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Thursday 9 July, 10.30 – 12.00
Chair: Malovika Pawar (Utrecht University – International Development Studies/ Indian Administrative Service)
Part I: Governing the commons
Changing land use, -tenure, interdependency and resilience: The uncertain fate of grazing lands in farming systems in Mali and Burkina Faso
Joost Nelen, Nata Traoré and Amadi Coulibaly (SNV Mali)
Abstract: In the past decades livestock and grazing lands have become a fundament of farming systems in the cotton-grain belts of South-Mali and West-Burkina. After the big droughts pastoralists have settled down in considerable numbers. They have integrated local societies but most families remain secondary-rights holders in access to land and natural resources. Agro-pastoralists established mutual trust with hosting communities. Reciprocal service delivery existed. The trust relations helped in resolving conflicts.
These relations have changed. Partly this is due to internal dynamics: all families have developed mixed production systems. The mutual dependency has been reduced, and therefore the need for strong social bonds. Due to population pressure and economic development, land that was ‘taken-for-granted’ and easily shared, now emerges as an outcome of deliberate claims and is object of conflicts. Agriculture encroaches upon rangelands. Farming moved in the last decades from a situation in which the place of land and water access for production was self-evident, although often contested, object of conflicts, towards a situation in which it has become a central issue again as natural capital.
The paper is a state of affairs by LANDac and SNV of 10 years of study and interventions in 20 Districts in the Mal-Burkina border area.
The interventions have been designed to respond to aforementioned change, but they need improvement. Farm-level interventions are generic and have to be fine-tuned to production systems that are neither purely pastoral nor -agricultural. As for agro-pastoralists: interventions need to understand how their herds use resources that are spread over different territories. Local governments have appropriate land management mandates, but quality of consultation processes is not guaranteed at the district intervention level: representation is a risk and the social mutations ask for better checks and balances.
Protecting the commons: A case study from Rajasthan, India
Malovika Pawar (Utrecht University – International Development Studies/ Indian Administrative Service)
Rajasthan is the largest state in India with an area of 34 million hectares, two-thirds of which falls in the arid zone. Forests occupy 8% and permanent pastures only 4.9% of the total area. Common property resources (CPRs) in the state include permanent pastures, grazing grounds, village forests and woodlots, watershed drainage, ponds and tanks, irrigation channels, and common threshing grounds meant for the common use of the villagers.
In pre-British India, the CPRs were under the control of the local communities. With the arrival of state control, community management systems greatly declined. Post-Independence (1947),the decline has been due to land reforms which led to privatization of common lands for agriculture, allotment of unoccupied land to landless/poor farmers, population growth, and the dismantling of the traditional feudal arrangements that protected the use of the commons.
Over the past few decades, the commons have been appropriated by the state for public infrastructure but also for private industry, mining, tourism, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), private hospitals and universities, solar and wind energy projects etc. Large areas of cultivable pasturelands have also been illegally encroached upon. In Rajasthan alone, the recorded pasture lands have declined by .2 million hectares over 20 years.
In 2011 the Supreme Court of India passed an order in a landmark case, Jagpal Singh versus the State of Panjab and others, in which it declared that the enclosure of a village pond in Panjab by real estate developers was a totally illegal occupation of the commons. The court also ordered that similar enclosures all over the country must be reversed. Rajasthan complied by passing an order completely prohibiting allotment or diversion of pasturelands or catchment lands or water bodies, for any private /commercial purpose.
This bold and sweeping decision has had far-reaching consequences for the present status of the commons in India. Across the country, 29 court orders and 29 follow-up government orders have been passed in 2012 itself, in compliance of the apex court order. It is to be seen, however, what the future holds for the commons, given the insatiable hunger for land for private and commercial purposes.
Part II: Forest Governance
Tenure and forest governance: experiences of Tropenbos International
Rene Boot1 and Herman Savenije1 (1Tropenbos International)
Improving forest governance and secured and clarified rights to forest lands and trees are important prerequisites for promoting sustainable forest management and reducing deforestation and forest degradation. Forest governance refers to the policy, legal, regulatory and institutional framework dealing with forests, and to the processes that shape decisions about forests and the way these are implemented. The practice of governance is based on fundamental democratic principles, such as participation, fairness, accountability, legitimacy, transparency, efficiency, equity and sustainability.
The need to improve forest governance and tenure is widely acknowledged, but difficult to achieve due to divergent interests and mind-sets and unequal power relations.
In this presentation key issues on forest governance and tenure across the countries (Ghana, DRC, Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam) where Tropenbos International is working, are discussed. Some lessons to move forward in making forest governance work on the ground are presented.
Developing policies and legal frameworks to incentivize forest protection
Ashley Toombs1, Jennifer Blaha1, Adrian Ang1, Anindita Chakraborty1, Fahima Islam1, Valentina Lagos1, Mina Lee1, Maryka Paquette1, Xiaoyu Qin1 and Carolina Rosero1 (1School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia University, New York – in partnership with the World Resources Institute)
Abstract: In the wake of the Kyoto Protocol and global climate talks, incentives programs have launched worldwide to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation and protect the vital ecosystem services that forests naturally proved. However weak forest governance and insufficient incentives for forest protection drive negative outcomes beyond climate change, including biodiversity loss and the marginalization of forest-dependent communities. The report ‘Developing policies and legal frameworks to incentivize forest protection’ analyses the design and implementation of incentive programs in a number of case studies to determine the key policy mechanisms, governance dimensions, and land tenure regulations that either enable forest conservation, restoration, or other conservation-related objectives. The results provide a framework of systematic criteria that may be used to influence forest and land policies from local to global scales.
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