Jyotishi, Amalendu

Climate change and numerous anthropogenic factors substantially impact the natural resources and livelihoods associated with that. The impact of such changes is visible across different resource systems including forest, grazing lands, coastal and marine systems. Degradation or destruction of these resources lead to not only ecological and livelihood dispossessions but can also have significant impacts on local food and nutrition security. Degradation of forests and biodiversity erosion, shrinking or privatization of grazing land, blue economy led development activities in the coast, estuarine and marine scape not only impact the health and resilience ecosystems but also the livelihoods of the communities dependent on and living with such commons. The proposed panel attempts to understand such varied dispossessions across these common ecosystems and livelihoods, drawing from cases from global south, where climate change and action are expediting such transitions across commons and linked dispossessions.

Literature suggests many ways of response to such dispossessions including climate resilient actions, climate smart communities etc. Our attempt in this proposed panel is to showcase how communities have been traditionally and more so as first responder to climate change and are addressing these transitions. We look at community stewardship – characterized by care, knowledge and agency as one such approach. Contrary to the thought that a community’s collective response can be built from the visible poverty or material absence, the panel would be keen on exploring the possibilities of building a community from the point of their strength or their presence in the form of pride, norms, social cohesion, ecological understanding, tacit knowledge. These often-invisible presences can be identified in the forms of various actions and everyday life. Maintaining biodiversity, conservation of seeds and species, resource use and extraction practices are the visible forms of outcomes depicted through these invisible presences.

The panel propose to bring together the proposers’ work around such approaches in Indian ecosystems while inviting papers from others, thinking about or engaging with similar approaches in global south.

Traditional agrarian institutions which are intertwined with a hierarchical social order of caste and gender in the governance of the affairs of civil, political and economic structure of the village, are instrumental in the governance of commons including land, water, grazing land, and village forests. Caste and gender permeate a structure of hierarchy in terms of the accumulation of and access to resources so as the traditional governance of commons and their access. Commons and their governance in Global south particularly is deeply intertwined with the institution of caste and gender. The historical evolution of access and control over the productive resources, in its relationship with land had dis-entitled vulnerable groups from having any share of ownership, be it common or private. In this panel, we propose in-depth studies from the global south to bring out and unfold the rights, access and utilisation of commons, their spatial and longitudinal transformation, and how caste and gender play a significant role in these contexts. We also foster the at the arrival of new commons aimed at equalization of access to natural resources in contrast to their denial in the past. Such a process of equalization has positive effects in terms of enhanced agrarian productivity for the depressed castes and women reposing the need for a policy of commonization as a principle of equi-distributive and efficient policy.