Session 2. 4.

Contemporary forest management has been constructed from predominantly Global North-driven scientific paradigms and/or driven by external aid. With a techno-managerial focus, it is designed largely around artificial regeneration of few species, mostly timber or fast growing exotics, following a plantation geometry, with high external inputs. Inherited or adopted by the state, they reduce local communities to mere 'recipients’ and ‘labourer’ rather than active stewards those nurture and shape their landscapes. While leading to even-aged, good timber stands and serving industrial wood production goals, this management also resulted in biodiversity loss, dwindling ecosystem services, and alienation of local livelihoods and food security.

In contrast, habitats of indigenous people and local communities, with low to no such management inputs, now show evidences of biodiverse and carbon-rich forests, which is growingly being acknowledged. However, despite this recognition and action to enhance climate finance flow directly towards the IPLCs, community stewarded forest management practices, have not received due attention. Enriched from intrinsic traditional knowledge and adaptive wisdoms, this management system, however, has ensured multiple products and services as well as food and cultural forests, that is critical for climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods.

Unlike, ongoing transformation from high-input, green-revolution agriculture to Nature-based solutions, aligned around agroecological intensification framed around local ecological knowledge, circularity and low external input, forest management continue to remain contemporary, even when community rights are recognised.

In this paper, we argue for recognition and adoption of a Community stewarded management practice, that highlights the value of local ecological knowledge, along with that of agency, and an ethic of care, as imperatives for climate resilient and local economy-reviving forestry. Drawing from our ongoing research in India's forest and tribal overlapping landscapes in Meghalaya, Odisha and Manipur, we demonstrate how locally evolved forest management practices- around regeneration, tending, harvesting and resource management, can consistently lead to diverse, multi-species, multi-layered, multi-aged forests offering a bundle of ecosystem services.

Anthropological and ecological research on pastoralism has established that shepherds and their animals have a considerable role to play in the production and sustaining of their environments. There have however been few studies of the interaction between pastoralists and forest environments in the Indian subcontinent, particularly in the semiarid and subhumid forests. In India, the forests discourse has been dominated by a focus on tribal communities that are residents in forests. This has led to an ignoring of the fact that Indian forests have multiple claimants. Among the many pastoralists are a critical group who are seasonally dependent on forest resources. The Government discourse has tended to see pastoral presence in forests in largely negative terms both ecologically and socially. The present study seeks to look at questioning this narrative by examining the case of two landscapes where pastoralists interact with forest environments. Two studies are currently being undertaken in Rajasthan and Maharashtra and have sought to explore and document ways pastoralists contribute to the shaping of the forest landscape which are complex in form. Through timing their movements, composition of herds, and minimizing competition, a shepherding culture of stewardship may be said to have evolved. In the paper, we seek to demonstrate the cultures and institutions of careful and considered resource use that to form a template on which the viability of pastoralism is founded in both the ecological and societal sense. Much like forest communities or fishing populations pastoralists may also be said to have evolved cultures and practices of stewarding the complex and dynamic environment of which they are one among the many users.

Shrinking Commons: Experiencing the transition
Introduction:
Using commons for development projects has transformed local economic, social and cultural landscape interwoven with local common resources. This paper presents the everyday experience of living through this transformation. Industrialisation in coastal villages of Gujarat has resulted in the allotment of large tracts of coastal commons, resulting in restricted access to it, affecting their everyday dependence on commons. It adversely impacted traditional livelihood practices such as cattle rearing, fishing, agriculture, agro-pastoral activities, and the cultural ethos of local communities, which is rooted in local natural resources. Communities seek alternative income-generating activities in the industries; simultaneously, they continue to depend on these natural resources. This paper elaborates on how people cope with the transition in using common and continue to assert their relationship with local resources. This paper illustrates coping, negotiating and manoeuvring through this transforming commons landscape.
 Methodology:
Research aimed at documenting the experience of the loss of commons to development projects living through this transition. Fieldwork is conducted in select coastal villages of Kachchh (Kutch), Gujarat affected by multiple industrial projects sanctioned contiguously. Coastal commons, such as settled sand dunes, mangroves, marshland, wasteland and grazing land, are essential to traditional livelihood and social and cultural aspects. The paper is based on ethnographic data on experiencing the loss of commons every day. Participant observation and in-depth interviews were employed to understand the complex network of local commons people's everyday dependence on it and experiencing the transition.
Key Findings:
Alienating communities from resources has resulted in adapting to alternative income-generating activities. However, communities continue to assert their relationship with local resources through cultural practices, legal contestations in the form of PIL and illegal means of accessing them. Field narratives on the loss of commons and asserting a relationship with local commons are expressions of care for natural resources. This expression is not just rooted in its instrumental value of livelihood-generating resources; it reflects people's deep understanding of its ecological value, which is also intertwined with local communities' cultural values and practices.

In this paper, we explore the role of psychological ownership in the evolution of community stewardship. Community stewardship is defined as individuals or self-organized groups steering the management of a shared common-pool resource (CPR) by making local stakeholders care for them through a democratic process (FES, 2024). We use the model of stewardship antecedents developed by Hernandez (2012) to demonstrate how stewardship behavior is independent of property rights and ownership. While ownership plays an important role in defining the relationship of users with their ecosystem, the individuality or legality of ownership is different from the psychology of ownership or the ‘feeling’ that it is ‘my property, even if I don’t own it legally or individually’ (Pierce et al 2001; Peck et al, 2020). This feeling of ownership is rooted in an innate need to possess, where a property becomes an extension of one’s self. To elaborate, we study how stewardship emerges in the members of the Bishnoi community found primarily in North-Western arid regions of India, for two of their most valued community resources, the Khejri trees (Prosopis cineraria) and the Blackbuck antelope (Antilope cervicapra). This community is considered, in general parlance, as the first environmentalists of India and their presence has been positively associated with an abundance of biodiversity (Hall, 2011). A survey questionnaire and in-depth interviews helps us identify the key attributes of psychological ownership and its mediators. We conclude with laying down the design principles of stewardship behavior, that is, conditions under which mediators such as – effectance (deriving satisfaction out of control), self-identity, sense of place, care, knowledge, intimate association and felt responsibility – align with stewardship. By admitting to the role of psychological ownership and theorizing upon stewardship behavior, we can better understand those instances of self-governance that exist prior to community crafted institutions.