Session 1. 9. B.

Forest Rights Act marks a significant turn in forest governance in India. Thousands of villages now have community forest rights (CFR) that empower them to manage forests to address local needs. The FRA further mandates different state departments such as those responsible for forests, agriculture, and social welfare to provide technical and financial assistance to the rights-bearing, village-level institution of gram sabhas. There have, however, been limited institutional reforms that fully acknowledge and incorporate the gram sabha in the larger forest governance structure. In this paper we draw on cases from Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh in central India to analyse the recent approaches adopted in these states to facilitate CFR gram sabhas or its members in forest management. Broadly, these approaches can be categorised into three – withdrawal of the state, welfare-based state support, and demand-based state assistance. Attempt at withdrawing state presence in gram sabhas includes the deregulation of non-timber forest products (NTFP) allowing their trade by gram sabhas and their federations. This approach while giving gram sabhas autonomy may also expose them to vagaries of the markets. On the other hand, attempts that continue or increase the state presence include increasing direct and indirect investment into state-led participatory programs and NTFP-trade cooperatives focusing on welfare of individual members of the gram sabhas but by-passing the gram sabhas themselves. A third attempt has been the demand-based convergence of pre-existing state schemes towards gram sabha-led community forest management goals. All three approaches may be attempted simultaneously and may or may not be enforced onto gram sabhas or their members. We compare these approaches to understand the form of state facilitation necessary in post-rights scenario for sustainable forest governance through CFR gram sabhas.

A large and growing proportion of working lands across the United States (US) are rented, thereby presenting a conservation decision-making context where agricultural landowners are not directly involved in farm operations. As a result, rental agreements involving non-operating landowners (NOLs) and tenant farmers (operators) are common across the US. Among others, existing research underscores the importance of balance of power between NOLs and operators, tenure (in)security, lease terms, information deficits and asymmetries, and trusted information sources in affecting conservation behavior on rented farmland. Recent scholarship also highlights the need to view land tenure as a multidimensional construct, and that to improve our understanding of how land tenure affects conservation behavior scholars need to operationalize these dimensions. Drawing upon insights from several US-focused papers published during the last six years, this talk will present a synthesis of promises and ongoing challenges associated with promoting conservation on rented working lands. In particular, the focus of this talk will be on cross-cutting themes that are applicable to forest-based livelihoods, including tenure security, power and gender dynamics, and theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of land tenure.

Nepal's community forestry (CF) is an institutional exemplar of tenure rights devolution. Central to CF are the Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs), which are expected to manage common-pool forest resources by balancing conservation with community needs. Previous research has sought to understand CFUG performance through the lens of Ostrom's Design Principles. Building on this, we incorporate insights from Public Choice theory and recognize the central role of CFUG leadership. CFUG leaders are supposed to be democratically elected volunteers. However, this ideal may be undermined due to a lack of volunteers in smaller and resource-poor CFUGs or by competition and maneuvering for positions in resource-rich areas. We explore the heterogeneity of CFUG leadership by investigating the preferences of CFUG leaders for timber harvesting, rule enforcement, forest management, and decision-making accountability to uncover a typology of CFUG leadership. We relate the typology to the characteristics of the leader (e.g., gender, leadership position in CFUG) and the CFUG (e.g., forest area and regeneration, engagement status, and incidence of forest fires). Latent class analysis through generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) of data from 144 CFUG leaders in Kavrepalanchowk and Kaski districts reveals two leadership types. One aligns with Ostrom's principles, favoring inclusivity, responsiveness to local conditions, and conservation. The other reflects Public Choice Theory, driven by economic gains and political ambitions, with a preference for resource optimization. The findings underscore the importance of adaptive governance models that account for the diverse leadership preferences identified in CFUGs. They should be considered when developing interventions, ensuring that strategies align with the actual preferences and values of local leaders to foster a future for CF that reconciles conservation with economic incentives. Future research should investigate the interplay between leader preferences, local governance, and external influences to promote long-term sustainability and economic vitality.

Tenurial reforms in forest governance, like the one brought by the enactment of the Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA) in India, are associated with improvement in forest-based livelihoods for the local communities. But what happens if such tenurial reforms fail to extinguish or aggregate the pre-existing property rights assigned to competing forest resource-uses viz. mining and/or conservation? In this paper, we investigate the nature of institutional change and its implications for reshaping resource-related contestations brought in by FRA 2006.

Using the case study of mineral-endowed and biodiversity-rich Hasdeo Aranya forests in central India, we explicate the effect of fragmentation and creation of multiple overlapping forest rights post-FRA in shaping local communities’ de facto exercise of tenurial rights. We use the conceptual framework of ‘anticommons’ property and a conflict-based analysis of institutional reforms. Our data comprises (i) a detailed review of government and judicial records of policy & legal deliberations, (ii) ethnographic fieldwork over an extended duration, and (iii) interviews with policymakers.

We uncover the effects of pre-existing power asymmetries as they manifest through the institutional regime post de jure tenurial reforms. We find that the very existence of de jure anticommons (created by FRA) can serve as the legal, institutional, and discursive foundation for resistance by local communities against extractivism and displacement. They can also significantly constrain the “Cunning State’s” discretionary powers to mediate conflict amongst stakeholders. Consequently, the power and politics in action could lead to an unstable equilibrium – sometimes leading to a disruption in forest-based livelihoods and, at others, a fulcrum of revival in the forest economy. Our findings represent a radical rethinking of the role of anticommons – traditionally viewed from the lens of inefficiency - in contemporary societies.