dynamic S& SE Asia. * P.K. Viswanathan is Post Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University, Thailand. His areas of interest include institutional aspects of development and management of natural resources, farming systems and the political economy of plantation agriculture. ** Ganesh P. Shivakoti is Associate Professor of Agricultural and Natural Resources Economics at the School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. His areas of interest include agricultural and natural resources economics, farming systems adjustment and governance of common property resources. Situating Law: Adivasi Rights and the Political Economy of Environment and Development in India Law in India has been an important instrument through which the state has ostensibly articulated its social welfare concerns related to adivasis (tribals). The draft Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill 2005 that is currently awaiting the approval of Parliament is the latest attempt to recognize adivasi ‘customary’ claims to land. And like many times before the vagaries of law are becoming more than apparent with attempts to dilute the content of the Bill and hence delay it. Although genuine concerns do exist about the impact of the Bill on the ‘environment’, similar opposition in the corridors of power is rarely witnessed when large-scale development projects destroy the environment. This paper attempts to examine the complex manner in which adivasi rights to land are marginalized (and diluted) to a great extent, both before and after the actual legal recognition of these rights, due to the privileging of both ‘development’ and ‘environment’ concerns. First, it suggests that the limits to rights must be situated in the history of colonialism and processes of territorialization of the colonial state, a process that has continued in the post-colonial period. Second, it highlights the manner in which adivasi rights are intertwined and shaped in different ways at different times by concerns of development and environment, but invariably play second fiddle to them in practice. Third, it examines the Scheduled Tribes Bill with a view to assessing the specific content of the Bill, the logic of its arguments and its potential in the context of the wider political economy of development, highlighting both its contentious dimensions and the structural constraints in which it is located. * Dr. Ajit Menon is presently a fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore, India. He would soon be joining the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India, as an Associate Professor. Ensuring “Collective Action” in “Participatory” Forest Management Control of the forest resource in India has seen a transition from communal ownership in the pre-British era to State ownership in the British period. The government of free India followed similar policies and principles. With these policies it has not been able to increase the total area under forests. Severe protests compelled the Government to adopt a more accommodative approach, which got reflected in the forest policy of 1988. However, community-initiated and NGO-promoted “collective action”-based resource management had emerged sporadically throughout the country much before this. This paper is based on three case studies, each belonging to one of the three types of institutional structures: Self-initiated, NGO-promoted, and government-sponsored JFM. The basic objectives of all three institutional structures have been strengthening ecological security and meeting the subsistence biomass needs of the local people. Yet, they are different, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Thus, this paper suggests several important points. First, lack of well-defined property rights of communally managed forest for the people who managed them may adversely affect the long tem sustainability of local institutions. Second, given the caste hierarchy in the Indian villages, State or other external agency may have to intervene to ensure fair distribution of community forestry benefits. Third, inter-community cooperation, in addition institutions within the village, is necessary in order to make sure the conservation and sustainable utilization of forest resources. Finally, the paper argues that rather than oscillating between a simplistic either/or model of ‘state’ or ‘village community’, there is a need to conceive of more complex arrangements in which forest areas are protected for multiple objectives, under the joint management of multiple institutions. * Dr. Rucha Ghate is associated with SHODH: The Institute for Research and Development, Nagpur, India.
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