141114 memoire FRA final - AgroParisTech · 2019. 4. 18. · Final synthesis by Pierre-Marie...

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Authors: Marie Baranger, Roman Baudin, Anaïs De Fresnoye, Mathieu Gérard, Marine Grisot D’allancé, Quentin Guignard, Éloïse Ingadassamy, Caroline Mollion, Vincent Piton, Emmanuelle Rica, Julie Richard, Améline Vallet, Victor Zylberberg. Final synthesis by Pierre-Marie Aubert, lecturer in sociology and environmental management at AgroParis-Tech.

Institutional Mapping and Forest Landscape Dynamics

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Foreword and acknowledgements

This report is the result of a collective internship carried out in February and March 2014 by 13 students from AgroParisTech’s Executive Master in “International Management, Nature and Society” It is designed to contribute to the Institutional Mapping component of the Sentinel Landscape project, undertaken jointly by CIFOR and ICRAF under the Forest, Trees and Agro-forestry consultative research program (CRP6 / FTA). The Sentinel Landscape initiative sets out to identify the main drivers of forest landscape dy-namics through the systematic comparison of 7 sites in various parts of the world. It seeks to combine a variety of disciplinary approaches at different spatial and temporal scales, ranging from landscape ecology to population genetics and from micro-sociology to political science. More precisely, the SL programme seeks to shed light on the social, economic and political processes involved in landscape dynamics through an “institutional mapping” exercise to which this report seeks to contribute. This paper focuses on the Western Ghats sentinel landscape (WGSL) site (Southern India) and more particularly on Chamarajanagar district - one of four districts in the WGSL site.

Kodagu Chamrajanagar

Wayanad

Nilgiris

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Figure 1: Situation of the Western Ghats Sentinel Landscape

This internship has been financially supported by ICRAF, CIFOR and CIRAD and we are grate-ful to the trust Claude Garcia placed in us. From a logistical point of view, we were greatly as-sisted by ATREE in general and Siddappa Setty in particular, to whom we are all most grateful. A special thanks is also due to C. Madegowda, a senior scientist at ATREE and a local leader in


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Chamarajanagar who involved himself in our work and facilitated matters by helping us meet the Soligas people. The field work was similarly facilitated not just by Georges Da Silva but also his son, who drove wherever we needed to go and organized everything prior to our arrival in India. During the field work Jeremy Vende organized all the logistics and brought his considera-ble experience from previous projects in Coorg to shed additional light on several topics of the study. Nor would this internship have been possible without the preparatory work carried out in Montpellier by Isabelle Chang, Murielle Salas and Geneviève Reynaud, and indeed the backing of Maya Leroy.


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Summary

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6!2. Analytical framework ............................................................................................................ 7!3. The study site: practices affecting the forest and how they are likely to be modified by the FRA ...................................................................................................................................... 9!

3.1 Two types of impact on forest landscapes ...................................................................... 12!3.2 Potential impact of FRA implementation from a formal point of view .............................. 15!

4. The regulation of the action system underlying forest uses / disturbances ................ 15!4.1 Forest tribes depend on forest resources with little alternatives and few benefits from sustained demand for most products .................................................................................... 15!4.2 The Forest Department attempts to control all forest-related activities ........................... 16!

4.2.1 The FD deploys diverse means to control human activities ..................................... 16!4.2.2 These means are implemented through a rigid organisation which diminishes efficiency ............................................................................................................................ 18!

4.3 Forest people benefit from rural development carried out by NGOs, political organisations and administrative bodies which help them to stay in the forest ........................................... 20!

4.3.1 Rural development actions and their promoters ....................................................... 21!4.3.2 The FD also seeks to control other rural development activities ............................. 22!

4.4 An important “tribal network” which lobbies for Soligas ................................................... 23!4.5 Preliminary conclusion: the action system underlying human activities affecting the landscape prior to FRA implementation. ............................................................................... 24!

5. Consequences of the implementation of the FRA: little change in the action system underlying forest uses and on forest landscapes ............................................................... 25!

5.1 Implementing the FRA: between supporting tribal claims and impediments to the process .............................................................................................................................................. 26!5.2 Working outside the FRA to limit or favour its implementation: the reinforcement of the opposition between the FD and the pro-tribal coalition ......................................................... 27!5.3 FRA implementation has only brought about minor changes in the action system underlying human activities affecting the landscape ............................................................. 32!

6. Ecological consequences of FRA implementation: possible impact on the landscape .................................................................................................................................................. 33!7. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 34!8. References ........................................................................................................................... 37!List of figures, tables and boxes ........................................................................................... 41!


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1. Introduction

The Sentinel Landscape program seeks to characterize forest landscape changes in tropical and inter-tropical areas and to identify the main drivers of these changes. In this report, by “for-est landscape” we mean a spatially heterogeneous area mainly covered by forest ecosystems, in interaction with other sub-natural or cultivated ecosystems, of which 3 characteristics can be considered: its structure, function and dynamics of change (Turner, 1989: 173). The landscapes discussed here vary in size from 100 to 1000 km2. This report focuses on landscape changes in the Chamarajanagar district, part of the Western Ghats sentinel landscape site (see map below); it considers “landscape changes” in terms of changes in vegetation structures, without much consideration for changes in other aspects of the landscape. A major goal of this study was to identify human practices and the underlying drivers to which these changes can be attributed, leaving aside other drivers of change such asclimate change. As per Geist and Lambin (2002)human practices affecting vegetation structures can be classi-fied into three broad categories with five types of underlying forces. They assert that agricultural practices, forest exploitation and infrastructure development are mainly driven by five major variables: economic, political, demographic, technological and cultural ones. In the case of Chamarajanagar, the forest areas are used and inhabited by the Soligas tribes, whose liveli-hoods depend in part on forest products. These forests are currently also managed by the For-est Department under various types of rules, depending on the status of the forests and accord-ing to Indian forest policies, both at national and state level. Thus local livelihoods and their determinants, forestry policy implementation structures, and how they interact will be the three main areas of investigation of this report. Among the most important policy change which has affected Indian forest management in re-cent years is the The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006, and referred to as the Forest Rights Act (FRA1), followed by a set of application rules in 2008. This act, the outcome of a long struggle between competing forces, seeks to “redress an historical injustice” through the recognition of both individual and collective forest rights to forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwellers who have been living in forests without any recognition of their rights. Long before it came into effect and continuing to the present day, the FRA has been subject to intense controversies between “strict-conservationist positions” and “pro-tribal positions”. Simply put, the former condemn the irre-versible damage the implementation of the FRA will cause to forests and wildlife (Bhargav, 2012), while the latter consider that returning rights to tribal populations can form the basis of an effective and rights-driven approach to conservation (Kashwan, 2013). These discussions have fed an “old” conservation debate which opposes, in India and else-where, strict environmentalists vs socio-environmentalists. If both sides have developed elabo-rated arguments to back up their discourses, they do not always ground them in empirically analysis. This is particularly true in the case of the FRA implementation debate, this being partly due to the fact that this implementation is pretty recent2. This is particularly true in respect of the

1 All abbreviations and acronyms are set out more fully in Appendix A. They are developed only once the first time they appear. 2 This does not mean however that there is not any empirical analysis of the processes associated with the implementa-tion of the FRA. One can particularly mention the work carried out under the “Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth” Research Programme consortium (see for example Springate-Baginski & al., 2009). As this programme focuses on the impact of the FRA on livelihood and poverty, the study presented here can be seen as complementary as the focus is put on environmental consequences.


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FRA implementation debate, which is at least partly due to the fact that implementation is itself relatively recent3. By focusing on the consequences of interactions between forest people and the forestry administration on forest uses and then on vegetation structures, this report thus also intends to contribute to the on-going debate on the potential impact of the FRA4 and, as such, to the broader Indian conservation debate. The question it seeks to answer can be phrased as follows: how does the implementation of the FRA impact upon forest uses and forest landscape dynamics in the Chamarajanagar district, with regards to other drivers of forest uses? In order to answer this question, we made the hypothesis that to understand the way the FRA can affect landscape dynamics, one must firstly understand how its implementation structure (Hjern & Porter, 1981) affects the existing social interactions underlying the use of forest re-sources, and more specifically those determining access and withdrawal rights to forest prod-ucts and areas (Schlagger & Ostrom, 1992). The theoretical framework we developed for this analysis is set out in section 2, along with the data collected and the way it was analysed. In section 3, we will present the two areas where the study was carried out and their main features. Forest activities, their impact on the landscape and how they might be affected by the imple-mentation of the FRA are also presented. Section 4 will then bring to light the action system in which these activities are embedded. Section 5 will present the implementation process of the FRA, how it has been applied in Chamarajanagar and what changes it has brought about in the previously described action system. Section 6is designed to tentatively assess the conse-quences of these changes on forest activities and then on landscape changes. Section 7 is the report’s conclusion. Throughout this paper the intention is to demonstrate that in the context of Chamarajanagar, the implementation of the FRA is unlikely to bring about any significant changes in landscape dy-namics due to at least two factors. The first is that infrastructures that could be created by virtue of article 3.2 of the FRA already exist in the case of BRT Hills. The second relates to the not insignificant efforts being made by the Forest Department to impede the implementation of the FRA. While implementation has not created any significant changes in terms of impacting forest landscapes, it has however reinforced the current tensions between the forest department on the one hand and the pro-tribes activists on the other.

2. Analytical framework

Our approach to the analysis of the FRA implementation, as previously mentioned, set out to understand how it has affected the existing social interactions underlying the use of forest re-sources and, more specifically, how it has modified the actual management of forest ecosys-tems (Mermet & al., 2010; Mermet, 2011). We call “actual management” the broad set of human activities which have a direct or indirect impact on forest vegetation structures (as defined in the introduction). The identification of these activities and of how they affect forest vegetation relied on the existing literature — both scientific and “grey” one — and we did not gather any ecologi-cal data. Approximately 60 scientific papers were analysed to assess the relative impact of dif-ferent human activities on forest landscapes, both from a general perspective and with specific reference to the studied areas.

3 This is not to suggest, however, that there is not any empirical analysis of the processes associated with the imple-mentation of the FRA. There is in fact an important research programme carried out under the “Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth” Research Programme consortium (see for example Springate-Baginski & al., 2009). As this programme focus-es on the impact of the FRA on livelihood and poverty, the study presented here can be seen as complementary as the focus is on environmental consequences. 4 This will also be permitted by the fact that livelihoods in the studied area are similar to those of many areas across the Western Ghats.


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On this basis, field work sought to uncover the social processes underlying the practices identi-fied as impacting the landscape. Our approach was grounded in an inductive and interactionist perspective on social processes (Abbott, 1997) which can be conceptually summarized in the two following working hypotheses. The first posits that actors’ practices can be best understood as the result of their embed-dedness in a particular action system, itself defined as a set of structured power relationships linking several actors together and resulting in the establishment of a stable, but often contin-gent, local social order (Crozier & Friedberg, 1980 [1977]). We will say that an actor A has some power over B when A has the capacity to get B to do something he would not otherwise have done (Dahl, 1957: 203). But power relationships are not only bilateral. They are connected in a systemic way, in the sense that the nature of the relationship between A and B has conse-quences both on the way A and C and B and C relate. Through the successive analysis of bilat-eral relationships and of how these relationships are connected, we are able to describe the structure and functioning of the whole action system which, we assume, determines the way forests are used / managed. From such a perspective, we consider that the five “underlying forces” of forest exploitation proposed by Geist and Lambin all find expression as power rela-tionships which, in turn, impact upon practices. Our second hypothesis is that the impact of a public policy can be best analysed through a careful examination of the effect it has on the structure and functioning of such an action system. As such two questions need to be answered through field investigation. The first is whether the implementation of a policy serves as a new resource or, on the contrary, imposes new con-straints on actors involved in a given action system (Musselin, 2005), and with what conse-quences on bilateral relationships. The second is whether the whole system is affected by one or several changes in bilateral relationships, and with what consequences on individual practic-es. Such an analysis enables us to eventually shed light on the concrete impacts of a policy on human activities identified as impacting vegetation structures. Data were collected by a team of 13 students from February 18th to March 4th 2014. During this period, two areas (presented below), were covered: the Male Mahadeshwara Hills area (MM Hills) and the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Hills area (BRT Hills). Fifty eight interviews were carried out with most of the actors involved in forest-related activities, most of the time with the assistance of a translator5. We eventually distinguished 6 distinct categories of actors. The first were “simple” villagers - people living nearby or inside the forest in one of the four villages cited above, cultivating their land, collecting products in the forest or selling their labour to earn mon-ey. People in this category do not hold any official position or undertake any commercial activi-ties beyond seeking to sell their own products. Then there are actors involved in the commercialisation of forest products. They collect prod-ucts fetched in the forest by villagers and sell them on the market or to the forest department. Most are also villagers but were interviewed in respect of their commercial activity. Officers and field workers of the forest department (FD) are a third category of actors. They are in charge of managing all forest areas under the forest legislation and are particularly involved in several stages of the FRA implementation. A fourth category consists of elected bodies and “tribal leaders”. Those people are either elected in official assemblies or represent the interests of tribal populations in different social and political spheres. Members of administrative bodies other than the forest department constitute the fifth category. They might be part of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA), which is in charge of implementing the FRA jointly with the FD, or of the Revenue Department. The sixth and final category con-sists of people working for various NGOs involved in tribal or / and environmental issues.

5 As such, the excerpts presented in later sections are the result of translation from Kanada to English and were slightly edited for the purposes of clarity.


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The final interview distribution of these 6 categories of actors is set out in the pie chart below. Among the 58 persons interviewed, 10 of them belongs to more than only one of the proposed categories.

Figure 2: Interview distribution between the main categories of actors

The interview sample was not predefined but resulted from the application of three principles. The first was that of a snowball strategy, meaning that each actor was asked at the end of the interview who else we might be able to contact on his behalf. The second was that of triangula-tion / redundancy, which is the need to assess the relative importance of a given process by making sure it applies to several actors. The third was that of field saturation, attained when no new information emerges from additional interviews (Olivier de Sardan, 1995). The aim of ap-plying these principles was not, however, to look for similarities in the answers but rather to focus on divergent discourses, with a view to obtaining the broadest possible understanding. The interview grid consisted of four themes: the actors’ practices linked to forest use, the main problems they face, the nature of their relationships to others and their perceptions and dis-courses about environmental issues. These themes were refined and tailored for each actor and throughout the field work, as hypotheses emerged from prior data analysis. Supplementary data such as internal reports and grey literature were also collected in the different organiza-tions involved in the area.

3. The study site: practices affecting the forest and how they are likely to be modified by the FRA

The district of Chamarajanagar is located in the south west of Karnataka state, at the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu (see map below). The district is 48.5 % covered by forests and is often considered as a bridge between the western and eastern Ghats. Forest landscapes are com-posed of a mosaic of specific woody ecosystems — semi evergreen, moist deciduous and dry deciduous forests, bamboo forests,scrub woodland, riparian forests — and host many endemic species. Almost all forest areas come under the auspices of the Forest Department Authority. As of to-day, the district is covered by three reserve forests (MM Hills, Kollegal and Talaimalai), two wildlife sanctuaries (Cauvery and BRT) and one National Park (Bandipur) (see map below). The National Park (NP) enjoys the highest degree of protection, followed by the Wildlife Sanctuary


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(WLS) and the Reserve Forest (RF), bearing in mind that in the RFs the rules are very strict with next to no human activities allowed inside. During the last decade the BRT WLS and the Bandipur NP have also been declared as Tiger Reserves in order to more effectively take into account tiger protection issues in these areas.

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Figure 3: Map of Chamarajanagar district and its forest cover

In spite of the severe restrictions imposed by the various rules relating to forest areas, forest density still decreased by almost 25 % in the area between 1973 and 1995, according to a study carried out by the Forest Department and published in 2000 (Jha & al., 2000). At the same time biodiversity has also declined, with several species becoming rarer. Among the most cited factors relating to degradation are human activities taking place inside or near to the forests and carried out either by forest dwellers or other rural populations. Both types of population are more present in the district than in other parts of India, with 12% of the total population belonging to a scheduled tribe (ST) and 83% living in rural areas (vs 6.6% of ST and 68% for India as a whole). We chose to focus our study on two areas of the district, namely the RF of Male Mahadeshwara Hills (MM Hills)6 and the WLS of Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Hills (BRT Hills). In both areas we chose one village outside of the forest, on so-called revenue land and one village inside of the forest. This choice was made in order to maximize the diversity between the different sites with respect to several variables:

— between the two areas, differences are in terms of vegetation and climate, distance to ur-ban centres and markets and types of forest protection;

6 The MM HIlls Reserved Forest was converted into a Wildlife Sanctuary in 2013. We will see in section 5 that this happened as a consequence of FRA implementation. Until this section, we will thus consider the MM Hills forest as an RF, as our aim is to compare the situation in terms of forest management prior to FRA implementation (when it was an RF) and with FRA implementation.


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— between the villages inside or outside the forest, differences are the types of rights held by people over the land and the types of rights they can expect over the forest through the implementation of the FRA.

The four villages we chose to cover this diversity are as follows: — in MM Hills: Anehole and Palar; — in BRT Hills: Kuntu Gudi Colony and Mutugada Gade.

Table 1 below summarizes the differences between the four selected sites. Most people living in these 4 villages belong to the Soligas tribe, a Scheduled tribe entitled to claim rights as per the FRA. Few data are available in the social sciences literature about the Soligas tribe. It seems that this tribe has been living in the area for more than two centuries. They were previously hunter-gatherers but forced to settle in what might be described as the village-forest at the beginning of the 20th century. From then until the present time, they have been living from small agriculture, non timber forest products (NTFP) collection and employment in coffee plantations or other types of agriculture.

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Figure 4: map of the surveyed areas

Palar Anéhole Kuntu Gudi Colony Mutugada Gade

Protected area

Inside the new MM Hills WLS

Border of the new MM Hills WLS

Boarder of the BRT WLS Inside the BRT WLS

Type of land

Forest Land / Forest village Revenue Land Revenue Land Forest land / Forest

village

Size 75 families 40 families 30 families 115 families

Table 1: Comparison of the studied sites according to their main features

In the four situations, the activities impacting upon the forest are broadly the same and fall un-der two categories: those relating to rural livelihoods and those relating to infrastructure devel-opment.


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3.1 Two types of impact on forest landscapes

The development of human settlements inside or nearby forest areas has a direct impact on forest landscapes as it induces an artificialisation of the land by human construction: houses, roads, buildings, power lines and so forth. The impact of such constructions on vegetation struc-tures and functions has been well documented, especially in respect of linear infrastructures (Laurance & al., 2009). It’s precisely in in order to avoid these ecological impacts that most tribal villages were relocated outside of forest areas many decades ago. This is the case for three of the four villages on which this study focuses, namely Anehole, Kuntu Gudi colony and Palar. While people from Anehole and Kuntu Gudi have been resettled on revenue land and have been given land title, the inhabitants of Palar were moved in 1995 from one forest area to an-other forest area. The Forest Department (FD) now seeks to resettle people from Palar else-where but faces important resistance. The last village, Mutagada Gade, is located deep inside BRT WLS. It is one of the 22 villages not to have been resettled in the 1970’s, when the forest of BRT was declared a WLS. Several infrastructures have been built since then: roads, power lines, schools, dispensaries and even a small hospital, thanks to a series of development pro-jects. For the two settlements located on revenue land, infrastructure development does not have much impact on the forests as such and are in any event officially permitted. However, for the two others, infrastructures which were developed (in BRT) or which are now planned or ex-pected (in Palar) are formally forbidden. Any change or further expansion in these areas is thus subject to conflicts with the forest department and could possibly have a significant impact on forest landscapes due to the fragmentation they can cause. People living outside / nearby the forest do not modify it simply for the infrastructure they require. They also use forest products, and particularly so in an area where agricultural production is rather limited. In all four villages, agriculture represents only a small part of total income. When fields are available, their size is quite limited; the major crops produced are rain fed ragi, beans and maize. Ragi and beans are grown for local consumption while maize is occasionally sold as a commercial crop. In Mutagada Gade (inside BRT WLS), a few families also grow coffee under shade for commercial purposes. The relative importance of those crops for peoples’ livelihoods depends on access to cultivation areas but never exceeds 50% of total income. The balance is generated from external wages and forest products collection. People use forest resources for three different purposes: livestock grazing, Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) collection and firewood collection. Livestock usually consists of either goats, sheep or cows / buffalos whose milk is used for local consumption and which can be sold as and when additional income might be required. Grazing takes place mostly in surrounding villages’ forest areas, with grazing intensity varying according to the availability of other sources of fodder. NTFP collection represents a significant source of income for all families around the forest are-as. It undoubtedly represents a safety net - but can also contributes to over 50% of total family income (Shaanker & al., 2004a; Madegowda & Rao, 2013). The products collected are wide and varied in nature, ranging from honey to mushrooms, broomsticks to soap nuts. Extensive studies have been carried out on NTFP collection in the area in order to determine its economic importance, ecological impact and social organisation (for a synthesis of long term research see Shaanker & al., 2004b). Finally, firewood collection also concerns all four villages. Firewood is collected either for fami-lies’ own use or for commercial purposes, especially in MM Hills where demand is high.


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Palar Annehole Kutu Gudi Colony Mutagada Gadde

Cattling Forest grazing tol-erated but few judi-

cial cases

Forest grazing toler-ated

Forest grazing tolerated

Forest grazing tolerated

Firewood Families use Families use

Selling to hostel and temple at MM Hills

Families use Families use

NTFP Families use

Selling on the mar-ket

Families use Selling on the mar-

ket

Families use Selling on the

market

Families use Selling on the

market

Source: field data

Table 2: Forest activities in the four studied villages

Taken together, these activities impact significantly on forest landscapes through their effect on regeneration, plant community size and forest structures, as documented by several publica-tions. Synthetically, the effects can be summarized as follows:

— A decrease in species richness nearby villages; — A decrease of population sizes and regeneration difficulties; — A decrease of the basal area and of the class diameter < 10 cm, leading to a transition from deciduous forests to scrub forests, enhanced by the important development of a so-called “invasive specie”, Lantana Camara, which affect forest structures.

The table 3 below gives a detailed view on the effects of the different activities on each ecologi-cal dimension. The overall consequences are difficult to assess at landscape level for at least two reasons. There are firstly many interactive effects between all these ecosystem dimensions which are not taken into account here on the grounds they are not well known. The same is true for threshold effects, below which different species can probably tolerate various disturbances but above which they are likely to enter into rapid decline. In the case of BRT, Shaanker et al (2004b) have demonstrated that the cumulative effects of these activities did indeed lead to drastic alterations in land cover over the last two decades. More particularly, forest sites close to human settle-ments tend to be more open and less dense (although the cited article does not provide numeri-cal data). If the ecological impact of human activities carried out in forests is already high, environmental-ists against the FRA say, matters will become worse still once the FRA comes to be implement-ed with a significant reduction in biodiversity. Indeed, since prior to the FRA local populations retained only limited rights over forest resources and forest areas, all those activities are either severely controlled or tolerated when carried out informally. Granting extensive rights to collect NTFP, firewood or to settle in the forest, the environmentalists claim, will come to have dramatic


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effects. The following sub-section (2.2) will deal specifically with the theoretical impact of the FRA in such a situation. Forest related activities: Effects on! Fuel wood NTFP collection Forest grazing and fire

Regeneration

• Gradient of dead trees and cut stems around villages (Murali & al., 1996); • Regeneration of NTFP trees is poorer in proximity of the villages (Murali & al., 1996; Shankar & al., 1996; Sinha & Bawa, 2002; Shaanker & al., 2004b); • High sapling mortality (Ganesan & Setty, 2004); • Fire impact negatively fruit production, growth rate, time to maturity, har-vest potential (Hoffmann, 1999; Sinha & Brault, 2005); • Interviewed villagers said they collect between 70 and 80% of NTFP fruits.

Population Size

• Some species are decreasing because of the fuel wood collection (e.g. Phyllanthus indofisheri) (Ticktin & al., 2012); • NTFP overharvesting lead to unsustainable population size (Murali & al., 1996; Shankar & al., 1996; Ganeshaiah & al., 1998; Shankar & al., 1998b; Rao & al., 2001; Ticktin & al., 2012); • Extinction or emigration of animals dependent on specific vegetation cover ((Madhusudan & Mishra, 2003; Karanth & al., 2006); • A decrease of NTFP products in forest is also described by interviewed villagers.

Forest Struc-ture

• Diameter class repartition is affected (Significant decrease (up to 70%) in the class of diameters < 10 cm dbh (Padmini & al., 2001; Shaanker & al., 2004b), NTFP more affected than other species (Murali & al., 1996); • Basal area decreases with extraction level among fuel wood species and fruit trees, leading to a degradation from deciduous forest to scrub forest (Shankar & al., 1998b) • Fire enhances Lantana Camara germination (Sundaram & Hiremath, 2012); • Villagers interviewed said that lantana cover the trees, stopping their growth.

Diversity

• Decrease in species richness (Shannon Index) nearby the villages (Shaanker & al., 2004b); • Constraints on reproduction (Gene flow and mating) (Namkoong & al., 1996) with change in allele frequency and genetic differentiation of popula-tions exposed to the most disturbance (Shaanker & al., 2004b); • Tree cutting creates isolated populations (Rao & al., 2007, 2008); • Removing Lantana increases native species recruitment and richness (Sundaram & Hiremath, 2012); • Herbivory / cattle grazing facilitate invasion by Lantana (Sundaram & Hiremath, 2012).

Table 3: Linking rural livelihoods to their ecological impacts


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3.2 Potential impact of FRA implementation from a formal point of view

Simply put, the FRA is designed to endow forest people with two types of rights under article 3.1 of the act. An individual right (art. 3.1.a) is “the right to hold and live in the forest land under the individual or common occupation for habitation or for self-cultivation for livelihood by a member or members of a forest dwelling Scheduled Tribe or other traditional forest dwellers”. Communi-ty rights (3.1.b to 3.1.i) include rights to collect NTFP, fish or graze on land recognized as col-lectively possessed, the right to convert forest villages to revenue land villages, and the intellec-tual property of the biodiversity existing in these areas. Article 3.2 of the act also states that the Central Government shall provide for diversion of forest land for [different] facilities managed by the Government, such as roads, schools, hospitals, electric and telecommunication lines, storage tanks and other minor water bodies, drinking wa-ter supply and water pipelines (and so on), provided that such diversion of forest land does not exceed 1 ha in each case and does not involve felling more than 75 trees / hectare. In respect of the rules issued in 2008, a strict enforcement of the law could lead to the following changes in the above-described activities:

— under article 3.1.a on individual rights: a possible extension of human settlements and a possible extension of areas under cultivation or an intensification of cultivation practices; — under article 3.1.b, c, d on community rights: an increase in grazing pressure, NTFP and firewood collection, both spatially and temporally; — under article 3.1.h: the conversion of Palar and Mutugada Gade from forest villages to revenue land villages and when take in conjunction with article 3.1.a, a possible extension of human settlements; — under article 3.2: the development of infrastructures in these settlements such as roads, power lines. It should also be noted, however, that in Mutugada Gade most of the required facilities are already in place. As such the implementation of article 3.2 is likely to make little impact.

Given the fact that all of these activities impact upon ecosystems, as previously described, im-plementing the FRA could indeed have a far-reaching impact on forest landscapes However, the current picture in the four sites studied of Chamarajanagar is slightly different. So to really understand how the FRA has affected human practices related to forest ecosystems – and then the ecosystems themselves – one needs to go beyond a solely formal analysis. That is precisely what is proposed in the following sections, starting from a proper analysis of the action system underlying current practices to understand then how the implementation of the FRA has affected this action system and subsequently practices linked to forests.

4. The regulation of the action system underlying forest uses / disturbances

In this section we will shed light on the action system which allows for forest practices not only to continue but occasionally to thrive.

4.1 Forest tribes depend on forest resources with little alternatives and few benefits from sustained demand for most products

Two major factors explain the continuous — even growing — exploitation of fuelwood and NTFP in the two studied areas. One is their relatively low substitutability for local livelihoods, that is to say the fact that local populations depend on it without next to nothing by way of alter-


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natives. Another is the fact that the commercial demand for NTFP and even fuelwood (in MM Hills) is constant and even growing. As stated above, NTFP collection represents a safety net for all families. It can contribute to up to 60% of their income. In such a context, few economic alternatives exist to replace this re-source, even if there are significant differences between MM Hills and BRT Hills (Shaanker & al., 2004a). In MM Hills, NTFP collection mostly represents an additional source of income for fami-lies, and the majority do not directly depend upon it. Its a rather different story, however, in BRT Hills, as clearly illustrated by a recent study carried out by C. Madegowda and C. Raho. They demonstrated that a ban on NTFP collection in BRT WLS in 2006 led more than 30% of families to send at least one person in search for outside wages in other districts (Madegowda & Rao, 2013: 110), while 99% of the total population were economically affected by the ban. The same applies for firewood collection, which is used mainly for domestic consumption and for which no satisfactory alternative currently exists (Shankar & al., 1998a). Gas stoves are available but most families prefer not to use them, either because they are too expensive or because they are simply not used to them – often it’s a question of both:

“FD asked us to use gas. But no one uses gas. (…) The FD sold one bottle of gas to every house so that they wouldn’t go and collect the fuel wood. But the people don’t continue using it. People had to pay 2000 rupees to the FD for their first bottle. Then you refill with 500 rupees. (…) Gas is not good, because of the cost and there is a danger: kids sometimes interfere and try to tamper with the bottle…” (elderly lady in Palar, February 2014).

Concerning NTFP collection, there is sustained commercial demand for honey, ambla and gooseberry, all of which are sought after both locally and nationally. In effect everything collect-ed is easily sold, via different systems of intermediaries or cooperatives which we will set out below. In respect of MM Hills, the local demand for fuelwood is also increasing due to the de-velopment of religious pilgrimages which take place in the area. Restaurants and temples are similarly significant consumers of fuelwood and their number is similarly increasing year on year.

4.2 The Forest Department attempts to control all forest-related activities

NTFP and firewood collection are two activities subject to the control of the Forest Department. The FD is in charge of implementing the two main pieces of legislation relating to forest and protected areas, namely the 1927 Indian Forest Act and the 1972 Wildlife Protection Act (WPA)7. In the two studied areas, a Reserved Forest and a Wildlife Sanctuary, most human activities are thus entirely prohibited. A few can be carried out but only under the strict control of the FD: sheep and cow grazing and firewood collection for domestic purposes are allowed in both for-ests while NTFP collection is allowed in MM Hills but only tolerated in BRT Hills. We will show that the FD uses several techniques to control these activities but that its efficacy is limited by its poor overall organisation.

4.2.1 The FD deploys diverse means to control human activities

The first means employed by the FD to limit human activities in these areas was simple and straightforward - they removed the people. This is precisely what happened in BRT Hills in 1974, when the forest was declared a WLS. Two thirds of the settlements inside the forest were relo-cated outside. 22 villages remained as per the FD interest, but were moved within the forests8:

7 Both acts were recently amended but these amendments brought only marginal changes, except for the case of the 2006 amendment of the WPA. This latter defines the Tiger Reserve. 8 Surprinsingly, Lasgorceix and Kothari (2009) did not mention the case of BRT in their review paper about relocation of Protected Areas in India.


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“At that time [in 1974, when the area was declared as a Wildlife Sanctuary] 22 settlements […] were only shifted to the road side inside the park. […] They were allowed to stay because they were working as labor for the FD” (tribal leader, February 2014).

The same happened in some parts of MM Hills in the mid 1990’s. People who now live in Palar were moved there in 1995. Since then, the FD has been attempting to move them again to an-other place. But in this endeavour they were unsuccessful - until the enactment of the FRA. All forest areas are also kept under strict surveillance; guards patrol both day and night. They are on the lookout for illegal activities such as timber harvesting, goat grazing, firewood collec-tion for commercial purposes and hunting. If people are caught carrying out such activities, the FD can arrest them, fine them and, in some cases, have them sent to jail. The illegal products are seized and destroyed. The FD also attempts to control those human activities which are allowed, either formally or informally. This is particularly the case in respect of NTFP collection. NTFP collection by sched-ule tribes is allowed for both commercial and domestic purposes in protected and reserved for-ests, but formally forbidden for commercial purposes in protected areas by the WPA 1972. It was, however, tolerated in most Protected Areas (PAs), including BRT Hills, until 2006 and is now once again tolerated9. This activity is controlled by the Karnataka Forest Department, main-ly through the so-called Large Adivasis Multi Purposes Society, or LAMPs10. These organiza-tions were created in the 1970’s in order to fulfil three main objectives:

— controlling NTFP collection and, as such, ensuring its sustainability; — providing a legal income for most tribal people interested in NTFP collection; — contributing to local / collective development through profit sharing and the provision of different services to their members, such as the distribution of rationed goods, the sale of subsidized agricultural inputs and the provision of credit to members.

The studied area is covered by several LAMPS created during the 1980’s and 1990’s, each managing the collect in one or two forest ranges (a range is an administrative / management unit for the FD). Through the LAMPS organisation, the FD can control three main parameters related to NTFP collection: who are the collectors, how much of each product is collected, and how much is sold. While this system has been designed to ensure sustainable NTFP collection, it has nevertheless been unable to prevent the overharvesting of many species, as reported by Shaanker & al (2004b). This is for at least two reasons, both related to the FD internal organisa-tion and functioning: the proximity between forest department field staff and the local population, and the relative disconnection between FD officers and FD field staff. One forest officer is appointed as a member of the LAMPS’ board, usually the Assistant Con-servator of Forest. He participates in the establishment of the membership list of the LAMPS,

9 In 2000, the Supreme Court of India declared a strict ban on NTFP collection in application of the WPA 1972, which was soon followed by the enactment of the Wildlife (Amendment) Act 2002. This ban was implemented formally in BRT Hills in 2006 after several discussions, with major consequences (see Madegowda & Rao, 2013). However, the imple-mentation of the FRA brought many changes in the current situation, which will be analysed in detail in the following section. 10 The situation was actually different in the two studied areas: while in BRT Hills, products can only be sold through the LAMPS, in MM Hills there are at least three options. One is to sell via the LAMPS. Another is to collect and sell products through another FD-controlled organisation, the Village Forest Committee (VFC) - created to manage specific forest areas. A final option is to work for a tender which has bought the right to collect a certain amount of product to the FD. According to Shaanker & al. (2004a), the commercialisation through tenders is by far the most important in MM Hills, with drastic consequences on the collect practices, although our interviews failed to reveal such a predominance of the tender system. NTFP collection through VFCs or a tender system share two characteristics: they allow for non tribal people to collect NTFP and they do not redistribute collective benefits through development actions such as LAMPs. Despite this, we will not make specific cases of these two systems in what follows as they have a major common point with the LAMPS: all three systems are ways for the FD to manage / control NTFP collection on a formal / legal basis and thus to control a major source of income for local people as well as the pressure exerted on forest ecosystems. Practically,however, the control is far less important, as it will be shown below.


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which specifies who is allowed to collect. He is also in charge of processing LAMPS applica-tions in order to receive a collection permit. If the application is accepted, a lease is given to a LAMPS, for a given product on a given area. The FD also fixes the price for each product. LAMPS members then collect the defined products which they sell to the LAMPS through local agents at the “collector price” (the price to be paid to the tribal collector) as decided by the LAMPS. For its part, FD field staff are in charge of controlling (i) the collectors’ identity, according to the membership list validated by the forest officer and (ii) the areas from where NTFP are fetched and (iii) the quantities collected. If a person is found collecting NTFP in the forest, guards have first to establish that he is indeed collecting “the right product at the right place”. They are also to ask for their LAMPS membership card they have received from the board and which they should be carrying with them in the event that collectors are at the wrong place or collecting the wrong product, or if they can’t provide their membership card, the guards are obliged to seize the products and issue fines on the spot. The quantities collected are controlled through weigh-ing at check posts by forest guards, when collectors leave the forest in order to sell their prod-ucts to agents. Because of the two reasons abovementioned — relative disconnection with officers and im-portant proximity with the local population — the FD field staff do not, however, strictly enforce these rules. A rapid description of the FD’s organisation and structure is now required to under-stand how such a set of circumstances came to exist.

4.2.2 These means are implemented through a rigid organisation which diminishes efficiency

In general terms the FD can be viewed as a relatively rigid, vertical and hierarchical organisa-tion. This vertical organisation has a spatial expression as presented in figure XX below: the higher an agent is in the hierarchy, the greater the area under his control.

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Figure 5: Structure of the Karnataka Forest Department

From the bottom to the top, each agent has to report to his superior, from whom he also re-ceives orders which he in turn has to pass on to the lower agents. At the lowest level are the watchers and forest guards. Most watchers are Soligas; hired for their knowledge of the forest, but not permanent workers and devoid of any responsibility. Guards are engaged on a perma-


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nent basis but are also mostly local people and hold nearly the same hierarchical position as watchers. They have to report to a Deputy Range Forest Officer (DRFO), who himself reports to and receives his orders from a Range Forest Officer (RFO). Watchers, guards and DRFO are those we refer as “FD field staff”. We refer to agents holding positions from Range Forest Of-ficer to Principal Chief Conservator as “FD officers”. The Range Forest Officer therefore holds a midway position between those two categories, being partly in the field and partly in the office. The main task of the FD field staff is to patrol the forest to see if anything improper has occurred but then, most especially, to report it to the RFO.

“I just take care of the forest. Some area of the forest is under my control and I have to see if trees are not being destroyed and if the animals are not being killed and if there are hunters. I just watch-ing. […] And I have to make sure that none of the trees are felled. If I see animals I have to issue a report saying if it male or a female, what time I’ve seen the animal, and in which part of the forest. I have to provide a daily report” (a watcher, February 2014). “Every morning all he watchers have to come here. It’s like a class. At 6.00 am. 4 watchers, 3 guards, 3 permanent government appointed watchers, under me. […] I will go along with them sometimes. But if I have other work, they will go. They will watch everything and report to me, what is going on, etc… And I will report it to the RFO” (A deputy Range Officer, February 2014).

The RFO will then gather the different reports he has received from the different DRFO he manages and then pass them on to the Assistant conservator of forest, who will gather… etc. The counterside of this system of reporting is sanctions: if a field staff member omits something in his report which later comes to have consequences, he can be severely punished:

“If we go in the forest, and we don't see something, like we don't see a dead elephant because we took a different road. And maybe in that road, a more senior officer will know what has takenplace. And he will say ‘why you didn't say, and why you didn't watch?’. And immediately they will take 2 days of salary and the increments. […] During the first 2 years, if we were punished, we could actu-ally be fired. […] Once you are a permanent member of staff though they will still remove our in-crements and can even suspend salaries for anything up to 6 months” (a DRFO).,

The consequence of this situation is that field staff are often more focused on avoiding punish-ment than on the conservation of the forest. As such, little information outside pure reporting is actually shared and forest monitoring is eclipsed by the focus on the control. FD field staff seem similarly disinterested in the way products are fetched: how much and where, or their conse-quences on plant populations. This is precisely why ATREE, an environmental NGO, attempted to establish a participatory resources monitoring system, as reported in (Setty & al., 2008). But the tensions between field workers and officers also combines with the proximity between guards and villages, which is far closer than many forest officers might have come to expect, resulting in many local understandings regarding official rules. More particularly, collectors often manage to find compromises with the field staff whereas negotiation is all but impossible with officers:

“We are not allowed to collect in the forest, but we keep going anyway. So we have to hide. But we have good relationships with the guards. If the RFO comes, we have problem, but otherwise it’s ok and we can go. The RFO keeps roaming in the forest. If we are caught, we won’t be fine though, the FD will simply say “tomorrow you’re not allowed”, and goof they go again. No punishment” (farmer, February 2014).

More generally speaking, control is rather flexible thanks to the arrangements that the local population and the FD field staff manage to establish between themselves. Both parties can exchange different kinds of services, depending on the situation. This can sometimes be pecu-niary or in nature, as reported below:

“Before going to the forest the FD tell them not to collect 100%. Be aware of it and collect only 80%. If they find someone who collected 100%, the guards who are watching – well, they just go to the FD and inform FD. FD is going to inform the LAMPS and in the meeting it will be discussed. […] But they don’t issue any punishment” (A LAMPS secretary, February 2014).


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“At weighing time, the FD comes and gets money from the tenderer. […] That is “illegal communi-cation”. Thanks to that the community can collect more. If there is too much collect, [the FD] don’t say anything because of this “illegal communication” thing” (a LAMPS secretary, March 2014).

As local guards are often from the same area / village / community as those whom they are supposed to control, both sides often prefer to exchange “services” than to cause conflict and difficulties with one another:

“There is a good relationship between the villagers and FD. If anything bad happens in the forest, if a villager find an unknown person in the forest or anybody dies, or somebody is hunting inside the forest, somebody felling trees, or if there is a forest fire, these people are directly bringing it to the FD. Since these people are helping the FD in such a way, so FD allows them to sell the products directly in the market. But it is just an understanding, it is not actually legal” (a LAMPS secretary, March 2014). “Until now, our village had no rights to collect NTFP from the forest, but still we do it illegally, alt-hough we don’t have rights. We have a good understanding with the FD, because the FD needs our help to watch and control forest fires” (Local leader, March 2014).

This kind of “mutual understanding” between the local population and the FD field staff also applies to most other activities carried out in the forest, such as grazing or house building-wood collection, as reported many times11:

“We have no rights for grazing inside the forest, with goats or cows. Only illegally we go and come in. The local FD men now watch and guard it there, so we have to give yearly some money to them: 1 goat 30 rupees per year” ( farmer, February 2014). “When some people go for the wood for the house, if we know it is for the house, we will fine but leave it off. We will leave him the wood. We give the fine but we don’t get the trees” ( Deputy RFO, March 2014).

The local population is all the more eager on pursuing those practices that control is limited by the lack of enforcement means of the FD:

“The problem is we are only 2 guards for the entire range. There is a lack of staff, because nobody wants to live here, they prefer to work in the cities, like teachers” (forest guard, February 2014).

But the local population not only relies on the mutual understanding it has built with local forest-ers to keep on exploiting the forest. When they are caught and fined, they often benefit from the support of local officials or elected representatives who intercede for them with the FD to have the fine quashed. But more generally, the fact that there are still some people living in the forest is, at least partly, the result of the important work carried out by several organisations to defend tribal rights and promote their social development. And the FD has indeed been trying to re-move many people from the forest on many occasions – from the 1990’s until today, albeit with-out much success. Let us now turn to an analysis of these organisations, how they work and how they interact with both the FD and the local population.

4.3 Forest people benefit from rural development carried out by NGOs, political or-ganisations and administrative bodies which help them to stay in the forest

Given the difficulties of forestry and conservation policies alike, the fact that the Soligas contin-ue to live in the forest or collect products in it can be seen as a consequence of the confusing policy system of Karnataka. While the forestry administration attempts to impose limits on any human activities taking place within the forest12, many social policies are designed to improve

11 More generally, this “mutual understanding” can be found throughout India, as reported for example by Robbins & al (2009). 12 This assertion could be relativized by the fact that the 1988 National Forest Policy specifies that “The life of tribals and other poor living within and near forests revolves around forests. The rights and concessions enjoyed by them should be fully protected. Their domestic requirements of fuelwood, fodder, minor forest produce and construction timber should


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the living conditions of the rural poor, including tribal people. Those social policies are accom-panied by a policy of affirmative action towards ST and the actions of many social development NGOs. We will see how these different actors intervene in the two studied areas and will then show that their actions are impeded by the FD, which constantly attempts to be the sole regula-tory actor within the forested areas.

4.3.1 Rural development actions and their promoters

It is worth noting, from the outset, that there are many sectorial policies targeting rural develop-ment. They deal with almost all aspects, including facilities (power lines, water tanks, roads, house building), rural employment, agricultural development (distribution of improved varieties of seeds and of cattle), education and health, food aid through subsidies or food distribution. Among those policies, those undertaken by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) are more spe-cific to tribal populations and a significant share of the total budget of all other policies must be dedicated to tribal development as per the Tribal Sub Plan. However, very few of these policies are specifically designed to maintain people within the forest. Those implemented by the MoTA even seek to help them to “jump into the mainstream”, as one official chose to put it13:

“For generations they have been oppressed, and now tribal affairs are helping to bring them to the mainstream, which means out of forests, and becoming modern, and organized” (official from the STWO, March 2014).

Despite that, many schemes do impact upon the tribal population of our two studied areas, irre-spective of the fact they are inside (Palar, Mutugada Gade) or outside of the forest (Anéhola, Kuntu Gudi Colony) and some actions do indeed specifically target forest villages:

“[For people in BRT who don’t want to leave the forest] we are providing minimum facilities. We are trying to provide them with solar gates and things like that. Gas we are giving also for cooking pur-poses. And for light we are providing solar lamps” (The District Collector, March 2014).

All these schemes are implemented under the coordination of the district Chief Executive Officer. Some elements are implemented directly by the dedicated administrative bodies. Others are brought to the villagers through the elected bodies, from the Zilla Panchayat to the Gram Pan-chayat. Local elected representatives serve as mediators between the central government and the pop-ulation targeted by public policies. They do this in two ways. One is to advocate at district level for the specific needs of a particular village / area where to implement this particular govern-ment scheme:

“All schemes implemented by departments are government schemes. The Zilla Panchayat will se-lect the area in which these schemes have to be implemented as a matter of priority and will also monitor how the funds are spent” (District Chief Executive Officer, March 2014).

Several schemes are implemented through the Gram Panchayat, such as the Mahtma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme or the Housing Development scheme. The for-mer’s aims are twofold: providing jobs to rural people, who can receive up to 100 days of wages paid at 174 Rs/day and, through the work they do, build basic structures for the local communi-ties in three main areas: the regeneration of water tanks, school ground improvements and the construction of platforms for grain. The Housing Development scheme assists poor people to build their houses by providing important subsidies, up to 40 000 INR/family, but only for those

be the first charge on forest products”. However, the current discourses and practices within the FD are clearly in favour of a rapid eviction of any human presence in most forested areas of India (see for example Sarker, 2011). 13 The situation seems to be very different from one district to another. In the case of Wayanad, in the Kerala State, the MoTA appear to be pushing in favour of “mainstream” tribal development, helping the FD to relocate forest villages outside of forest areas.


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who own the land on which they live. Meaning, of course, that its remit does not concern forest villages. While these actions are well received by local populations, they do not cover all needs. And running in tandem with government schemes, development NGOs were also active in our stud-ied areas. They offer a broad range of services and support to local communities. One can cite, for example, the provision of micro credit for the launch of small business projects or to buy cattle, the creation of income generating projects such as craft centres, the provision of health facilities in the case of BRT Hills with the ONG VGKK. These NGOs also emphasize raising awareness and capacity building, to which they contribute through the creation of Self Help Groups (SHGs) or community based organisations. The NGOs work freely vis-à-vis the admin-istration and can even benefit from their support in some situations, as many officials admit that the administration cannot fulfil the roles of the NGOs.

“Actually, we try to encourage the NGOs because they are closer to people than we are. Most work for tribal development” (District Chief Executive Officer, March 2014). “Myrada is taking support from the government, and in effect the government is working through Myrada” (member of an NGO called Myrada, February 2014).

Given the number of actors involved, coordination between them is challenging. It leads to in-consistency, conflict and delay. in terms of projects. This was all too evident in relation to a pro-ject of toilet construction in Palar, although such confusion actually worked to the villagers’ ad-vantage:

“NABARD (a development bank), through Myrada and then to Self Help Groups, gave 10 000 INR to build toilets in my village. Now the Gram Panchayat is giving 15 000 INR for toilets. So the NAB-ARD want us to give back the money. So we gave back the money but were still able to enjoy the balance of 5 000 INR!” ( villager, March 2014).

Despite such confusion , most rural development actions are greatly appreciated by the majority of beneficiaries14, who express the positive impact on their livelihoods. More specifically, they seem to consider that these types of projects have had a more direct and positive impacts than those carried out by the LAMPS under the FD15:

“The Panchayat brought water and electricity. They use the electricity in the house for free. And the street lights too. The Gram panchayat is the most helpful, the LAMPS is of little help. Every 2-3 months for the last 5 years they had a meeting with the LAMPS. The last 2 years, no meeting, no-body came” (villager, February 2014). “Even if we are getting more profit, the LAMPS does not redistribute it. Some pots were given a long time back, and now there is nothing. Even the pots. We tried very hard but they are not going to give anything any more, even if they make more profit” (villager, March 2014).

This situation is not, however, viewed positively by the FD, which often considers itself as the sole and legitimate actor in or around forest areas.

4.3.2 The FD also seeks to control other rural development activities

As rural development schemes contributing to the maintenance of tribal people inside forested areas are likely to run counters to, or at least partly so, the objectives of the FD — strictly limit-ing human presence inside protected areas — it constantly attempts to control them as much as possible. To do this the FD takes full advantage of its administrative position. For unlike other administrative bodies, which are under the district Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the Forest Department is directly attached to the general head of the district, the District Commissioner,

14 Even if, due to the type of survey we conduced we do not have any statistical figures. 15 It must be kept in mind that there are several LAMP societies working in the studied areas and that all of them do not necessarily work the same. The two quotations below come from two different societies but according to our interviews, the work of the third one seemed to be more appreciated by villagers.


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who is himself above the CEO. As such, the FD has a say on most projects as and when they are planned. But the FD does not only retain a key administrative position. It also has a hold on land tenure. For forest land in India is almost entirely state property and its management is left entirely to the Ministry of Environment and Forest, represented locally by the Forest Departmen-tSo any operations planned in forest areas which might impinge on forest land are subject to its prior approval: a road, a water tank, and indeed any type of construction whatsoever (schools and hospitals for example). If the FD is unable to reject a particular project for legal reasons, it has always the option to delay it:

"The government gave permission in 2010 to build a school, via a 360000 rupees donation. The FD refused it. So it took 3 years to get the permission" ( teacher)

Even if the relationship between the FD and other departments seems to be clearly in favour of the former, the latter can and do resort to legal solutions. This is particularly true in respect of the Tribal welfare office, which is in charge of making sure that the Tribal Sub Plan is imple-mented effectively in all other departments. This plan stipulates that funds and resources have to be reserved accross administrative departments in proportion to the SC/ST population at national, state and local levels, as per the current census data at each respective level. In the case of Chamarajanagar, each department has thus to spend 22.5% of its budget on actions for tribal people, which has also to apply to the FD and thus for the benefit of forest people:

“FD has to fund some projects for tribal people as a certain percentage of their funds is dedicated to them under the Tribal Sub Plan Act” ( officer of the MoTA, March 2014).

In order to make their claim heard in this clearly unfavourable context, and to support rural de-velopment actors in their negotiations with the FD, the tribal populations have developed politi-cal organisations and to which the following sub-section is dedicated.

4.4 An important “tribal network” which lobbies for Soligas

As in many Indian regions, tribal organisations have flourished over the last 20 years both in the studied district and more broadly in Karnataka. As per Kudva (2006), who has extensively de-scribed this movement, we can say that the current situation results from the convergence be-tween local dynamics, initiated by social development NGOs in the late 1980’s, and a national movement that became increasingly effective from the mid 1990’s onward. Soligas tribal leaders are today active in several social and political spheres, from village to state and national level, through various types of organisations. At national level, they participate in the National Adivasi Alliance, in Tribal Joint Action at state level, and are active at all levels from the village to the district through the so-called “Sangha system”. This is at the heart of the entire tribal political organisation of the district and beyond, in the neighbouring ones (especially in Coorg and Mysore). According to Kudva, one can see in the Sanghas a “federated structure that paralleled the state, [while] not linked to any single NGO” (Kudva, 2006, p. 230), even if it was created under NGO’s initiatives. At village level, Sanghas tend to replace he Gram Sabah, and at least to complement it. They seek to bring together local claims to make them heard and taken into account at higher level. People participating in Sanghas are also asked to contribute financially - 50 INR/house. This money is kept at a district level Sangha bank account and then used for actions carried out at different levels. To make sure that local claims are taken into account, tribal leaders involved in the Sanghas have two interrelated means at their disposal. One is to lobby the local government and administrative department. This lobbying is made possible by the presence of tribal people in administrative and elected bodies. Indeed, if many tribal leaders are elected representatives16, they neverthe- 16 In this respect, the Sanghas seem to play an important political role and contribute to the emergence of a political elite amongst the Soligas. Most Sanghas’ leaders also hold other official positions, either in elected or administrative bodies or in NGOs.


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less firstly consider themselves as tribal leaders and, as such, mostly work for the advancement of Soligas’ interests. To ensure that their claims are heard however, tribal leaders often need to go back and forth, from administrative departments to elected representatives and vice versa:

“We have relationships with the 4 categories of the RD (DC, Revenue Inspector, Village Account, and Tashilda). I have connections with everybody. Almost everyday I am in contact with them. […] I have connections with the MoTA. Three members are tribal people at this level, and they are con-sulted when the process is on. We enjoy good relationships, and things are moving fast” (A tribal leader, district level). “Basically, we look at government programs. The government has different programs for tribal de-velopment, like animal husbandry activities, cattle grazing, land distribution, some advantages like agricultural loans and benefits, drinking water, etc… So we identify all these issues in the settle-ments and we have a meeting in the committee and we go and approach the district officer and en-ter into the bureaucracy. And sometimes if nothing happens in the bureaucracy, we will go and ap-proach political leaders” ( tribal leader, state level).

But lobbying alone is often insufficient. The money collected at local level is thus used to organ-ise demonstrations or protests in order to ensure that the Soligas’ claims are heard in the media, as explained by this leader:

“And we know the media people. Sometimes, they also ask us. We carry out lots of protests in Chamaranjanagar. […] We gather more than 2000-3000 people here in Chamaranjanagar. People are coming from different settlements” (tribal leader, district level).

If this political organisation has proven to be effective in respect of many issues, its influence on the Forest Department has remained limited until recently, although the FD is certainly amongst the most important targets for tribal leaders. There are several reasons for this situation, one being that contrary to many other departments, there are no tribal people in any senior posi-tions whatsoever. Another is likely to be linked to the administrative position of the FD, which is quite isolated from other departments and in a position of relative superiority over them. Despite this tribal organisations have managed to obtain some positive outcomes during their negotia-tions with the FD, the most remarkable being their apparent ability to “neutralise” the ban on NTFP collection when it came into effect in 2006:

“After 2004 to 2006, they allowed it. One of the ACF was supportive of the community, he said to the PCCF: ‘The Solegas are using MFP only for bona fide uses and self-consumption. So you should give them a clearance’. […] Then, a new DCF came. He was tough. In 2006, he stopped the collection of MFP. So then we again started to protest, approaching political parties. […] After that a new DCF came [in 2009]. He's a good person. He said "Ok, you can collect the honey." Informally. […] We had lots of interactions with him, and finally he told us ‘Ok. Some areas are reserved forest. In WLS, you can’t collect. But there's a reserved forest area nearby the WLS. So we will give you the pass and you will say the products come from the reserved forest.’ There is an understanding” (tribal leader, state level, February 2014).

It is precisely the influence the tribal organisations can exert on the Forest Department which has been the most altered by the implementation of the FRA, as we will demonstrate in the fol-lowing section. But prior to that let us provide a short synthesis of the main findings of this sec-tion, which was to shed light on the social processes underlying the two main activities affecting forest landscapes, namely the use / collection of forest products for domestic and commercial purposes and the development of infrastructure and the artificialisation to which it leads.

4.5 Preliminary conclusion: the action system underlying human activities affecting the landscape prior to FRA implementation.

On the one hand, the development of infrastructures, the growth of human settlements and the construction of diverse facilities mainly results from the balance of power between the FD —


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mainly its political direction — and a broad set of actors consisting of development NGOs, de-partments dealing with rural development and tribal political organisations. While the depart-ments working on rural development can not be categorised as strong supporters of tribal de-velopment (apart from the TWO), they are certainly not opposed to it. Moreover, the different schemes they implement benefit most forest inhabitants, helping them to boost their incomes and livelihoods and thus able to remain in the forest, and sometimes even contribute to the de-velopment of facilities inside of the forest. On the other hand, maintaining the use of forest products stems from both the political and local interactions taking place between the FD field staff and local villagers. At a political level, the tribal organisations have proved to be strong enough to successfully negotiate with the FD to the point of being able to suspend the ban on NTFP collection in 2006. In conjunction with these highly political negotiations, villagers interact on a daily basis with forest field workers and have come to a mutual understanding with them. Thanks to their proximity / interdependency and to the relative autonomy of the FD field workers vis a vis their hierarchy, the villagers continue to use and collect forest products even if they themselves consider it has adverse effects on forest ecosystems. The overall action system is structured by the balance of power between the FD officers and the “pro-tribal” coalition, with FD field workers and “simple” villagers being at least partially margin-alized. The following figure summarises these findings. The red arrows represent conflictual relation-ships while the green refer to cooperative interactions.

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Figure 6: The action system prior to the FRA implementation

In the following section we will show how this action system eventually came to be affected by the implementation of the FRA. We will then attempt to shed light on its consequences on land-scape dynamics.

5. Consequences of the implementation of the FRA: little change in the action system underlying forest uses and on forest landscapes

The FRA was enacted in 2006 and its application rules in 2008 as a result of a long social struggle which has been well documented elsewhere (Springate-Baginski & al., 2009). There-fore we will not present its findings in any great detail here. Still, there are two key points to be


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made in this respect. Firstly, the Adivasi social movement to which we referred in the previous section, and resulting from both national and numerous local dynamics, played a major role in the passing of the act, as demonstrated by (Kudva, 2006; Kumar & Kerr, 2012). Secondly, it has also been well documented that the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), on which the FD depends, went out of its way to prevent its adoption and, once passed, to delay and hinder its implementation (Springate-Baginski & al., 2009; Gopinath Reddy & al., 2011). This deliberate obstruction was carried out in the name of a conservationist philosophy relying on three main pillars, as presented by Lainé (2014). The first argument was ecological. It rests on different ecological theories to assert that man and wildlife cannot coexist in the same area17. A second argument was empirical: to date, its advocates contend that the conservationist approach has been the only one allowing for the conservation of ecological assets. A third argument was “social”. A strict conservationist ap-proach is said to be the key for the “modernisation” of forest people, the way through which they will be able to “jump into the mainstream” thanks to their relocation outside the forest. In the case of Chamarajanagar, we will demonstrate that the FD effectively opposed the imple-mentation of the FRA by various means: by obstructing the process of implementation itself as much as possible, undoubtedly, but also by taking diverse actions outside of the strict imple-mentation process. We will then show how tribal organisations and the social NGOs mobilised their networks and the new legal resources provided by the enactment of the FRA for the ad-vancement of Soligas’ claims. We will demonstrate that this has resulted a in the action system underlying forest uses. At political level, the opposition between the FD and the “pro-tribes” coalition has come to be reinforced. At field level, the local arrangements between villagers and the field staff are likely to become increasingly challenging in the future due to the increased control exerted by FD officers on their staff and the use of new means of upward accountability.

5.1 Implementing the FRA: between supporting tribal claims and impediments to the process

In general terms people can claim two types of rights through the FRA: individual rights and collective rights. The claiming and attributing processes for both differ slightly but rely on the same official bodies: the Gram Sabah (GS), which is the “traditional” village council recognized by the Gram Panchayat, the Village Forest Rights Act Committee (VFRAC), the sub-divisional level Forest Rights Act Committee (SDLC), and the district Forest Rights Act Committee (DFRAC)18. While the VFRAC consists of 10 to 15 members elected by the GS in its first meet-ing, the SLDC and the DFRAC are chaired by either a sub-divisional officer or the head of the district, and made up of tribal representatives, one representative from the Forest Department and one from the Tribal Welfare Office. Claims have first to be registered at village level by the Gram Sabah with the help of the Village FRA Committee and the sub-divisional level FRA Committee. Specific documents have to be filled in and provided at this level: a claim form and a map of the area claimed. All claims are then passed on to the District FRA Committee, which examines and eventually accepts or re-jects them19. When rights do come to be granted, a downward procedure through the same channels confirms it to the claimant. In the case of individual rights, it has to be followed by a

17 The scientific basis of this ecological argument have been severely criticized in the case of BRT by Rai (2009) and more widely at Indian level by Kothari. The American origin of this conservationist paradigm and the way it has been reinterpreted in India has been outlined by Lewis (2004). 18 A state level monitoring committee has also been created but is not directly involved in the claims process. Its role is to ensure that the FRA implementation is taking place as it should. 19 For more information on the formal implementation process, one can refersto Rao (2011).


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change in the land status, from forest land to revenue land. This change becomes concrete via the obtention of a RTC. It is hardly surprising that such a complex procedure of rights attribution is difficult to for most villagers to grapple with as it refers to complex administrative mechanisms / rules with which they are not familiar. This is precisely why NGOs and tribal organisations put a good deal of effort to inform them and assist in the submission of claims. Meetings are organised to explain the role of the VFRAC prior to the designation of its members.

“We do workshops with these people [of the Gram Sabah]. Ten leaders from the Sangha come to the village usually and meet the Gram Sabbah. […] But other community members approach us and do the training. We use mainly the leadership of the village and interact with the Gram Sabbah. Usually, 50% of attendance is required at the Gram Sabbah. So not everybody. Based on that we claim.” ( tribal leader).

However, in some cases, local leaders have to work hard to attract people and interest them in the process. In such a context, they sometimes simply gather all the information and fill in the claim for the villagers with them not really understanding the situation at all. Technical support is also brought by NGOs which help to provide maps and any other required documents. When claims are brought to the DFRAC, either individual or collective, tribal organisations and NGOs do their best for these claims to be validated through advocacy and lobbying on DFRAC mem-bers. They make use of the collective organisations they have developed over the years and of their good connections / relationships with the WTO. This background work is all the more im-portant in that, as in many other places in India (see for the case of Orissa Gopinath Reddy & al., 2011; Springate-Baginski & al., 2013), the FRA implementation process is systematically hindered by the FD. Despite the fact that the FD is officially only a member of the different committees – and does not chair it – it often manages to take a decisive stance on the claims. This means that if they are unable to impede it, they might at the very least be able to ensure that delays will come to be the order of the day.:

“Regarding the role of the DCF and the fact he's just a member, how can he have so much power to say "No"? Afterwards the people of the committees have to sign the document. It went very slowly because of the signature of the DCF. […] The Act says that once you collect all the documentation from the vil-lage, then RTC should be given. But since the law is weak, and not all officers are working on it, it always remains pending” (Tribal leader).

This deliberate obstruction to the FRA implementation process is all the more successful in that it is coupled with other actions taken at a broader level.

5.2 Working outside the FRA to limit or favour its implementation: the reinforcement of the opposition between the FD and the pro-tribal coalition

As the FRA is a national policy, the response given by the MoEF has been at the same scale. Thanks to its relative autonomy within the administrative / political system, the Ministry has pushed for the strengthening of protection statuses of forest areas all over India with the obvi-ous aim of hindering the implementation of the FRA. According to Bijoy (2011, p. 37), between November 2007 and January 2008 more than 30 000 ha of Tiger Reserves were classified as “Critical Tiger Habitats” (CTH), a protection status defined by the 2006 amendment of the WPA — also referred to as the “Tiger amendment”20. In and around Chamarajanagar, protection sta-

20 Before the enactment of this amendment, Tiger Reserves were declared across India in application of the Tiger Pro-ject, launched in 1973, but without any legal basis.


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tuses were drastically strengthened in the whole district from 2006 onwards, as illustrated on the map below21.

— 2006: Rajiv Gandhi NP is declared a CTH and Mudumalai WLS a NP; — 2008: Satyamangalam RF is declared a WLS and Mudumalai NP a CTH; — 2011: Satyamangalam WLS is declared a CTH as well as BRT Hills WLS; — 2013: MM Hills RF is declared a WLS; — next step, according to our interviews: MM Hills WLS to be declared a CTH.

The aim of designating forest areas as protected areas and Tiger Reserves is twofold. First, it allows forest villages to be relocated outside the forests through the so-called “relocation scheme”. This relies on the strict conservationist philosophy presented above, according to which co-existence between humans and wildlife is neither possible or desirable. While many people have been ejected from forested / protected areas over the last fifty years in India (Las-gorceix & Kothari, 2009), the 2006 amendment of the WPA provided legal provision for this under the relocation scheme, the benefits of which being asserted through scientific papers (as in Karanth, 2007). Through this scheme, families living inside a protected area are offered a “package” of nearly 10 lacks INR (in both cash and kind, in forms of land, buildings, etc) to move outside. However, relocation is not compulsory: families can either accept or refuse the proposition and cannot be expelled very easily, which is in fact contrary to what the FD often claims:

“[Talking about MM Hills WLS] within one month it will be a tiger reserve here. Then scientists will come to do research in the area. And nobody [will have access to the forest]. We will destroy every building in the forest” (Forest officer).

In the case of BRT Hills, for example, people have refused to move, forcing the FD to provide them with facilities. But to many observers, the aim of the MoEF when issuing the Tiger Amendment in 2006, was not only to be able to relocate people outside the forest. Rather, it was designed to render the implementation of the FRA impossible (Bijoy, 2011). This amendment was indeed introduced immediately after the FRA was enacted. In the case of BRT, the direct consequence of the des-ignation of the area as a CTH was for the FD to oppose the attribution of any rights, as reported by this tribal leader:

“We discussed everything and met the DCF. He told us: ‘Under the FRA, there's no provision for getting rights [in Critical Tiger Habitats]. It means with the Wildlife Protection Act, you can't collect MFP’. So we went directly to the PCCF [principal chief conservator forest, head of the State Forest Department]. We informed the DC [District Collector, head of the district] as well. Telling them: ‘This is a national act, you should apply it’. We sent the letter to the PCCF. He returned the letter, saying ‘No way. You can't do’. This went on for more than 4 years” (Tribal leader).

21 Conservation issues in the Western Ghats, as per the status of the area as a “biodiversity hotspot”, have also led to the constitution of an expert panel on the “Western Ghats Ecology”. Its final report suggested declaring several areas as “Ecosensitive Zones” of different levels in which human activities ought to be reduced, under the Environment Protec-tion Act (1986). Besides the social agitation which resulted from the report released by the panel (see for an account Gadgil, 2014), it seems that the process through which the MoEF designates certain areas as ESZ in Chamarajanagar does not include the consultation of local administrative bodies, as reported by the District Collector himself (head of the district). This again illustrates the relative autonomy and power the FD has vis-à-vis other administrative bodies: “Forest Department has been consulted by the MoEF, not us. Now the state government has taken up this issue, there’s a cabinet sub-committee which has been formed to consider this 10 km buffer zone they mentioned in the ESZ” (The DC, March 2014).


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Figure 7: The evolution of protection statuses in and around Chamarajanagar district


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The success of the operation of impeding the FRA lies behind the legal confusion it creates between the status of Critical Tiger Habitat and that of Critical Wildlife Habitat. If both are de-signed to create “inviolate areas” with respect to human activities, the former is to be declared under the WPA 2006 and, as such, under the sole responsibility of the MoEF, while the latter has to be declared under the FRA. At the time when the Tiger amendment passed, the rules concerning the designation of a CWH under the FRA were still under discussion and, as such, not applicable (Bijoy, 2011, p. 38). When all was said and done the designation of BRT Hills WLS as a CTH was in fact a considerable hindrance for the people to obtain their rights. Aside from these political discussions, the strengthening of conservation statuses also caused FD officers to seek a limit in terms of the number of “local arrangements” between local popula-tions and their field staff. Two recent changes in the FD human resources strategy might indeed bring about changes in such arrangements. One is replacing local guards with foreigners in order to limit the closeness between field staff and villagers and thus the possibility of “under-standings” being arrived at:

“The people used not to have rights but they are doing it anyway [collecting NTFP]. Since we get along with the FD, it is not a problem. Before [the creation of the WLS] the guards were from the surrounding villages and they got along, but now the FD is trying to bring guards from other states to watch illegal goat grazing and prevent understandings between the forest guards and tribals” ( Sangha representative, March 2014).

Another change is to ask for more upward accountability to the field staff by the use of infor-mation technologies. Simply put, the idea is to replace paper-pen reporting, which is by its very nature subjective, with automatic reporting via android and GPS. In order to do this all BRT Hills WLS forest guards were provided with a brand new android / GPS. Coupled with WiFi hubs installed in the WLS, this device enables the DCF to monitor, on a daily basis, the exact route followed by all patrols. Guards are also asked to take pictures whenever they encounter any suspicious / unusual events, while pictures taken are also automatically transferred to the DCF office through the same WiFi hubs. Despite the intense work carried out by the FD with a view to impeding the implementation of the FRA, many families have nevertheless managed to obtain individual rights, with a few vil-lages even obtaining community rights. According to the TWO statistics, the following rights have already been granted at the beginning of 2014 in our two studied areas:

MM Hills BRT Hills

Anehole Palar Kuntu Gudi

Colony Mutugada Gade

Individual Rights

Not applicable (Revenue Land)

49 individual Rights

30 individual rights

45 families (50%) were giv-

en while 50% are waiting

RTC Waiting for RTC Waiting for RTC Waiting for RTC

Community Rights Have asked Have asked

7 community rights after a long struggle.

Table 4: Types and number of rights already attributed in the 4 studied villages

This situation can be explained by the vital work carried out by tribal organisations and their supporting NGOs at a political level to counter that of the Forest Department. This political en-terprise results from the convergence between local initiatives led by the Sangha system and


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local NGOs and a national movement. At district level, local organisations have worked on their own or in coordination with other regional / national organisations through three distinct means, each one complimentary to the other. The first means of action was legal in nature. The organisations involved in Chamarajangar contributed to a national reflection designed to analyse / criticise the proposed implementation guidelines for the CWH and to propose alternatives (Future of Conservation Network, 2011). At a more local level, they also explored the concrete possibilities for the creation of a community based tiger reserve in BRT Hills (Rai, 2013):

“We mention the Community-Based management things but already the Government had notify the Tiger Reserve Area so we can't do anything. They won't take back. So they say, you should pre-pare community based project, so with Biligiri Tiger community-based plan, people should not be removed from the area and should be allowed to do all the activities in the area. And we demand also, whenever you're taking the recruitment for the Tiger Project, you should use tribals. We pro-vide all the facilities in the forest area. So we won't leave. That was the memorandum. We sent the memorandum to the prime minister, through the DC office” (A tribal leader).

To push for a community based management system, local organisations relied on an alterna-tive conservation model to the conservationist one, developed at national level by several scien-tists and which one can refer to as a “wise use model”. Without going into too much detail ( for a complete description see Lainé, 2014), two aspects of this model ought nevertheless to be men-tioned. On the one hand, it assumes that wildlife and humans can indeed co-exist and that, more broadly speaking, human activities should not automatically be seen as disturbances as they can also in fact, in certain circumstances, actually enhance biological diversity. On the other hand, it assumes that tribal people will not embrace a “modern” type of development in-side the forests and will stick to their “traditional” way of life which will in turn limit their impact on ecosystems. This question was widely debated during our interviews. It challenges “develop-ment ideology” (Rist, 1996) according to which all human communities are to follow a similar developmental process and with a view to arriving at a rather similar way of life22. An second way of counterbalancing the FD’s initiatives has been to communicate about the current situation either through direct interventions via the media (press or TV) or through di-verse public interventions, such as protests. Several articles were published in local / regional newspapers by local leaders or locally involved persons, in association with national personali-ties (Kothari & Rai, 2013). The third method has relied on the national adivasi network, established over time, to advocate for the attribution of rights on the basis of successful experiences in other states, such as Orissa.

22 We will return to this topic in the concluding section.


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States

Orissa Kerala Karnataka Number of claims re-

ceived

IFR. 530 849 36 140 165 638

CFR 10 951 1 395 308

Number of titles at-tributed

IFR 321 499 23 163 6 487

ratio 61% 64% 4%

CFR 2 631 4 90

ratio 24% 0% 29%

Extent of land for

which titles have been distributed

IFR 510 925 ? ?

CFR 151 164 ? ?

Total 662 089 32 104 34 856 Average size

of a title (acre) 1,6 1,4 5,3

Table 5: An overview of rights attributed in different Indian states of undue delays in

Karnataka?

Each of these three means of action undoubtedly deserves a more detailed description / analy-sis but which, unfortunately, falls outside the scope of this paper. However, their very existence reveals that the “pro-tribal” coalition, made up of tribal organisations and social NGOs, has clearly been able to mobilise the FRA as a new resource for the advancement of tribal interests. More precisely, it has forced the FD to take them into account and, as such, to recalibrate the complex power relationships linking pro-tribal organisations and the FD. So let us now turn to a summary of our findings in terms of the changes in the action system underlying the use of forest resources.

5.3 FRA implementation has only brought about minor changes in the action sys-tem underlying human activities affecting the landscape

It is certainly worth bearing in mind the fact that prior to the FRA implementation, the social ac-tion system underlying forest human activities was two-tiered: at a political level, the balanced opposition of interests between FD officers and the pro-tribal coalition first allows us to explain the existing but limited development of human settlements in forest areas. On the other hand, maintaining the use of forest products stemmed both from the interaction at this political level, but so too from the local interactions taking place between the FD field staff and the local villag-ers. This action system has not been subject to major changes with FRA implementation. At a politi-cal level, the FRA implementation has consolidated / reinforced the opposition between the FD and the pro-tribal coalition23. On the one hand, the FD uses all the resources it can muster to limit FRA implementation, including controversial and constant interpretations of the law. It is feared that widespread implementation might reduce the control they hold on forest areas. On the other hand, the pro-tribal coalition is keen to implement and act upon the FRA’s many and varied promises. A good deal of time and energy has been put in to understanding and making

23 The evolution of the position of other administrative departments – apart form the FD and the Tribal Welfare Office – would need to be further investigated. We are unfortunately unable to provide with more details at this stage of the research.


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use of legal resources and its application rules can provide. This seems to have led to a pro-gressive disconnection between the tribal leaders and their popular basis, an aspect on which further investigation might well be required. By way of contrast, however, the autonomy enjoyed by FD field staff vis-à-vis the FD officers seems to be call into question by the evolution in the FD management. As a consequence, the local arrangements between FD field staff and local villagers through which this latter group has been able to maintain access to forest resources are likely to be increasingly difficult to establish in the future. Although remaining unreported until now, many villagers fear that that this is likely to happen rather sooner than later:

“They are not supposed to go inside the forest to cut the trees, but when they go and find some dry sticks or dry trees they take it. […] Nowadays they think that soon the Government, the Forest De-partment is going to prohibit these people inside the forest. So at present, this is the way it is going on. But they feel that someday something is going to happen” (A villager).

These developments can be summarised in the following diagram:

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Figure 8: Evolution of the social action system with the implementation of the FRA

Let us now turn to the ecological consequences of such changes.

6. Ecological consequences of FRA implementation: possible impact on the landscape

It is worth reminding ourselves of the possible consequences of FRA implementation as ana-lysed from a formal, legal point of view, as per section 3.2:

— under article 3.1.a on individual rights: a possible extension of human settlements and a possible extension of areas under cultivation or intensification of cultivation practices; — under article 3.1.b, c, d on community rights: an increase in grazing pressure, NTFP and firewood collection, both spatially and temporally;


— 34 —

— under article 3.1.h: the conversion of Palar and Mutugada Gade from forest villages to revenue land villages and a, coupled with article 3.1.a, a possible extension of human set-tlements; — under article 3.2: the development of infrastructures in these settlements such as roads and power lines. It should be noted, however, that in Mutugada Gade, most of the facilities required are already in place. As such, the implementation of article 3.2 is likely not to have much impact.

Given the social dynamics which have followed FRA implementation and presented above, none of the hypothesis lying behind these possible impacts have actually come into being to date:

— RTCs have not been issued and as such no extension of human settlements and no con-version of forest villages to revenue villages; — almost no community rights and, as such, few possibilities to increase NTFP collection, especially given the strengthening of protection statuses and the reinforcement of control over FD field staff; — there has been little demands for facilities under article 3.2.

Beyond this, a rapid overview of the situation at district scale left few uncertainties on the con-sequences article 3.1.a might have in a near future. Indeed, 1516 individual titles have been distributed at district level, for a mere total of some 2500 acres of land (= 1010 ha). From these figures, one can first see that the average surface of land each family has gained from the FRA is less than 1,7 acres, far below the maximum surface authorised by the law, which is 10 acres / family. These figures demonstrate all to clearly that there is no opportunistic claiming of forest land and, most probably, no use of the FRA for clientelism from the elected leaders, as reported by Kashwan (2013, p 621) on the basis of similar figures in other districts. The total surface of forest land given back to tribals also represents less than 0,3 % of the total forested area of the district (which is nearly 270 000 ha), meaning that the final impact is likely to remain relatively low. Concerning article 3.2, - the administrative position of the FD and its negotiation capacity vis-à-vis the revenue department for any topic related to forest land diversion – this would also limit the potential for facilities development. Eventually, the impact of the FRA might remain very limited. This is especially true if compared to other human drivers (Kashwan, 2013) or to other ecological drivers (Sundaram, 2012; Sundaram & al., 2012).

7. Conclusion

Throughout this report we have demonstrated that in the case of Chamarajanagar, the imple-mentation of the FRA is unlikely to lead to drastic changes in terms of human activities impact-ing on forest ecosystems, and thus in the broader forest landscape of the district. Our analysis has led us to broaden the remit of our paper with two concluding remarks. From an empirical point of view first of all. If FRA implementation has not had a significant impact up to now, and if this is likely to remain the case in the near future, the question of the future way of life of tribal people remains uncertain. In this respect the conventional rhetoric of tribal leaders might seem to be rather unconvincing: we will remain in the forest as we are at present and will manage it in a satisfactory manner (see for example, Nagarahole Budakattu Janara Hakkustapana Samithi, 2011). It indeed challenges the widespread notion that “mainstream development” is the one and only path to follow, whereas most actors believe tribals will follow it with probable significant consequences for the forest if they continue to live within it. Hence the controversies related to the FRA and its possible impact on conservation. Up until now, the main proposition to counter this argument has been the establishment of community based conservation, under the 2006


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WPA amendment. This possibility has been theoretically explored by Kashwan (2013) and the likelihood of this actually happening by Kanagavel (2013). While the former ensures that it would be one of the most satisfactory options, the latter presents results demonstrating that few actors involved in forest management today have any confidence at all in such an option. How-ever, such a debate could continue permanently. What is clear, however, is that without practi-cal experience where communities are actually entrusted and empowered to manage their own forests for themselves, then such issues will indeed remain unanswered. Our fieldwork has also enabled us to conclude with a methodological point. While much has been written concerning the ecological consequences of the FRA, by opponents and supporters of the law alike, little can be said via a formal analysis alone. In fact what is required is to go beyond an institutional approach with a view to shedding light on the concrete social processes which stem from the enactment of a law. More broadly though it is worth bearing in mind that a law cannot of itself be the driver of reform. It is only because its passage brings with it re-sources or imposes constraints on specific actors, embedded in social life, that a law might then come to have some impact on social life and, as a consequence of that, on the ecology too.


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8. References

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Foreword and acknowledgements .......................................................................................... 2!1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6!2. Analytical framework ............................................................................................................ 7!3. The study site: practices affecting the forest and how they are likely to be modified by the FRA ...................................................................................................................................... 9!

3.1 Two types of impact on forest landscapes ...................................................................... 12!3.2 Potential impact of FRA implementation from a formal point of view .............................. 15!

4. The regulation of the action system underlying forest uses / disturbances ................ 15!4.1 Forest tribes depend on forest resources with little alternatives and few benefits from sustained demand for most products .................................................................................... 15!4.2 The Forest Department attempts to control all forest-related activities ........................... 16!

4.2.1 The FD deploys diverse means to control human activities ..................................... 16!4.2.2 These means are implemented through a rigid organisation which diminishes efficiency ............................................................................................................................ 18!

4.3 Forest people benefit from rural development carried out by NGOs, political organisations and administrative bodies which help them to stay in the forest ........................................... 20!

4.3.1 Rural development actions and their promoters ....................................................... 21!4.3.2 The FD also seeks to control other rural development activities ............................. 22!

4.4 An important “tribal network” which lobbies for Soligas ................................................... 23!4.5 Preliminary conclusion: the action system underlying human activities affecting the landscape prior to FRA implementation. ............................................................................... 24!

5. Consequences of the implementation of the FRA: little change in the action system underlying forest uses and on forest landscapes ............................................................... 25!

5.1 Implementing the FRA: between supporting tribal claims and impediments to the process .............................................................................................................................................. 26!5.2 Working outside the FRA to limit or favour its implementation: the reinforcement of the opposition between the FD and the pro-tribal coalition ......................................................... 27!5.3 FRA implementation has only brought about minor changes in the action system underlying human activities affecting the landscape ............................................................. 32!

6. Ecological consequences of FRA implementation: possible impact on the landscape .................................................................................................................................................. 33!7. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 34!8. References ........................................................................................................................... 37!List of figures, tables and boxes ........................................................................................... 41!


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List of figures, tables and boxes

Figure 1: Situation of the 7 sites belonging to the Sentinel Landscape Program and of the West-ern Ghats site within this network .......................................................................................... 2!

Figure 2: Interview distribution between the main categories of actors ........................................ 9!Figure 3: Map of Chamarajanagar district and its forest cover ................................................... 10!Figure 4: map of the surveyed areas .......................................................................................... 11!Figure 5: Structure of the Karnataka Forest Department ............................................................ 18!Figure 6: The action system prior to the FRA implementation .................................................... 25!Figure 7: The evolution of protection statuses in and around Chamarajanagar district .............. 29!Figure 8: Evolution of the social action system with the implementation of the FRA .................. 33! Table 1: Comparison of the studied sites according to their main features ................................ 11!Table 2: Forest activities in the four studied villages .................................................................. 13!Table 3: Linking rural livelihoods to their ecological impacts ...................................................... 14!Table 4: Types and number of rights already attributed in the 4 studied villages ....................... 30!Table 5: An overview of rights attributed in different Indian states of undue delays in Karnataka?32!

141114 memoire FRA final - AgroParisTech · 2019. 4. 18. · Final synthesis by Pierre-Marie...

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