SESSION 1 | 3 OCTOBER 2022: POWER AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

PRESENTATIONS

Session abstract:

Global Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (2021) shows that poverty incidence among the Scheduled Tribes in India is 50%. This poverty is principally due to under-developed livelihood.  A significant proportion of tribal population is dependent on agriculture; however, due to political, economic and cultural marginalisation, agricultural development among them has remained inadequate. Tribal communities residing in forests and river valleys form the majority of the population in India that was displaced due to fortress conservation and construction of large dams; the tribes however have not only lost their cultivable lands in forests but have also been left off the beneficiary list of the major irrigation projects of these dams. Whereas 41% of the cropped area held by non-tribal communities is irrigated, among tribal communities irrigated area is only 26%. Lately, though, the policy for irrigation in the country has provided for special financial support to the tribal farmers through subsidised rates for installation of micro irrigation (drip and sprinkler) systems in their farms. This presentation highlights the significance of micro irrigation for tribal farmers in the light of contemporary irrigation policy of the Government of India. Positioning in Gujarat, a state in India with tribal population of 9 million (15% of the state’s total population), this presentation reports the status of micro-irrigation and challenges for its promotion among tribal farmers. It also deliberates upon the contribution and role of Civil Society in connecting the tribal farmers with the welfare schemes.

Session abstract:

Studies on participatory mapping consider it as a grassroots activity that secures the customary rights, the sovereignty of marginalized communities, and as a tool for conservation and sustainable resource management. Political ecology looks at such grassroots struggles as sites where multiple (human) groups/actors articulate and contest their knowledge over entities called ‘resources’. However, the aforementioned approaches suffer from two problems. First, dubbing them as resources excludes the role of other-than-humans, thereby perpetuating asymmetrical and anthropocentric ways of knowing and conceptualizing place-based struggles. Second, in their quest for distributive justice, such approaches do not question; instead, they only extend the modern principle of sovereignty to marginalized humans across the world. Through an ethnographic observation of a participatory mapping among the indigenous Gonds of Adilabad in South India, this article shows that by incorporating other-than-human actors as equally potential agents of conservation, the indigenous Gonds have produced a non-sovereign, symmetrical map that challenges notions of human sovereignty over a seemingly inert ‘nature’. It aims to contribute to political ecology by arguing that grassroots mapping that includes other-than-humans is a potent exercise in revealing and articulating more-than-human ways of conservation.

Session abstract:

In the last decade, environmental movements that emerged in opposition to the mining projects increased dramatically following the pressure of the government, the amendments regarding the mining laws, and the designation of the new mining areas throughout Turkey. Many movements have been organized through similar mobilization strategies like the vigil protests to defend the area. Yet, these strategies have substantially changed the ways in which the local actors communicate with each other to sustain grassroots activism. To analyze the organization and mobilization strategies of environmental movements in Turkey, through one-month field works in both regions, I made a comparison between the Cerattepe (Artvin) and the Kirazlı (Çanakkale) anti-mining movements with the question of how a local community sustains grassroots activism. I argued that when the local actors create a place-based struggle as a part of the organization of a movement, it is more likely to sustain grassroots activism through the creation of collective identity. In contrast, I showed that the geographical characteristics of the city lead to the emergence of new kinds of environmentalism, namely “environmentalism of the urbanite,” which can sometimes adversely affect collectivity and grassroots movement. I emphasized that the history of the place contributes to maintaining environmental movement through democratic and participatory decision-making processes. Lastly, this research revealed that knowledge production as a form of mobilization was an important strategy to create social movement space in the city and strongly ally diverse actors of the movement under an umbrella organization to maintain grassroots environmental movement.

Session abstract:

Power is a concept frequently used in biodiversity conservation literature; however, it is rarely approached via the situated practices and discourses through which it operates. The lack of an empirical approach to the concept of power hampers the development of alternative mechanisms that incorporate diverse knowledge systems and discourses into decision-making processes and conservation efforts.

This work is framed within a larger project that seeks to contribute to the implementation of biodiversity conservation initiatives that enhance human well-being in local settings across the Americas. This presentation discusses how power is approached in three place-based conservation cases: Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile. In Uruguay, the governance initiative aims at promoting the conservation of nature and sustainable practices in private agricultural and livestock farms with outstanding biodiversity. The Colombian case is focused on a participatory mechanism called Conversatorio de Acción Ciudadana, which seeks to generate grassroots political agreements endorsed by local governments. In Chile, the initiative’s goal is to preserve water sources that are privately owned under the current Chilean legislation.

The three study cases are approached from a transdisciplinary perspective to analyze how power articulates diverse knowledge systems and underpins environmental governance conflicts. This empirical approach to analyzing power in local contexts may contribute to understanding conservation as a system of relations where all knowledge systems and actors can actively participate in policy-making.