TOWARDS PARTICIPATORY CONSERVATION IN INDIA:

TOWARDS PARTICIPATORY CONSERVATION IN INDIA:

National Scenario and Lessons from the Field[1]

Ashish Kothari

Kalpavriksh

5 Shree Dutta Krupa, 908 Deccan Gymkhana, Pune 411004, India

(Ph/fax: 91-20-354239; Email: [email protected])

PART 1: THE NATIONAL SCENARIO

1.1 Introduction

For the last few decades, legal and administrative protection to ecosystems and species has been the main strategy for wildlife conservation in India. The declaration of national parks, sanctuaries, and other categories of protected areas (PAs) under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, has resulted in protecting a large number of areas from certain destruction by commercial, industrial, or biotic forces. Legal protection against hunting and capture, given under the same Act to listed species, has also helped to safeguard threatened and rare species. Related legisation like the Forest (Conservation) Act has also helped to curb diversion of natural habitats for non-conservation purposes.

But increasingly, chinks in the armour of this strategy are being exposed. Public and political support for conservation is falling everywhere, state governments are trigger-happy about sacrificing notified areas for so-called developmental activities, illegal hunting and tree-felling has been hard to curb in many areas, and conflicts between wildlife officials and local people living in and around PAs are getting more common. Several species whose existence had been relatively well-secured over the last 2-3 decades, are once again facing the threat of extinction. It is clear that unless there are significant attempts to respond to such issues, including changes in the policy and legal direction of conservation, wildlife will remain in deep trouble.

A centralised, bureaucracy-dominated approach to conservation is doomed to failure in the new circumstances that India finds itself in. Firstly, new macro-economic policies, responding to the globalisation process that is sweeping the world, are essentially in contradiction to conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. The same government which declares a PA is now willing to sacrifice it at the altar of 'development' and 'economic growth'. Second, a new political dynamic has empowered state parties and governments much more than before, and the central government is unable to wield its environmental clout as before. Third, government controls are generally loosening under the impact of the private corporate sector, both domestic and foreign, which has far more clout to influence policies now than just a few years ago. Fourth, local communities everywhere are no longer willing to take things lying down; they want, and rightly so, a voice in making the decisions that affect their lives. This relates as much to top-down development processes as to conservation measures taken by governments. Privatisation and decentralisation are powerful forces, and they militate against the form of centralised control that conservation and natural resource management has enjoyed over the last century or so.

The conservation movement has yet to organise itself to respond to these new challenges. In a sense, this failure has a lot to do with history: in the past, urban conservationists found favour with a tiny section of the political elite which was sympathetic to wildlife conservation, and able to wield power with state governments. However, little attempt was made to broad-base the movement, so that when the political support at the top ended, conservationists were suddenly left out in the cold. All the conservationists at the Wildlife Institute of India and the Bombay Natural History Society and the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and World Wide Fund for Nature and Sanctuary Magazine and Ranthambhor Foundation and Wildlife First and Kalpavriksh and myriad other organisations, brilliant and dedicated as they are, now find themselves helpless against the forces mentioned above. Urban-based conservation helped India's wildlife to buy time; that time is now running out, and a new orientation is needed if the gains made in the last few decades are to be sustained.

The only thing that can save the conservation movement is to move away from its elitist base to a much broader base of local community members, academics, NGOs, and sensitive government officers. Together, these constituents can defeat the destructive forces engulfing natural habitats; divided, they will be powerless against these forces.

Is this possible? To answer this, I will briefly go into the history and contours of the current situation, below.[2]

1.2 Ignoring People's Needs, Rights, And Knowledge

Conventional conservation policies and programmes in India have been characterised by an amazing ignorance or deliberate neglect of the integral relationship between rural communities and natural habitats. The majority of the country's population still depends directly on natural resources for some or other crucial element of their survival. This is even more true of PAs than elsewhere, for the simple reason that they are predominantly inhabited by highly ecosystem-dependent people. A study by the Indian Institute of Public Administration in the mid and late 1980s revealed that 69% of surveyed PAs had human population living inside, and 64% had rights, leases, or concessions. to extract fuel and fodder, to graze, or to carry out other activities (Kothari et.al. 1989). The situation has not substantially changed, since in the last decade or so not so many people have been moved out of PAs, nor have so many adjacent communities been provided alternatives. A rough extrapolation of the same data suggests that there are at least three million people living inside PAs, and several million more using them from adjacent settlements. Official policy never came to grips with this reality, with the result that legal and administrative structures of restriction and denial of access to resources were imposed on every area which become a PA. While actual displacement of communities has fortunately not been very prevalent, curtailment of rights to resources has been commonplace. Simultaneously, restrictions on hunting (perhaps usually justified from the conservation point of view) have denied communities a means of self-defense against wild animals which attack livestock or humans and damage crops.

As short-sighted was the neglect of the enormous knowledge of ecosystems and wildlife that India's local communities had, and in many cases still have. This knowledge and the associated practices of prudent resource use and conservation, have been documented by several people (Gadgil, Berkes and Folke 1993, Sen 1992, Deeney and Fernandes 1992, Gokhale 1997, Ramakrishnan 1984) and I will not recount them here. One senior wildlife official recently told me that it is not true that such knowledge is neglected, for officials often rely on local people to tell them about plants and animals and ecological factors. However, community knowledge is not merely bits of information which are used when convenient and discarded when not, and which are in any case rarely acknowledged when used (as for instance is happening in the ecodevelopment process in Great Himalayan National Park, see Baviskar 1998). The relevance of traditional knowledge of biological resources needs to be understood in the context of the social and cultural milieu of the community as a whole, and within the context of its relations with its surrounding habitats. Official policy has not given this entire context the respect it deserves; rather, the knowledge and its milieu were considered essentially antithetical to the conservation objective, and therefore even where pieces of traditional knowledge were used in conservation programmes, the community as a whole continued to be alienated from its natural context. Almost never were community members (even the much-celebrated Bishnois, or the Irulas, or other communities which official wildlife pamphlets pay lip-service to) asked to be in any decision-making or planning capacity. As we will see below, this attitude continues to characterise even more progressive official policies of recent times, such as ecodevelopment.

The result of the above aspects of conservation strategy has been the following:

1. Communities, even those which continued to practice sustainable or conservationist resource use, were increasingly alienated from natural habitats, resulting in a break-down of traditional practices, erosion of knowledge, and loss of the desire to protect resources from degradation (the "sarkari tiger" syndrome).

2. Hostility towards official conservation efforts and officials, manifested in a range of responses including: non-cooperation (e.g. during fire incidence or illegal timber cutting incidents); outright violence against officials (e.g. against the former director of the Ranthambhor Tiger Reserve Shri Fateh Singh Rathore); deliberate destruction (including poaching and setting fire to forests); undermining of regulations by obtaining political and other patronage (Saberwal 1998); and demands for denotification of PAs.

What is particularly tragic is that many instances of curbing human uses, and the general prescription to eliminate all human uses (except, for some strange reason, for tourism) from national parks, is based on the mistaken assumption that all such uses are detrimental to biodiversity conservation. Evidence from various parts of the world suggest that limited human use may not only be possible to absorb within ecosystems, but that in many cases it may enhance local biodiversity levels; and indeed that many of the so-called 'pristine' wildlife habitats that we want to preserve in their 'virgin' character (the Amazonian forests, the American prairies, the African savannah, freshwater wetlands in India) actually owe their current levels of diversity partly to a long history of human use (Gomez-Pompa and Kaus 1992, Bush and Colinvaux 1994, Adams and McShane 1992, Arhem 1985, Saberwal 1998); and further, that stoppage of human activities (including grazing and fire) from such ecosystems could actually reduce biodiversity levels and even make the habitat worse for the species sought to be conserved (Ali and Vijayan 1986, Vijayan 1990, Naithani et.al. 1992, Pandey and Singh 1992, all citing cases from India). It would of course be dangerous and foolish to extrapolate from these examples and suggest that all human use is compatible with biodiversity conservation, but surely they do indicate that a blanket policy either way is unscientific and potentially detrimental to conservation objectives.

1.3 Conflicts and Cooperation

The current conservation scenario is confusing in its complexity, making any generalisations hazardous. Look at the following examples:

· In some areas, local villagers/communities are totally rejecting the official concept of PAs and consequently are even willing to sacrifice the forests and wildlife for immediate gains. In Narayan Sarovar Sanctuary of Gujarat (western India), many villagers have welcomed the recent denotification of the sanctuary to make way for a cement factory. Such local communities have invariably realised no benefits from the establishment of the PAs around them. If anything it has only meant livelihood insecurity and lost opportunities because of lack of commercial development. This phenomenon has received a major boost due to the recent haphazard and insensitive processes of settlement of rights that have been launched in all states, as a result of a Supreme Court order in a case that WWF-India is fighting. In Udaipur district, a sarpanch has filed a case asking for the denotification of the Phulwari ki Naal Sanctuary, arguing that the settlement process is violative of his rights.

· Commercial forces are invariably very strong and often influence-industrial states to reverse their own conservation measures. In 1991, the government of the Himalayan state of Himanchal Pradesh denotified the Darlaghat Sanctuary to make way for a cement factory; the same purpose drove Gujarat to denotify the Narayan Sarovar Sanctuary in coastal Kutch. In 1994, Karnataka gave fresh mineral prospecting leases inside the evergreen forest habitat of the Kudremukh National Park. News came in July 1998, that permission had been granted to the Atomic Minerals Division to prospect for uranium inside the Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve.

· In many areas, having realised the critical importance of these resources for their livelihood, and dissatisfied with the Forest Department managing it, the local people on their own or sometimes with the help of sympathetic forest officers or NGOs are struggling to conserve these areas. For instance, in Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, villagers have fought against mining, using the help of forest officials and the Wild Life (Protection) Act and going all the way to the Supreme Court to seek redressal. Inhabitants of two villages in the Alwar district of Rajasthan have declared 1200 hectares of forest as the Bhairodev Dakan 'Sonchuri', promulgated their own set of rules and regulations which allow no hunting, and are zealously protecting the area against any outside encroachments. In Jardhar village of Tehri Garhwal, as in many other settlements of the Western Himalayas, forests and high-altitude pastures have obtained strict protection from the communities associated with the Chipko Movement.

· At several places, bold forest officers and NGOs are also standing in the way of destructive commercial interests. For example, at Radhanagari Sanctuary, part of the evergreen forests of Maharashtra, local forest officers dug up the road leading to a proposed mining site, local NGOs campaigned to get the mining lease cancelled, and a Bombay-based NGO obtained a stay order on further mining. NGOs and politicians have successfully stalled attempts to use the Bhitarkanika Sanctuary in Orissa (home to the world's largest nesting sites of the threatened Olive ridley sea turtle) for trawling jetties.

· Many governments, or individual officers, are realising that either the survival needs of communities must be allowed to be met from PAs, or acceptable alternatives must be provided in place. In Uttar Pradesh, a government order has made it possible for villagers around Rajaji National Park to once again legitimately collect bhabbar grass for rope-making (though the Park management has not been so forthcoming in implementing this); in many states, ecodevelopment activities have offered livelihood opportunities to villagers. In Tamil Nadu, the Kalakad-Mundantharai Tiger Reserve is experimenting with innovative ways of reaching financial and developmental benefits to villagers in the adjacent areas.

While some of these examples show continuation of serious conflicts, others show the existence of significant opportunities for more effective conservation in the future. There are many instances of conflicts being resolved, dialogues opening up new partnerships, communities protecting habitats on their own steam or with support from officials, forest officers entering into informal arrangements with communities for conservation and access to livelihood resources, and so on.

1.4 Why A Change?

At this stage, let us review the major reasons why Indian conservation strategies must change to being far more participatory than they are at present:

1. Substantial dependence for survival and livelihood resources continues in a majority of natural habitats, including most PAs; it is impossible, even if the government had the good intentions, to resettle or provide non-ecosystem based alternatives to the several million people with such dependence;

2. People have a right to the resources on which they have traditionally depended, especially when their access to such resources pre-dates official conservation efforts;

3. The wildlife wing or department continues to be given step-motherly treatment by governments, with serious shortages of funds, humanpower, equipment, and training;

4. Public and political support for conservation has declined considerably, and politicians are unlikely to see the need for change unless a substantial part of their electorate were to demand it;

5. Considerable knowledge and experience about natural habitats and wildlife exists, even now, with traditional communities; this is fast eroding, and needs to be protected, respected, and built on for conservation programmes;

6. Serious new challenges have come from the commercial-industrial world, especially in the 'liberalised', 'globalised' context, and it is only committed partnerships between local people and outside conservationists/officials which is going to be able to face these challenges.

1.5 Ecodevelopment: Is it an Adequate Response?

Wildlife and forest officials have not been blind to the above situation. In the last few years, realisation of the impossibility of saving wildlife in the midst of hostile and hungry humans has grown considerably. Perhaps the single most ambitious official response has been ecodevelopment. Advocated as a strategy even as far back as the National Wildlife Action Plan (1983), ecodevelopment aims at providing alternative livelihood options to villagers, thereby weaning them away from dependence on natural ecosystems. Typical ecodevelopment inputs include employment opportunities like dairying, horticulture, handicrafts, etc., energy saving devices such as more efficient stoves, and market linkages such as roads and transportation. A Central Government scheme has disbursed funds for ecodevelopment to various states since 1990; in addition, the World Bank in association with other groups has funded ecodevelopment in several reserves (notably Great Himalayan National Park and Kalakad-Mundantharai Tiger Reserve over the last four years), and recently approved a Global Environment Facility (GEF) loan to implement ecodevelopment in another 7 PAs.

There is, unfortunately, no systematic account available of the earlier attempts at ecodevelopment. Last year when asked at a Planning Commission committee meeting for any monitoring that had been done of these efforts, only vague answers (such as the number of smokeless chullahs distributed) were forthcoming. Some accounts are available of the work in Great Himalayan Park and Kalakad-Mundantharai. NGO accounts in the former suggest that ecodevelopment inputs (pressure cookers, roads, etc) do not match the requirements of the poorer sections of the villages, and that there is little evidence of the work having benefited the Park (Baviskar 1998). On the other hand, official and donor accounts in the latter suggest that people's livelihood status in many villages has improved, pressure on the PA has come down, and financial management by village committees has been successful (World Bank n.d.; Melkani 1998). The GEF funded project is still too new to judge; officials and some NGOs who worked on it claim that it was built up in a far more consultative manner than previous conservation programmes, while some other NGOs and communities claim that essentially it was still planned in a top-down manner. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

But while it is undoubtedly a serious effort at tackling the conservation-people conflict, and certainly more people-oriented than conventional conservation programmes, ecodevelopment has a great distance to go if it is to become a truly participatory form of conservation. In particular, it will have to confront the following major weaknesses:

1. Since the major objective remains that of reducing people's 'pressure' on natural habitats (with the mistaken assumption that all human activities in the area are necessarily negative), the dominant model is still one of 'separation' or 'exclusion' rather than 'integration' or 'inclusion'. In other words, ecodevelopment advocates would still much rather alienate local communities from the natural habitats which are sought to be officially protected (giving rise to the risk that their stakes in its conservation may actually go down), rather than find ways of integrating their livelihood needs and their traditional practices into the conservation of the area. This could be a short-lived, unsustainable form of gaining people's participation.

2. Ecodevelopment largely restricts itself to peripheries of PAs, or to the immediate surrounds of their settlements within PAs. Though it is sometimes claimed to be a means of involving people in PA management, ecodevelopment is not a model of participatory planning and management of the PA as a whole. Even the new ecodevelopment project, funded by the GEF, separates the "Improved PA management" component (exclusively carried out by existing bureaucracies) from the "Village ecodevelopment" component (which involves villagers in planning and implementation) (World Bank 1996).

3. Ecodevelopment largely limits itself to working within the existing framework of law, essentially the Wild Life Act and related legislation (though some of its proponents, e.g. Kishore Rao of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, do advocate some changes in this framework). Thus even where it talks of only allowing "voluntary displacement" (as directed by the World Bank, which, after its Narmada and other fiascos, is now mortally scared of the charge of forcibly evicting people from their lands), it does not attempt to create the legal and administrative conditions within which people would be able to stay on if they so wished, and be given the powers and responsibilities for effective conservation and sustainable use.

4. There is very little attempt to build on available local community institutions, knowledge, and practices, even though some conceptual documents related to ecodevelopment suggest this as a part of the strategy. Typically (though not always), official agencies have come in asking villagers to create institutional structures in formats pre-determined by the government, and the use of traditional knowledge has been restricted to PRA mapping exercises and building up ethnobiological checklists (see, for instance in the case of Great Himalayan National Park, Baviskar 1998).

5. Though the GEF project talks about 'leveraging' the inputs (including finances) of other government agencies working in and around the identified PAs, available accounts suggest that this has rarely happened. State governments have not bought into the idea, and have therefore made little attempt to reorganise their plans and allocations in such a way that all official agencies would cooperate with wildlife officials in providing conservation-oriented developmental inputs. Indeed, it can be argued that if this was seriously done, it would eliminate the need for World Bank or any other foreign funding, since the amount of money available in various government welfare and developmental schemes is far more than is given by foreign aid agencies.

6. It is not yet clear whether the strategy of diverting people's pressure by providing alternatives does actually help wildlife conservation. Some conservationists have argued that rapid development of the peripheries of PAs could attract many more people from further away to come in, thereby increasing pressure. Even if this does not happen, there is the issue of introducing lifestyle changes which make villagers more like the resource-guzzling consumers that we in our cities have become. Like us, their immediate impact on the nearby ecosystems may decrease, but their indirect impact on ecosystems locally or elsewhere will only increase to unsustainable levels. There is also the danger of making people even more dependent on government or NGO doles rather than encouraging them to become self-reliant. It is not clear whether the ecodevelopment thinking and implementation is seizing on the opportunity of showing the world an alternative development path based on sustainable, self-reliant rural lifestyles.

7. Finally, and perhaps most important, ecodevelopment does not attempt to reverse the historical process of state take-over of community lands, and the common (though not universal) denial of rights and tenurial security over resources for local people. It has taken the important step of involving people in planning the development inputs they want, but these inputs are still predominantly handouts from government, and there is a continued denial of the revival of people's resource rights within and around PAs. Evidence the world over suggests that handouts are not an adequate stake for communities, and that one of the most effective long-term stakes is tenurial security over livelihood resources, with appropriate responsibilities built in.

To be truly participatory, and therefore more sustainable, ecodevelopment needs to build in these elements:

1. A model of conservation which admits (while not taking for granted) the possibility of integrating human uses within conservation values, and evolves alternatives only where this is not possible;

2. The full participation of local communities in the planning and management of the entire conservation area (except remote areas with no human populations or influence, or areas with new populations who are disinterested in conservation);

3. Readiness to question and continuously evolve legal and policy measures to respond to conservation and livelihood requirements;

4. Building on available local knowledge and institutions, supplementing it with formal knowledge and institutional structures from outside where necessary;

5. Re-organisation of local, state, and national planning to coordinate the activities, humanpower, and funds of various government agencies, towards conservation and sustainable resource use;

6. Devising ways to utilise or evolve sustainable livelihoods which can be based largely on local resources (related to Point 1 above);

7. Providing long-term stake in the conservation and sustainable use of habitats and wildlife by reviving resource rights and tenurial systems, with appropriate powers and responsibilities, and suitable checks and balances to avert misuse.

In theory, ecodevelopment could build these elements into its future planning. Indeed, World Bank officials or Indian consultants who have been questioned about their support to ecodevelopment have said that the GEF project has built-in processes of self-correction. However, given that many of the above issues require far more planning, organisation, and re-orientation amongst all stakeholders, it is doubtful that they can be built into a process that is already going ahead full-steam, and where the reigns are still held by the government.

Perhaps it would be possible for these aspects to be built in for future ecodevelopment projects, such as the new one which the Government of India is considering for submission to the GEF (for 40 more PAs). However, if indeed such changes were made, the result would be a very different creature; it would be some form of joint or participatory management of natural habitats and species. That, perhaps, is what many NGOs and community groups are asking for, and what we shall explore in more detail in Section 2 below.

1.6 Towards a New Paradigm

Non-official responses to the crisis facing India's wildlife and the conflicts mentioned above have ranged from an advocacy of more stringent, military-like protection of habitats and species (the 'animal rights' lobbyists), to strident voices arguing that people's rights should prevail over wildlife interests (the 'human rights' lobbyists). Somewhere in between these two extremes has been a group of people who argue that both wildlife and human rights are critical, and that given appropriate changes in attitude and policies, this can well be achieved.

A series of dialogues and other events over the 1990s have helped considerably to build bridges between hitherto warring factions, and this has been further aided by the perception of a common enemy, the rampant 'development' process which bulldozes both natural habitats and local communities. In two successive consultations between wildlife conservationists and social activists (1997 and 1998, at Bhikampura, district Alwar, Rajasthan), a common declaration was adopted, asserting the need to protect both wildlife and human rights, to oppose forcible displacement in the name of conservation, to protect threatened species even against use in traditional practices, and to use other means to both conserve wildlife and ensure sustainable livelihood rights. The plea for joint or participatory management of PAs was strongly made at these and other meetings, as was the appeal to jointly monitor and check poaching, timber smuggling, encroachment, etc.

PART 2: LESSONS FROM THE FIELD:

TOWARDS PARTICIPATORY CONSERVATION

It is one thing to realise and advocate the need for people’s involvement, and quite another to actually make it happen. What are the circumstances, the ground and policy conditions, under which it would work? Is it relevant everywhere, for all habitats and species? What precisely is meant by participatory/joint management, and what processes are needed to achieve it? What are the major hurdles and opportunities in its path?

As group of people affiliated to the Indian Institute of Public Administration and Kalpavriksh, we have carried out a series of case studies, and been involved in work on the ground, relating to people's participation in conservation. While the case studies have been conducted in India, lessons have also been learnt from other countries of South Asia, and currently we are helping to coordinate field studies in Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. In addition, we have been involved in the series of consultations and workshops mentioned above, and in responding to the periodic crises that natural habitats (including PAs) and resident communities face in various parts of India.

This involvement over the last few years, in addition to the experience of a number of other groups and individuals, has provided a number of critical lessons which need to be heeded in our quest for participatory conservation methods. These lessons are described below.

2.1 Research/Information/Monitoring

Despite decades of existence, India's protected area network and other natural habitats remain considerably understudied. Information on several individual areas (including PAs) and many species, is thus severely lacking, and it is no wonder that management is more often than not piecemeal and haphazardly planned.

There are several specific aspects to this:

(i) A historical understanding of the area or species to be conserved is needed. This would include assessment of the changes in ecological conditions, land and water use, political and economic relations, legal status, and other parameters, over at least a brief historical period. Given that these factors have given rise to the current situation of conflicts and opportunities in and around each of the areas, such an understanding is clearly of paramount importance.

More focus on historical research, including the oral history of local community members, is needed. Often information or knowledge of this does exist, but needs to gathered together and analysed adequately.

(ii) An ecological understanding of the area, especially the impacts of various human activities on elements of local biodiversity and on the ecosystem as a whole, is also weak in most areas, especially amongst the managers of PAs. Indeed, on enquiry we have found that the vast majority of management decisions, including those to curb human use, have been done on the basis of assumptions and generalisations, not solid research or evidence from site-specific circumstances. That is perhaps why, research (especially long-term) has often shown these decisions to be mistakes, and to have caused unintended negative consequences. The ban on grazing in some reserves (e.g. Keoladeo National Park and Valley of Flowers National Park; see Ali and Vijayan 1986; Vijayan 1990; Naithani et.al. 1992), the deliberate setting of fire in some circumstances or its complete stoppage in others, are examples of this. One does not thereby deny the role of decision-making on the basis of quick indicators or even intuition, but then conservationists (including wildlife officials) must be willing to constantly put these decisions to test, and agreeable to changing their prescriptions if found to be wrong.

Much greater emphasis on ecological assessments, involving both local people and outside scientists, is needed. Simple and short-term indicators and methods which can be used should be popularised, to supplement long-term and in-depth studies.

(iii) The indigenous/local community knowledge base, where relevant, needs to be built upon in the management of these areas and species, including in the research mentioned above. Understanding of such knowledge (in its full context, as explained in Section 1.2 above) is often very low amongst the officials managing PAs and other areas (with exceptions such as at Melghat Tiger Reserve where Korku tribal knowledge has been studied by forest staff). Even though local communities are rapidly losing their traditions, we have found considerable evidence of the continuation of their knowledge base, especially amongst the elderly members (e.g. in Kailadevi Sanctuary of Rajasthan, Dalma Sanctuary of Bihar, Melghat Tiger Reserve of Maharashtra, tribal and non-tribal communities in many Reserve and Protected Forests of the country, fishing communities in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, and others). Given that we have in our studies only scratched the surface (anthropologists admit that even after years of study, they often do not fully understand the knowledge/practices of a community in its full context), what is potentially available amongst the villagers is probably quite substantial. This knowledge could be critical in better managing the area, especially if more participatory processes have to be built up, though it is not contended by us that this knowledge alone would be adequate for the purpose. But in order for it to be of use, it must first be better understood by the formal sector, respected for its own worth, and protected against misuse (see also below, on benefit-sharing relating to indigenous knowledge). It will require a major educational effort to instil officials of the Forest Department an attitude of learning from local people.

Mutual learning exercises between forest staff, local villagers, and NGOs are urgently needed, especially to understand local and other forms of knowledge in their own contexts, and to use these in synergistic ways.

(iv) Access to available information must be enhanced to all stakeholders. At Kailadevi Sanctuary (Rajasthan), for instance, we found that even the front (ground) staff of the Forest Department was ignorant about the nature of the massive ecodevelopment plan that had been launched for the PA; and the villagers had simply not heard of it. And it is not only governmental information which is thus not accessible; in the case of Dalma Sanctuary (Bihar), we found that a detailed study on the elephant conducted in the Sanctuary by the Bombay Natural History Society, was not available with the officials in charge of the area. We finally obtained a copy and sent it to them! Moreover, what little information exist for most such areas, is often in English or the state language, and therefore often inaccessible to the local villagers.

A system of sharing all information, especially amongst the various stakeholders, is urgently needed; there is no justification for any governmental or NGO document being withheld from the public.

There needs also to be greater networking and sharing of information amongst personnel managing protected and other areas, especially those who could learn from each other’s experiences. Exchange visits of personnel and community members would be one effective medium of such sharing. Relevant management plans, research reports, and other documents from one conservation area should also be more easily available to another area than is currently the case.

(v) Universal acceptance of available information has to be attempted. This is currently absent. For instance, Gujjars and NGOs working in Rajaji refuse to accept the official figure of the number of sedentary and migratory Gujjars in the area, while officials scorn NGO figures. Very often, even formal ecological research by independent people has not been accepted by wildlife managers, resulting in valuable data being left unused. The process of negotiation between stakeholders in Rajaji, currently underway, includes some such research (Rathore 1997), and will hopefully yield data which are more universally acceptable.

There is a need for a participatory method of conducting research and investigation, which would yield information which is acceptable to all.

(vi) Monitoring of ecological and social parameters in and around conservation areas and relating to protected species needs to be instituted as a systematic management activity. It is very weakly developed in India's protected areas (not to speak of other areas of conservation significance), with the exception of the periodic census of some animal species in PAs, some biodiversity monitoring (such as in a few PAs in Maharashtra), and some ecological monitoring in ecosystems outside PAs (e.g. some JFM areas). What this means is also that we have only rough indicators of whether or not conservation programmes are being successful; we know that tiger and elephant populations have gone up (or at least had till this decade), but we do not know if in the process some other lesser known species may have declined or increased in the same habitat. In Dalma, Kailadevi, Rajaji, and many other PAs, some mega‑species are annually counted, but there is virtually no other monitoring. Even many externally aided ecodevelopment programmes have this weakness; some attempts are being made to plug it in the new GEF-funded project, but it is too early to tell their effectivity. With an inadequate database, it will in any case be difficult to judge the impact of management and ecodevelopment plans. Such monitoring should assess the impacts of human activities and management strategies on the ecological status of the PA and surrounds, and on the social and economic conditions of the local communities. Advocates of community participation in conservation also, of course, need to build in such monitoring, to ensure that the switch to community controls does not endanger the ecological status of the area.

Long-term monitoring and evaluation programmes need to be instituted in conservation areas. However, since such comprehensive monitoring may be unrealistic in many immediate situations, there is an urgent need for some good qualitative and quantitative indicators (including some that may emerge from local knowledge) to be used, and for simple monitoring procedures with local community involvement to be put into place.

2.2 Stakeholder Dialogue

A basic problem plaguing India's conservation programmes seems to be the absence of any form of dialogue among the various stakeholders, and in particular between wildlife authorities and local communities. What little interaction that exists, is strongly one‑sided, with the Forest Department being dominant; or else it is confrontationist. The result is that each group is rather misinformed about the others' positions and justifications and circumstances. For instance, many officials are sharply critical of traditional resource uses of villagers, and do not understand the cultural significance of the event; on the other hand, villagers universally label the Forest Department as corrupt and inefficient, and are not fully conversant of the pressures under which Department staff has to work.

Regular and open dialogue, with neither side assuming the position of supremacy, could considerably ease tensions between wildlife officials and local communities. This has become clear from the experiments at achieving a more participatory process going on in various places, whether initiated by officials, NGOs, or community members: Rajaji National Park (Rathore 1997), Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (Melkani and Venkatesh 1998), Kailadevi Sanctuary (Das 1997), Dalma Sanctuary (Christopher 1997), dozens of JFM areas (Poffenberger and McGean 1996). By no means, however, is this process a panacea, since there are also deep differences in attitudes and motivations which cannot be resolved only through talking...but at least talking and listening is the first step towards such resolution.

Clearly, forums for such dialogue, both informal and formal, are amongst the earliest steps that need to be taken in each of India's protected areas where conflicts are taking place. It must also be stressed that the dialogue should be consciously open to all stakeholders (with an appropriately special focus on resource users and conservers, especially local communities), and should not be a mere formality that government agencies go through because a donor requires it.

2.3 Institutional Structures

Current centralised, top‑heavy institutional structures for conservation of natural habitats and species, are clearly unable to fulfil their responsibility for reasons mentioned in Section 1 above. Serious changes in this system have already been made with reference to forest lands under JFM (Poffenberger and McGean 1996), or village lands in the case of some ecodevelopment projects (e.g. Kalakad-Mundantharai Tiger Reserve, see World Bank n.d.). However, there is still considerable resistance to such changes in the case of standing forests (especially Reserve Forests), PAs, and protected wetlands or marine areas. Some changes are beginning even here; e.g. the Forest Department has recognised Van Suraksha Samitis in Kailadevi Sanctuary. Several different aspects of the present conservation effort are striking:

(i) Far more openness is needed in the official system to recognise existing institutions amongst local communities, and strengthen them towards meeting the needs of conservation and livelihood security. In the case of Dalma and Kailadevi Sanctuaries, for instance, there are extremely innovative structures established by the villagers in the form of Forest Protection Committees, which are obvious candidates for devolving management functions such as patrolling, fire prevention and control, and catching or reporting offenders. To some extent, the Forest Department appears to recognise this, but it also lacks the flexibility to allow for local variations in the structure and functioning of these bodies. So in Kailadevi, it has started its own Van Suraksha Samitis, which (with a single exception) appear to work less effectively than the villager-initiated Forest Protection Committees (Das 1997). In Dalma, as in many other areas under ecodevelopment or other schemes, the Forest Department has started or proposes to start Ecodevelopment Committees, since it feels that this is the only structure permitted under current government programmes and laws. Unfortunately, such government-initiated institutions have to confirm to uniform guidelines and format (e.g. having a forest officer as a major functionary), which may or may not suit the local conditions.

A potentially powerful opportunity for utilising local institutions for conservation and resource management, is the 73^rd Constitutional Amendment related to panchayati raj bodies. In particular, the extension of this amendment to Scheduled (tribal) Areas through a specific enactment in 1996, has opened up the possibility of devolving more resource controls to communities while ensuring conservation responsibility and accountability. It is not yet clear how the provisions of these enactments relate to PAs or other government lands such as Reserve Forests, but certainly they can be used to promote community-based conservation. By the same token, they can also be used by vested interests to subvert conservation programmes, so it would be well worth the while of conservationists to study and utilise its potential before the enemies of wildlife do so.

There is a need to understand existing community structures much better, and to build on their diversity and strengths as far as possible rather than displacing them with new, uniformly structured institutions. The recent constitutional and legal changes decentralising decision-making functions to village-level bodies can be creatively used, though they also have the potential of creating great damage if misused.

(ii) To involve people at more than their village scale, there is a need for institutional structures covering the entire conservation area or substantial parts of it. At the moment, even where village-level committees have been set up under JFM or ecodevelopment schemes, the overall management of the conservation unit or protected area remains exclusively in the hands of a government agency, with no formal involvement of the local communities. While an immediate change in such a process may not be feasible, as a first step, advisory bodies comprising various stakeholders should be established for each of these PAs. This proposal has already found partial acceptance in the draft new Wild Life (Protection) Act which is currently under consideration by the Central Government; it provides for advisory bodies in the case of sanctuaries.

Eventually, however, there needs to be a gradual shift towards joint or participatory management institutions, which involve the Forest Department and local communities as equal partners in decision-making and implementation. These would, of course, only be relevant where local communities have a substantial stake in the conservation and/or sustainable use of the area or species in question. We have even suggested such a joint structure for the ongoing procedure of settling people's rights, which is being urgently and rather haphazardly being carried out by state governments (primarily district collectors) under direction from the Supreme Court. It is only through such a participatory process that a fair and sustainable settlement will be worked out.

(iii) Most tricky but absolutely crucial, is the need for institutional structures which could ensure regular coordination within and amongst the various governmental departments which have a bearing on the habitats or species sought to be conserved. In all the PAs and other areas studied so far, we found a severe lack of interaction and joint planning between the Forest Department on the one hand, and other government agencies on the other hand. The serious shortage of water inside the Kailadevi Sanctuary (a severely drought-prone area) must have been common knowledge with the forest staff, yet the district administration appeared unaware of the situation in several villages when we were conducting research in 1997. In Dalma, the Bihar Irrigation Department appeared to have taken decisions (e.g. the alignment of the Subarnarekha canal) without consulting the sanctuary authorities; the classic case of mining in the Sariska Tiger Reserve is of course well known. In the case of many areas, e.g. at Kailadevi, there are also significant complaints of a lack of coordination within the Forest Department itself, between the wildlife wing and the territorial wing.

As mentioned above (Section 1) in the case of ecodevelopment, it is our contention that if all government agencies working in an area were to coordinate their activities according to a regional land/water use plan, within which were nestled areas earmarked for conservation, there would be little need for foreign funding. And if this is not done, conservation will in any case be difficult, as development plans will keep pulling in directions away from those set by the wildlife agencies. Such coordination was for a few years achieved by an enterprising district officer in the case of Melghat Tiger Reserve (Pardeshi 1996), and in the case of the forests in Harda district by an equally enterprising forest officer (Rathore 1996), so there appears little reason why it cannot be done elsewhere.

An interesting example from the forests of central India illustrates that, here too, people's empowerment and participation may be one potential key to achieving inter-governmental coordination. In the village of Mendha-Lekha, Gadchiroli district, villagers are so well-organised and self-empowered that they can call all government government departments to the village and organise a joint meeting to pool their funds together (Pathak, pers. comm., 1998).

There is a need for a clear state governmental order, issued to all its agencies working in and around PAs, that they must coordinate their work in the larger interest of conservation and meeting people's livelihood requirements. Appropriate empowerment of people's institutions, and the use of NGOs and other agencies as watchdogs, can also help to achieve this.

2.4 Benefit-sharing Mechanisms and Rights

The realisation that in the absence of tangible benefits emanating from the protected area, local communities are not likely to become a strong support base for the area, has resulted in the search for innovative mechanisms of generating and sharing the benefits. Perhaps the most powerful stake, is the continued and guaranteed access to survival resources, including biomass, as a matter of traditional right and not merely concession by the state. Linked to this is secure tenure over land and other resources; not, however, to unsustainably sell off to the highest bidder, but to assume the responsibility for conservation and sustainable use.

Conservationists have conventionally believed that PAs cannot yield substantial benefits for local people, hence they are unlikely to have the incentive to participate in conservation (e.g. Singh 1996). This view is based on the assumption that (a) biomass resources are the primary benefits that local people require and this is not possible to give since (b) human activities would inevitably degrade ecosystems. Therefore, the conclusion is, protected areas must generally be off‑limits to human use. Neither of these assumptions is necessarily valid. As stressed above in Section 1.2, some forms and levels of human use do not cause irreversible damage to biodiversity, and indeed may even locally enhance it, though it would be dangerous and invalid to extrapolate this to all activities and all ecosystems. Moreover, substantial benefits may accrue from non‑biomass based use of the PAs, even though biomass resources will remain a major component.

A rough list of possible benefits that a PA can yield is:

· Subsistence

fuel

fodder

non-timber forest produce

timber

fish/other aquatic produce

· Economic/livelihood

forest/aquatic/grassland produce

value enhancement of traditional products

employment

returns from commercial use of local knowledge/resources

tourism revenue

compensation for wildlife damage/opportunities lost

development inputs

· Social/cultural/political

protection of cultural values

social recognition

empowerment/control

It stands to reason that if these are possible within a PA, they are certainly also possible in the case of wildlife habitats outside the PA system. Indeed, many JFM and wetland areas provide adequate proof that a range of biodiversity can coexist with sustained generation of benefits for local populations.

In our work in the field, some striking features have emerged in relation to benefits:

(i) Access to regenerating and protected biomass resources is seen by local people as being critical. In Kailadevi and Dalma, villagers stress this as a traditional benefit; in Rajaji, they are more vocal in arguing that such access should be considered a customary and legally defensible right. The provision of bhabbar grass to villagers around Rajaji, by order of the Chief Wildlife Warden of Uttar Pradesh on May 8, 1995 (Vania 1997), though not amounting to such a right, is nevertheless a welcome step in that it recognises the need to share the resources of the PA as benefits to local communities. So is the order of June 26, 1996, of the West Bengal government, under which Ecodevelopment Committees are to be set up for PAs, and resources within the PAs can be shared with villagers in return for conservation functions (Government of West Bengal 1996).

In many areas, conservation actually increases the biological resources (fish, fodder, medicinal plants, etc) which local communities can harvest, yet sometimes they are not quite aware of this. In Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, for instance, fish stock in surrounding areas has reportedly increased due to protection of breeding grounds inside the Reserve. Lack of awareness of such benefits could be simply because they do not have actual access to these regenerating or multiplying resources; or it could be because, though access is available, the connections with the conservation programmes are not evident. This happens, for instance, with the increase in water availability as hydrological cycles improve with conservation of forests. In such situations conservation authorities and NGOs could play a significant role in highlighting the connections, thus also building a stake amongst local communities.

The sticky issue that remains is one of whether the access so granted should be a legal right or merely a concession offered by the government. As in Rajaji, communities everywhere are saying that they do not want to be at the mercy of a fickle government, which one day will allow access and the next day ban it (e.g. what happened with grazing in Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan). They would much rather take on conservation responsibilities if they are guaranteed some security of access, in other words tenurial rights. Perhaps unknowingly, they are reflecting a lesson that has been learnt the world over (and, for that matter, in JFM in India), viz. that resource rights are a much surer stake in conservation and sustainable use than uncertain access dependent on the whims of more powerful authorities.

Whatever the kind of benefits that accrue to local communities, it seems imperative that these be considered not as acts of charity by the government, but as a matter of rights for people who have otherwise 'sacrificed' for the PA. Resolving issues of resource tenure and rights is critical if a long-term stake in conservation is to be created amongst local communities. Undoubtedly also, conservation responsibilities must go tandem with these rights, a point that many local communities themselves will stress. Awareness about the connections between conservation and benefits is critical for all stakeholders.

(ii) Though in relation to countries like Kenya, India's returns from wildlife tourism are miniscule, nevertheless they are substantial in some PAs and non-PA areas (e.g. mountains). Without at this stage judging the ecological or social advisability of these levels of tourism, it is a shame that the revenue being earned from it does not go back to the PAs or the local communities. Reportedly this is now being considered in the case of Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan (where detailed studies have shown the potential of benefiting the local villagers from this source of income; see, for instance, Murty 1996). India would do well to learn from experiments such as the Annapurna Conservation Area Project in Nepal, where local communities and NGOs are completely managing the enormous trekking tourist flow, and generating very substantial returns from it.

It is high time that the country made the financial and administrative changes that are needed to return wildlife tourism benefits to local communities and wildlife authorities for use in conservation and livelihood generation activities. Appropriate checks may be needed to ensure that this does not become an encouragement to increase tourism beyond the ecological and cultural limits of the area.

(iii) Villagers themselves often have very innovative ideas for benefit-sharing. One, mooted by villagers of Kailadevi as part of a resolution adapted at an IIPA‑sponsored workshop, was that the penalties imposed by the Forest Department on offenders whom the Village Forest Protection Committees (FPC) help to catch, should be returned to the village. In addition, the issue of compensation for damage by wild animals to crops, livestock, and humans needs to be urgently addressed, both to improve the rates of payment and the efficiency with which it is paid. This is a universal demand from affected communities all over India. A suggestion made by the Kailadevi villagers in this regard is to accept the recommendations of the FPC with regard to individual compensation claims, rather than insisting that a doctor or official certifies the damage, a process which not only consumes time but also often forces villagers to bribe officials to obtain a favourable report. Another innovative attempt is by some NGOs (such as Corbett Foundation and the WWF through its Tiger Conservation Programme), which quickly detect cases of livestock kills and pay compensation equivalent to the difference between the market rate and what the government provides, or have given vehicles to the Forest Department to quickly reach villages reporting such cases (see Tigerlink Vol. 4 No. 2, September 1998).

Benefit-sharing (or cost-sharing) plans should be rooted in local ideas and technologies where available, enhancing these or introducing external ideas and technologies if necessary, as supplementary to what is locally available.

(iv) Benefits linked to natural resource related knowledge and innovations that local people have, are a part of the global debate on biodiversity. The protection of indigenous knowledge through appropriate community and individual intellectual property rights, and the generation of benefits from the use of these knowledge, are now being considered all over the world, especially in the wake of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention mandates countries to protect such knowledge, seek permission from its holders before using it, and equitably sharing any benefits that come out of such use. India too is considering National and State-level Biodiversity Funds, which could be used to give incentives to communities and individuals who promote conservation and sustainable use. There are several possible methods of doing this (Nijar 1995; Shiva 1997; Gupta 1997; Pathak and Kothari in press), which should be considered for use in conservation programmes.

Researchers in the formal sector should be particularly aware of such issues. Academics get extremely upset if someone takes their information or ideas without due acknowledgment; indeed, the person can even be sued for plagiarism. It is strange then that the same yardsticks are not applied by most of us when using local people as guides, informants, etc.; how many PhD dissertations, research reports, forest working plans, PA management plans, and other such documents actually name each of the local villagers who has provided information that has gone into these documents?

Benefits and incentives linked to the knowledge and innovations of local communities, as relevant for conservation, should be seen by conservationists as a potentially powerful tool to employ. To do this, however, they will need to support far greater respect for this knowledge, and legal means of protecting it from misuse and expropriation by outsiders. Researchers must evolve some code of conduct for use of such knowledge, ensure that it is properly acknowledged, and return some degree of benefits arising from its use to the original holder.

(v) Even those basic survival and developmental needs of communities which are seemingly unconnected to wildlife conservation requirements, are equally vital to address. Indeed, it may well happen that some rural areas which were earlier neglected by government, receive some attention because of the establishment of a PA or conservation scheme in their region. In Kailadevi, the serious deficiencies in water which are faced by villagers, may get alleviated if current trends are an indication: both NGOs and government agencies (including the district administration and the Forest Department) are investing time and money into water harvesting structures, and communities are re-organising themselves to participate in this. The institutional capacities and partnerships which are thus built up may help ultimately in conservation too. To some extent, ecodevelopment also aims to do this.

Conservation agencies and advocates must therefore go beyond their narrow confines and look into broader issues of livelihood and development, if they are to earn the support of local communities. The sort of inter-governmental and inter-sectoral coordination mentioned in Section 2.3 above would also help considerably in this.

(vi) Finally, and this is a point that social activists are often loath to admit, many benefits being derived by communities from PAs may already be causing irreversible damage to ecosystems or species. Others that are being demanded may do the same. There is therefore a critical need for assessment of all such unsustainable activities, and the search for on-site or other alternatives (ranging from modifications in these activities, to completely unrelated alternatives) where they cannot possibly be in harmony with the conservation objectives of the area. Ecodevelopment activities are essentially aiming at this. Both the assessment and the search for alternatives, however, are likely to be much more effective if conducted in a participatory manner; otherwise, they run the risk of either being biased or inaccurate, or being rejected by the affected communities. In several successful community-based conservation efforts, activities have been curtailed when villagers have been convinced that they are destructive.

Human activities relating to benefit-generation must be assessed for sustainability (whether they are not causing irreversible damage to the area or species sought to be conserved), and alternative benefits devised where they are not sustainable. These assessments and development of alternatives should be done in a participatory manner with the affected communities.

2.5 Intra- and Inter-community Dynamics

Both social activists and conservationists often assume the local community to be a homogenous entity. In India, it is far from that, especially in non-tribal areas. Official programmes of involving people in forest regeneration (JFM) and PA conservation (ecodevelopment), as also many NGO projects, have generally failed to disaggregate the community by class, caste, and gender. Even when they are aware of it, these agencies have been reluctant to address the rather thorny issues of inequities and power play within and between communities, hoping that general prescriptions for community participation will sort these problems out on their own. But this does not happen.

In particular, the way in which inequities in social status, political power, economic standing, and other attributes influence conservation, does not appear to have been well-studied. Exceptions include Sarin (1996) and Baviskar (1995). We have been especially mindful of this factor while studying the potential for people's participation in protected areas. Some important results which have emerged are:

(i) Women continue to be disprivileged in conservation programmes, both in those initiated by communities themselves as also in officially-sponsored ones. For instance, women are generally unrepresented in the Forest Protection Committees of Kailadevi, though in Dalma they are at times represented, which may be a reflection of the generally more equal status of women in tribal societies. In Kailadevi, women complained that the forest protection work of the FPCs (which were male-dominated) caused greater hardships for them, at least in so far as fuelwood collection had become harder (though they also admitted that fodder shortage had eased as a result of the forest protection). Most villagers, including men, agreed that there was a need for greater women's participation in decision-making, but they also strongly felt that this could not be achieved merely through formal reservation of seats in the local institutions (as has already happened with village panchayats in many parts of India). There was a need to build the capacity amongst women to be able to confidently speak and make their opinions matter, which, given the centuries of male domination in the area, would not be an overnight development. This is of course also true of the Forest Department and other line agencies of the government; Sarin (1996) reveals that out of 2576 Indian Forest Service officials in the country in 1995, only 72 (i.e. 3%) were women. The ratio is probably even worse in the case of the wildlife wing, since it is not considered 'safe' for women to take the kind of field-based jobs that are required.

There is clearly a need for more women's involvement in decision-making in the local and wider level institutions, both governmental and non-governmental.

(i) Landless people, lower castes, minority communities, and other disprivileged sections within a community are often left out of the decision‑making process. However, in some other cases, there have been conscious attempts on part of the village community to have representation of all these sections in the decision‑making body. Villagers themselves increasingly realise the need to resolve the inequities in representation at decision-making bodies, and also admit that government or NGO intervention may at times be necessary to make this happen. In the tribal villages of Dalma, the problem appeared less acute, possibly because of the inherantly more equitable and homogeneous societies they are characterised by.

Indifference towards this issue could doom the conservation effort in the long run, for people left out of the process are likely to consciously or accidentally undermine it. In the Great Himalayan National Park, Baviskar (1998) reports that the ecodevelopment process does not really reach benefits to the poorest sections of the villages, those who in fact are most dependent on the Park's resources. Such people will continue to "steal" into the Park for survival and livelihood, and chances are they would abandon whatever sustainable use practices they may have earlier employed in the quest to "cut and run" as fast as possible.

Such issues can of course also be misused by politicians and others for populist purposes, and it often becomes very tricky to determine whether majority or minority views should prevail. Sustained dialogue, coupled with

Conservation and development efforts need to be specially mindful of the needs of the disprivileged sections, taking care both to involve them as central partners and to ensure that their just share of benefits accrue to them.

(iii) Inter-community inequities could also strongly influence the success or failure of people's participation in conservation attempts. Both in Kailadevi and Dalma, the forest protection efforts of some villages were often thwarted because adjacent villages did not undertake the same responsibility, and allowed their forest patches to be degraded/cut down, with detrimental effects on the protected patches. This brings into focus the need for larger level coordination bodies which can mediate between different villages, between villages and the protected area authorities, and among other stakeholders. The Baragoan ki Panchayat (council of 12 villages) in Kailadevi, created to bring together people of 12 villages who have a common interest in forest protection, is one such example.

In all conservation areas where people's participation is being sought or is desirable, larger-scale forums or bodies which can link up various communities and institutions need to be established.

2.6 Intra- and Inter-departmental Dynamics

It is interesting that while the inequities and differences within and between local communities are increasingly being focused on by researchers, the internal dynamics of the government is not yet well‑studied, much less seriously tackled. While we too have not examined this in detail, even casual observations are adequate to indicate that the problems are severe:

(i) There is little vertical interaction among the various levels of the PA authorities; the experience of the ground situation being gained by the frontline staff (forest guards, foresters, daily wagers) has no systematic way of getting to the 'higher' officials, and there is little reverse flow of the policy/programmatic priorities being fixed by the latter. In Kailadevi, the Project team found that very little was known amongst the frontline staff about the ecodevelopment scheme. Scattered and individual efforts to redress this situation (e.g a meeting on ecodevelopment between senior and frontline staff, and some villagers, held on 26-30th November, 1996) are exemplary in all these areas, but they do not add up to any systemic response. Recent management planning exercises in Dalma and ecodevelopment planning exercises in Kailadevi, and the stakeholder meetings being organised in Rajaji, are giving an opportunity to partially increase vertical interaction, but it is too early yet to tell if they will result in a systemic change.

Forest and wildlife authorities will have to devise ways of increasing the flow of information and ideas amongst the different rungs of the agencies, and throw out the stiflingly heirarchical atmosphere that the British colonial rulers taught their Indian counterparts.

(ii) At the same time, horizontal coordination among the various wings/divisions of the Forest Department is also seriously deficient. There were, for instance, complaints by the wildlife staff in Kailadevi about the programmes of the territorial staff around the sanctuary, which, they claimed, had an adverse impact on the habitat. The wildlife officials also appeared to feel less powerful compared to their counterparts in the other wings of the Department. In many states, even PAs have not been fully handed over by the territorial wing of the Department to its wildlife wing, sometimes because it is felt that the latter does not have the resources to manage them, but more often because the former simply does not want to relinquish control.

The Forest Department needs to take a hard look at its own internal coordination amongst various wings/divisions, and devise innovative ways to build more synergy towards the goal of conservation.

(iii) Finally, coordination between the Forest Department and other departments/agencies of the government is far from satisfactory, as noted above. In the case of Dalma, forest officials complained of the lack of support from the police in tackling offenders, e.g. illicit liquor brewers. Lack of coordination between the Forest Department and the civil administration on the provision of water sources to villages inside Kailadevi, and on the problem created by the migratory graziers, was also prominent.

There is therefore a need for serious introspection by the Forest Department on their internal problems, and by the state governments on the need for inter-departmental coordination, followed by appropriate restructuring to improve coordination and motivation. This could include, for instance, interaction workshops between the senior and frontline staff of the wildlife wing, held in a neutral surrounding where participants could be more open and frank; and similar workshops and joint practical exercises among the various wings of the Forest Department and among the various government departments active in the area.

Other needs are well-known, though not yet fully addressed: training of conservation staff in wildlife/habitat management, better facilities for the ground staff and for their families, and others.

2.7 Role of Outsiders

Apart from the local communities, the conservation authorities and some other government agencies, a critical role is being played by other organisations and individuals, including NGOs. In many of the areas we have been involved with, local or national NGOs have been instrumental in mediating between villagers and wildlife officials, gathering data, helping local communities to organise for their rights, and keeping a watchdog eye on local activities. Independent experts have also helped to make scientific assessments, though, as mentioned above, the research done till now is far from adequate.

Given the important role played by such 'outside' parties so far, one question naturally arises: in any process of participatory or joint management, what should the role of these parties be? Should it be in a controlling and decision‑making capacity, equivalent to that of the government and the local communities, or should be more advisory? While certain flexibility may be required in deciding on a case by case basis, it is our opinion that the role of such parties should be mainly advisory and mediatory. This is because NGOs (as distinct from community‑based organisations like the FPCs) have no direct stake in the resources, nor any formal responsibility, nor any formal accountability to anyone. They cannot claim to represent the communities (though they can, and do, act as central supporters), as this would only perpetuate a system in which villagers themselves continue to be sidelined. However, groups or individuals who are very active/knowledgable may be co‑opted onto the overall multi-stakeholder management body (as advocated in Section 2.3 above).

Wildlife authorities need to be far more open than is currently often the case, to external intervention and mediation, where this is constructive. However, caution is also needed against agencies and individuals who have vested interests in continuing conflicts or using local people as covers for exploitative activities, as for the instance the fish mafia appear to have done in the case of Pench National Park, Madhya Pradesh.

2.8 Legal Measures

Many of the steps described above are possible within India's current policy and legal framework governing conservation. For instance, the Uttar Pradesh order concerning grass harvesting from within PAs (including within national parks which are supposed to be devoid of human presence), was passed using the Wild Life Act's provisions concerning management activities which are beneficial to wildlife: it was argued that grass harvesting would help in fire prevention.

However, these spaces within current legislation only go a certain distance. There is inadequate legal mandate, and indeed a barrier, where it comes to steps such as setting up joint management committees for PAs and other areas, or providing tenurial rights (or custodianship) to people in national parks even if conservation would be better served by this. Settlement procedures for rights remain vague, and large loopholes exist with regard to the entry of large development and commercial projects into conservation areas. Perhaps most important, the laws the sort of flexibility which would allow their constructive and creative use for a variety of ecological and social situations.

Both the Wild Life (Protection) Act and the Forest Act are currently (late 1998) under review, and citizens have strongly urged the government to make the changes necessary to facilitate participatory conservation. This has also been argued in the context of the proposed Biodiversity Act (being promulgated as a follow-up to India's ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity), and the panchayati raj legislation.

Mainly, three kinds of thrusts are required in the new legislation (Kothari 1997):

· Strong provisions against the use of conservation areas and threatened species for industrial or large-scale commercial purposes;

· Provisions empowering local communities to participate in management of such areas; and

· Provisions enabling resource-dependent communities to receive, as rights, appropriate benefits from such areas, in a way that is not detrimental to their conservation values.

Also suggested is a larger system of PA categories (renamed 'conservation areas' since they are not strictly protectionist), which would allow the flexibility of accommodating different kinds of ecological and social situations without compromising conservation values or livelihood rights. Bhatt and Kothari (1996) have suggested four additional categories to the two existing ones of national parks and sanctuaries: Strict Nature Reserve, Resource Reserve, Biosphere Reserve, and Community Reserve. A summary table of these is appended here.

Of these, the categories of Biosphere Reserves (as described in Chapter 4, this concept, which has the potential of harmonising conservation and human livelihood objectives over large land/waterscapes, has not really been applied in its full meaning in India), and of Community Reserves (which would provide a legal backing to communities who are trying to protect their sacred groves, catchment forests, village tanks, etc., but would retain control in their hands), are particularly important.

We would argue that with such an expanded set of categories, and using a much more inclusive range of conservation areas (see below), India's PA network could increase to well over 10% of its landmass (over double the present). This could in fact also include over 1% of its landmass under totally inviolate areas, jointly decided by government agencies and local communities, and including uninhabited islands, forests with no human use, sacred landscapes, etc.

2.9 The Larger Context of Land/Water Use

Most habitats of wildlife significance in India are not only themselves inhabited by humans, but also surrounded by human settlements, private lands, and developmental infrastructure. What happens in these adjoining areas has significant bearing on the ecological status of the wildlife habitat; e.g. the enormous fuelwood demand from Jamshedpur (Bihar) appears to be putting an unsustainable pressure on Dalma Sanctuary's forests (Christopher 1997). In addition, economic and social policies and programmes at the state, national, and international level, can also have strong impacts on the PA. The decision to make a major dam at Tehri town, in the Garhwal Himalaya of Uttar Pradesh, has had a detrimental impact on far‑away Rajaji National Park, as people to be displaced by the project have been resettled in the middle of the elephant corridor adjacent to the Park. In India as a whole, the ongoing phase of 'liberalisation', has led to demands to denotify or alter the boundaries of several PAs, to enable commercial‑industrial activities in these areas (Kothari et.al. 1995). The entire coastline and marine areas of India are threatened by plans to increase the export of fishery products (entailing the spread of polluting aquaculture and destructive trawlers), and to locate tourism and shipping facilities and industries.

While national and international forces cannot be tackled at the level of each conservation area, there is an urgent necessity, and possibility, of carrying out integrated land use plans for the whole region within which a critical wildlife habitat is embedded. One view is to declare the conservation area and its surrounding region as a special management unit, and set up an institutional structure to build up a detailed land/water use plan and manage this whole area. This is somewhat akin to the Special Area Development Authorities set up in many parts of India, but with an orientation towards conservation in this case. Examples of participatory management from across the world, reveal that such an approach is increasingly being taken by many countries (Suri 1997). In the Indian situation, this option may still be tried only several years from now, for major structural changes in the way the government functions will have to be made. A few test cases, however, can be taken up almost immediately, provided the state/central governments are ready to back the experiment to the full. To a cetain extent, Tiger Reserves are attempting this, by handing over a substantial buffer area around the designated national park or sanctuary to the wildlife authorities; however, coordination amongst government agencies active within this area has not yet been very heartening, and community involvement remains very weak. This reveals that what is also needed is a close re-examination of the impacts of several state/national policies and programmes, on the ecological health of wildlife habitats in India.

In addition, it is vital to get away from the almost exclusive protected area focus of conservationists. True, representative and rich biodiversity sites need special attention, but this is not an excuse to neglect the need for conservation in non-PA sites. As is well-known, considerable wildlife (including many of the 'flagship' species of Indian conservation, the so-called charismatic mega-fauna) is found outside PAs, including in human-dominated ecosystems, and its only protection is what the Wild Life Act provides rather ineffectually, or what local people themselves are providing. A range of incentives to local communities where these species exist, or encouragement of beliefs and practices which allow them to thrive, would perhaps be the most effective way of protecting such wildlife.

In sum, closer examination of the various external factors influencing wildlife habitats and species, and steps to tackle these factors, are urgently needed. This includes, as mentioned above, strengthening the Wild Life (Protection) Act against destructive industrial-urban influences and projects.

Eventually, it would be critical to ensure some level of conservation across the entire range of human land/water uses, rather than focus exclusively on a small percentage of biodiversity-rich areas.

3. CONCLUSION: HURDLES AND OPPORTUNITIES

India's conservation policy and programmes are moving increasingly towards more participatory processes. Rather than resist such a move, we (as conservationists) must see this as an opportunity to do what we have not been able to do for decades: make the conservation movement truly broad-based and grassroots rather than restricted to a small and increasingly ineffective elite. Indeed, it is only if we see village communities as conservationist in their own right, albeit with often different motives, and only if we see the legitimacy of their rights to survival and livelihood resources, will we be able to make conservation a sustainable effort. Some compromises may appear necessary (by both urban conservationists and local communities) to make these new alignments and strategies possible: some wildlife habitats may be lost, some communities may have to give up cherished traditions (such as mass hunts in areas with considerably depleted wildlife). But in the long run, a range of options in which co-management and community-based conservation figure prominently, offers a much surer vision of conservation than we have built over the last few decades.

The basic assertions made above can be summarised as follows:

1. The conventional method of protecting wildlife, especially the creation of PAs, has undoubtedly saved many habitats and species from destruction, but also caused severe hardships for local communities dependent on these habitats and species.

2. The alienation of these communities from their resource base, which has been the result of exclusionary conservation policies and strategies, is both unjust and shortsighted, for wildlife cannot survive in the midst of dispossessed and hostile populations. A strategy of exclusion is in any case unviable, given the extent of dependence of several million people on wildlife habitats and the impossibility of finding alternative lands and resources for all of them.

3. People, especially those who have traditionally subsisted on local resources, have a continuing right to these resources, except where they are causing irreversible ecological damage, in which case viable alternatives have to be provided.

4. Official and non-governmental conservation agencies are becoming increasingly ineffective, in the face of declining political support and mounting 'developmental' pressures. Such agencies have inherent limitations of human, financial, and technical resources.

5. Both wildlife and local communities are threatened by a third party: the urban-industrial sector which is bent on gobbling up natural resources as raw material and rural dwellers as cheap labour. Only a partnership between conservationists and communities/social activists, and the empowerment of ecosystem-dependent communities, can withstand this destruction, as can be seen at dozens of sites across India.

6. Changes are therefore needed in conservation policy, law, and administration, to allow for a much more participatory system, one which is respectful of both the needs of wildlife and the rights of humans. Such changes will have to bring in several factors previously ignored or only weakly integrated: relevant community knowledge and practices, customary laws and local institutional structures, vertical and horizontal integration within government agencies, land/water use planning in a regional context within which special areas for wildlife protection are supplemented by incentives for conservation across the spectrum of human resource uses, mutual learning sessions amongst various stakeholders, open access to information, and so on.

7. Decisions regarding conservation should be based much more on ecological, historical, and socio-economic research than is currently the case, research that is participatory and integrates the informal paradigms of local communities with the formal approaches of ecologists and wildlife scientists.

There are, undoubtedly, several hurdles to cross in achieving such a redirection of conservation strategy. These include:

· the rapid erosion of community knowledge and practices;

· loss of sustainability due to increases in human and livestock population and changes in lifestyle;

· social inequities at various levels;

· continued resistance from those who have power to share it with those who don't;

· severe distrust between government officials and local people;

· inappropriate development paths and national laws/policies;

· political interference;

· corruption; and

· lack of capacity amongst all stakeholders.

But for each of these hurdles, there are also examples of people having overcome them and creating opportunities:

· revival of community-level knowledge, practices, and institutional structures relevant to conservation (such that, according to one recent estimate, upwards of 2.5 million hectares of forests are being protected by communities in India today);

· voluntary reduction of livestock numbers and/or regulations on free grazing by many communities;

· willingness to accept family planning if adequate incentives are available and where women are empowered;

· decentralisation opportunities created by recent constitutional amendments;

· informal and formal arrangements between communities and government agencies/officers for conservation and sustainable livelihood options;

· challenges to destructive development processes (the coastal ecosystems would be far more degraded were it not for the widespread agitation by traditional fisherfolk against the introduction of trawlers and aquaculture);

· politicians taking up cudgels on behalf of conservation (e.g. to save Bhitarkanika and Balukhand Sanctuaries in Orissa from 'development' projects);

· reduction in the incidence of corruption where people's organisations have empowered themselves; and

· increasing awareness and capacity amongst different stakeholders to handle the complex job of managing natural resources.

The opportunities are there, and I believe that if the urban conservation community can respond adequately, and in time, to seize these opportunities, it will help to forge a new path of conservation. If it does not, it risks becoming increasingly redundant as larger forces take over.

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*Protected area category*	*IUCN category*	*Objectives*	*Features*	*Management structure*	*Stake of local community*	*Management activities*	*Examples*
I. Strict Nature Reserve	I	Absolute protection to species or habitats	Totally or almost totally natural; no human habitation in or adjacent, and no human use; small size	Central or state agency, with advisory committees of independent experts	Not relevant	Only protection; no human intervention, including tourism; restricted research and monitoring	Most A&N sanctuaries, Silent Valley, Core areas of several current parks
II. National Park	II	Conservation of species or habitats with minimal or very low intensity human activity	Largely natural; small (a few families) or no human habitation inside, some use by transient humans; small to medium size, except where large uninhabited area is available	Conservation Area Management Committees, of government officials, independent experts, and local community representatives	Employment in Park activities; bona fide survival rights of resident populations; tourism revenue	Minimal management, mostly protection; research and monitoring of activities, including of bona fide resource uses; very restricted tourism; awareness programmes	Nanda Devi, etc. (about 50% of current national parks)
III. Sanctuary	IV	Conservation of species or habitats by manipulative management	Largely natural habitat; moderate to no human settlements (few dozen families each, largely traditional), moderate to no use by outside humans; medium to large size	Conservation Area Management Committees, of government officials, local community representatives, and independent experts	Bona fide and essential livelihood rights within area’s conservation objectives; employment; tourism revenue, etc.	Intervention for protection and regeneration, and reversal of negative influences; research and monitoring, of resource uses, etc.; awareness programmes.	Over 50% of current protected areas, including national parks (excluding most A&N ones)

IV. Resource Reserve	VI	Sustainable resource use with conservation of identified habitat elements and species	Human-influenced or regenerated areas, with substantial human settlement; medium to large size	Largely local community body, with involvement of and assistance from government agencies	Bona fide and livelihood (including economic) needs; employment; tourism revenue, etc.	Sustainable resource extraction; research and monitoring on impacts of resource use; checks on commercial exploitation; awareness programmes	Many Reserve Forests and Joint Forest Management areas, CRZ 1 (and 2?) areas, river catchments
V. Biosphere Reserve	V?	Conservation of mosaic of complementary land/water uses, natural and human ecosystems; encouragement of traditional land-use systems, including agriculture	Mix of natural and human-influenced ecosystems; substantial human settlements (rural); very large size	Regional management boards, with all relevant government agencies, local community bodies, and NGO/expert representatives	Sustained livelihood and cultural security; support to traditional activities; ecologically sensitive livelihood options as alternative to large-scale commercial ones	Interventions to protect and regenerate ecosystems and species, safeguard corridors; encouragement to traditional resource uses; ban on large-scale developmental / commercial activities	Most existing Biosphere Reserves
VI. Community Reserve	None	Protection of landscapes, ecosystems, and species as practiced by local communities	Largely natural, minimal or low intensity human intervention; mostly small, some large size	Local community body	Protection of cultural / religious values and ecosystem functions	Mostly protection; controls on limited resource use, with safeguards against outside commercial forces	Sacred groves; Tanks like Kokrebellur; Chipko-protected areas

[1] The ideas in this paper were presented at the workshop on Collaborative management of Protected Areas in Asia, Nepal, May 25-28, 1998, and subsequently expanded for presentation at the National Seminar on Wildlife Conservation, Research and Management, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 10-13 August, 1998. On these occasions, the author represented both the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi, and Kalpavriksh - Environmental Action Group, Pune. Thanks are due to Neema Pathak, Sunita Rao, Bansuri Taneja, and Simronjit Singh, for useful inputs to this paper.

[2] These aspects are explored in more detail in Kothari, Singh, and Suri 1995; Kothari 1996; Rangarajan 1996; and Tucker 1991.