Sub-theme 9. Conservation, environmental justice and the commons
Panel 9.7.
Common-ing regulatory institutions for Environmental Justice
In India, where marginalized communities still depend on common natural resource for their basic sustenance, the environmental regulations meant to safeguard these commons have increasingly been altered or diluted to promote economic growth through private ownership over commons. This spate of regulatory changes has met with stiff resistance and sharp criticism from most quarters such as user communities, civil society groups and ecologists. However, the conversation around the need to democratize these regulatory bodies, which are fast either getting dismantled or taken over by corporate agencies, is still a faint murmur in the room. Commoning of regulatory institutions will help us evoke a deeper version of democratic governance and reinstitute the idea of commons in the mainstream policy debates.
In India, the wide network of central and state pollution control boards, one of the oldest and decentralized regulatory agency, provides us a fertile field to experiment with the idea of commoning an environmental regulatory institution for environmental justice. This institution offers us many potential inroads towards building a more accountable, participatory and transparent regulatory framework for environmental decision making, which unfortunately is largely taken over by corporate agencies. A detailed review of these boards and the legal frameworks within which it operates, will not only help us understand the existing participatory appetite of this body; but also aspects where efforts of commoning can yield maximum benefits in terms of better protection of commons and its shared ownership by the most marginalized in the society.
1. Role of Changpa Women in Preserving Their Textile Heritage- A Case Study of Ladakh India
Tata Institute of Social Science, India and Looms of Ladakh Women Cooperative, India
The number of Changpa pastoralists adopting semi-pastoralism and settled agro-pastoralism is increasing. A number of Changpa community pastoralists are migrating to Leh town in the Trans-Himalayas in India. Changpas rear the Changra breed of goat which gives the fabled fibre ‘pashm’ along with yak and sheep wool. Younger generation have started working in various white collared jobs. Many of the younger lot have also started engaging in unskilled blue-collar jobs in the construction and burgeoning tourism industry. Literature highlights a lack of knowledge regarding this pastoralist community’s need for collective action and the role their women can play in it. Policy focus is on increasing the quantity of entrepreneurs in the Leh town, in high economic value ‘pashm’ rather than the quality of collective enterprise by the pastoralists and artisans in villages. The women of the Changpa community are the ones still practising their traditional utilitarian crafts to diversify their household income.The aim of this qualitative study is to provide insights on how the women are preserving tangible heritage of the Changpas.Semi-structured interviews in Changthang and in the urban sprawling to where many of the pastoralist households have migrated, shall explore the traditional textile and craft skills of these women, significance of these skills in the past and the value they associate with these now, along with objectives of skill trainings these women become part of. This article shall examine the role of Changpa women in preserving their traditional textile and craft heritage. It shall also discuss their contribution to the nascent high economic value ‘Ladakh Pashmina’ industry. The need for their ownership and collective action for sustainability shall also be discussed.
2. Safeguarding community lands in Kenya
Namati Kenya
Until the early 1900s, local and rural communities in Kenya managed and customarily owned common open, unfragmented lands that supported their livelihood and was their identity and heritage. Land and natural resources were governed by custom and oral rules that were passed on from one generation to the next. The communities developed comprehensive land management systems based on the availability of water and pasture, presence of disease along grazing routes, relationships with neighboring communities, and socio-cultural activities and ceremonies.
Over the past hundred years, land and legal reforms significantly impacted customary system of common land management and governance, causing negative repercussions on livelihoods, effective local land governance, and land tenure security:
Crown Lands Ordinance (1902): Declared undocumented land as Crown Land, which was considered “waste and unoccupied” land. The colonial administration allocated such lands to private individuals/entities or for construction of administrative facilities and public infrastructure.
Trust Lands Act (1939): Further entrenched the Crown Land Ordinance by declaring all undocumented land to be held in trust by county councils, who retained all power to allocate land and manage it on behalf of communities.
Land (Group Representatives) Act (1968): Enabled small groups of representatives to own and manage community lands (especially pastoral communities being organized into Group Ranches) on behalf of the larger community.
These laws changed the nature of customary land tenure and governance. Ownership and governance of these lands was no longer through customary structure and practices, but rather through formal structures put in place by the colonial and post-colonial administrations. This led to a profound sense of land tenure insecurity among community members and resulted in fragmentation and privatization of communal land, with the assumption that individual parcels would be more secure than communal land. For example, by 2006, all but six of the original 52 Group Ranches in Kajiado County had been sub-divided. The sub-division of land is inherently incompatible with local community livelihood systems such as pastoralism and significantly increased poverty and conflict.
The negative impacts of these laws are among reasons that civil society organizations and other actors pushed for the enactment of the Community Land Act, 2016. The Community Land Act provides a legal framework for local communities to secure and register their lands collectively. In Kenya, a community can comprise as many as 5,000 or more people living on lands as large as 20,000 hectares. More than 60% of land in Kenya is unregistered community lands inhabited by the local populations. The Act provides an opportunity to safeguard the commons.
