Sub-theme 1. Our common SDGs?
Panel 1.6.
Role of informal property rights and community relations in sustaining global food, land, and ecosystem commons
Restoring and sustaining global food and land use commons is key to several sustainable development goals such as SDG 2, 6, 7, 12, 13 and 15. The Global Commons Stewardship Framework [Ishi et al. 2022] cautions that unless we transform our economic and social systems to safeguard the commons, we will cross the threshold of irreversible tipping points. This discourse routinely assumes formal institutional mechanisms can address the emerging challenges, even when the bulk of food, land and ecosystem commons is owned and managed by smallholders and local community systems [Gnych et al. 2020]. The prevailing property regimes are largely informal and rules-in-use determined by land-people relations. Yet, the policymakers and think tanks are predisposed to believe that formalization and regularization is the way to reduce perverse incentives for overexploitation and herald such interventions as the key to achieving sustainability. This fixation with institutional form is being increasingly challenged by scholars who emphasize functionality of institutions and show that credibility of an institution is not dependent on how formal it is, or on individual acceptance but on the aggregate perceptions about a common agreement (Sjaastad and Cousins, 2009; Ho, 2014; Goyal at al. 2022). In this panel, we invite papers that examine a variety of issues related to informal property rights relevant to restoration and management of food, land and ecosystem commons and push the frontiers of understanding their functions, credibility, persistence and necessary transformations – through cases and empirical arguments that explore grounded narratives and/or conceptual frameworks.
Restoring and sustaining global food and land use commons is key to several sustainable development goals such as SDG 2, 6, 7, 12, 13 and 15. The Global Commons Stewardship Framework [Ishi et al. 2022] cautions that unless we transform our economic and social systems to safeguard the commons, we will cross the threshold of irreversible tipping points. This discourse routinely assumes formal institutional mechanisms can address the emerging challenges, even when the bulk of food, land and ecosystem commons is owned and managed by smallholders and local community systems [Gnych et al. 2020]. The prevailing property regimes are largely informal and rules-in-use determined by land-people relations. Yet, the policymakers and think tanks are predisposed to believe that formalization and regularization is the way to reduce perverse incentives for overexploitation and herald such interventions as the key to achieving sustainability. This fixation with institutional form is being increasingly challenged by scholars who emphasize functionality of institutions and show that credibility of an institution is not dependent on how formal it is, or on individual acceptance but on the aggregate perceptions about a common agreement (Sjaastad and Cousins, 2009; Ho, 2014; Goyal at al. 2022). In this panel, we invite papers that examine a variety of issues related to informal property rights relevant to restoration and management of food, land and ecosystem commons and push the frontiers of understanding their functions, credibility, persistence and necessary transformations – through cases and empirical arguments that explore grounded narratives and/or conceptual frameworks.
Accepted Papers
1. “It Felt Public:” Formalized Forestland Access and the Eroding of a Recreational Commons
University of Wisconsin Platteville, USA
Forestland conservation in the Northeastern United States occurs through institutional negotiations between entities which control large parcels of land, including state agencies, environmental NGOs, and industrial timberland owners. This approach relies on buying land, carbon credits, and conservation easements, often with the shared goal of protecting forests from development while maintaining the tourism and industrial forest economies. Amidst this formal governance, a tradition of public access to private land has meant that settler populations have viewed the forest as a “recreational commons” (Acheson and Acheson 2010) for hunting, foraging, hiking, and otherwise recreating in the forest. The commons is largely governed by an informal property regime dependent on institutional landowners’ interest in maintaining good public relations. But with expanding residential development and a growing outdoor recreation economy, private landowners are increasingly restricting public access to their land. Drawing from participant observation and interviews with recreationists and agency representatives, this paper documents how institutions are recentering the rights of the private property owner to exclude, threatening the informal property rights of the commons. To promote conservation and keep industrial timberland owners happy, state agencies encourage land users to seek written permission before accessing private land, increasingly charge fees for use, and promote guided or trailed forestland access. These institutional mechanisms, which are meant to preserve public access to private land, are instead slowly eroding the recreational commons and instituting a regulated, formalized, and inequitable approach to forestland access.
2. Improving water access as climate change adaptation in the pastoral commons: interrogating community, gender and care relations underlying water rights in southern Kenya
Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway / International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya
In the Kenyan arid and semi-arid pastoral commons, investments towards improving water access for both households and livestock respond to several of the sustainable development goals, notably SDGs 2, 6 and 13. As climatic stressors are increasing in both frequency and severity, water availability fluctuates and becomes more unpredictable. Changing land uses within the Kenyan pastoral commons also increase water demands and create difficulties for pastoral households. Along with targets to invest in new water technologies, the emphasis in the policy discourse is also on the need to formalize institutional mechanisms that can address competing demands and ensure sustainability. However, these interventions do not always adequately consider pastoralists’ realities and the existing informal institutions. Moreover, such formalization approaches often fail to address inter and intra community power inequalities which regulate water access, control, and management in the pastoral commons. Based on a qualitative case study in a pastoral communal land in southern Kenya, we show how emerging forms of formalization and regularization of water access tied to new water infrastructures do not always translate to better water availability for all local resource users. Our findings exemplify the ways informal institutions and negotiations within and between communities and households constantly (re)define differentiated water rights to adapt to changing socio-environmental conditions. We suggest that building on the existing social relations of care and solidarity, while actively working to redress decision-making imbalances – particularly gendered, within both informal and formal institutions can open space for more sustainable and inclusive water access in the commons.
3. Role of tacit institutions in resilience of fragile socio-ecological systems
1Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India, 2Center for Land Governance, India, 3FLAME University, India
It is often assumed that formal institutions are more efficient in safeguarding common resource ecosystems. More recently, this fixation with institutional form is being challenged by scholars who emphasize functionality and argue that credibility of an institution is not dependent on how formal it is, but on the aggregate perceptions about a common agreement. We reason that, different from formal arrangements and customary functions, central to CPR management are those rules-in-use that originate in a shared understanding among actors that is based upon real life experience which is tacit and cannot be expressed through spoken language or codified in formal laws. Many times these tacit institutions are known only to the actors within a certain socio-ecological ecosystem, erosion of which could lead to ineffective regulatory regimes or break-down of informal norms. Using comparative cases of localized management of natural resource and agri-food systems in the north-eastern tribal region of India, we show that the common shared understanding about nature of the resource and community relations which lead to persistence of agricultural and forest biodiversity and symbiotic ecosystem interactions – are actually a result of tacit institutions. In another instance from the same region, we show that out-migration and market pulls led to deforestation because there was a breakdown of tacit institutions. We conclude with important conceptual insights for strengthening the self-governance and resilience of fragile socio-ecological systems through a better understanding of tacit institutions.
4. Access to open systems, food security and tenure: Assessing the contributions of pastoralism to ecology and economies.
Centre for Pastoralism, India
Pastoralists rely on open systems in a variety of tenurial categories throughout India, including village commons, privately owned agricultural land (for crop residues), protected forests, and National Parks/Wildlife Sanctuaries/Tiger Reserves, which are currently managed by the Indian Forest Department. As village commons are encroached upon, agriculture is intensified, pastoralists’ “wastelands” are turned into Special Economic Zones for industry, and a conservation ethic that is hardening is leading to a more rigid exclusion of communities, access to these lands for foraging is becoming more and more difficult. Reduced access caused by plantation activities has had implications on the pastoral economy, labour reproduction, and pastoral households. Push and pull mechanisms result in false choices where pastoralists choose to leave viable herding livelihoods for jobs that prove to be economically, socially and culturally insufficient. Changing regimes of access complicate property relations within and across communities resulting in conflict, contributing towards misconceptions regarding degradation and pastoralism’s inefficient contribution towards global climate goals. By mapping pastoral routes, overlaid with tenure categories and land use we quantify the magnitude of lands diverted out of pastoralism. Our economic study of pastoralism measures the contribution of pastoral livelihoods towards the household and state economies, also outlining the scale, drivers and consequences of pastoral sedentarisation on the economy and open systems. Based on this data, we argue that pastoralists ought to be seen as stewards of open systems, contributing to their ecology and economies, and providing necessary transformations required to sustain food security.
5. Sharing and Sustainability : Understanding the Padu System of fisheries management and community rights in Northern Tamil Nadu
Independent Researcher, India
Pazhaverkadu is a unique site of ecological importance in the northern frontier of Tamil Nadu, India. Located a few kilometers away from the rocket-launching site of the country, it consists of India’s second largest brackish water lake, mangroves, wetlands and beaches. As water flows into the lake for six hours and vice versa for the next six hours, the region houses a wide variety of flora and fauna including prawns for exports and migratory birds.
In an effort to manage water resources sustainably, the fishers of Pazhaverkadu have devised an innovative mechanism called the ‘padu’ system. Padu, which means site, refers to one of the thirteen locations in the lake which are used to place nets for catching prawns. Each village that holds customary rights for fishing is allotted one padu, during which 4-5 households can fish collectively in that spot. After the allotted time is over, other members of the village take up the next spot, such that every village gets access to every padu in the lake.
This system has ensured sustainable fishing in the village, particularly in the wake of advanced fishing gear and a steep rise in fisher population. The method has also ensured unity amongst the people, enabling them to mobilise against factories and shipping docks that threaten to severely damage the fragile ecosystem. The padu system is said to date back to the later half of the 21st century, thus highlighting the capabilities of indigenous people to consume resources responsibly. However, this system is accessible only by particular castes and largely excludes the lower strata such as the scheduled castes and the tribals.
