The sale and leaseback model (SALB) is an institutional arrangement that creates partnerships between land claimant communities and commercial forestry companies. The model provides benefits the following benefits to claimant communities, (a) rent and stumpage, (b) capacity building, (c) bursary scheme, (d) employment opportunities, (e) corporate social investment (CSI), and (f) enterprise development. Studies have shown that while partnerships were hoped to be a bridge between claimant communities and private forestry companies, it has not been the case. The study evaluates the SALB and its impact on claimants and forest management from a political ecology perspective and co-management analysis framework. Central themes analyzed in co-management are (1) representation which examines the scope of actors involved in co-management, (2) power sharing which analyses the extent of power sharing in a co-management arrangement, and (3) empowerment which examines the extent to which communities are dependent on the company they work with. Power is a central theme in the study as it is used to understand the interaction between the commercial company and claimant communities as well as understanding power dynamics within communities themselves. In the study, we see that power is not static, it shifts from actor to actor depending on the situation; although partnership arrangements account for potential power struggles, there is a lack of a mechanism to address them. The study shows that there is also an underlying inferiority from trustees as a result of historical injustices. The study provides practical case studies on institutional arrangements in forestry management.

The sale and leaseback model (SALB) is an institutional arrangement that creates partnerships between land claimant communities and commercial forestry companies. The model provides benefits the following benefits to claimant communities, (a) rent and stumpage, (b) capacity building, (c) bursary scheme, (d) employment opportunities, (e) corporate social investment (CSI), and (f) enterprise development. Studies have shown that while partnerships were hoped to be a bridge between claimant communities and private forestry companies, it has not been the case. The study evaluates the SALB and its impact on claimants and forest management from a political ecology perspective and co-management analysis framework. Central themes analyzed in co-management are (1) representation which examines the scope of actors involved in co-management, (2) power sharing which analyses the extent of power sharing in a co-management arrangement, and (3) empowerment which examines the extent to which communities are dependent on the company they work with. Power is a central theme in the study as it is used to understand the interaction between the commercial company and claimant communities as well as understanding power dynamics within communities themselves. In the study, we see that power is not static, it shifts from actor to actor depending on the situation; although partnership arrangements account for potential power struggles, there is a lack of a mechanism to address them. The study shows that there is also an underlying inferiority from trustees as a result of historical injustices. The study provides practical case studies on institutional arrangements in forestry management.

Individual Presentation Submission

This paper investigates the material and ontological dimensions of peasant collective agency in agrarian frontiers with protected areas. It explores the intersection of claims for distributive justice, cultural recognition and ecological change in the Colombian Andes highlands, following an ethnographic and participatory action research approach. It draws on the links between a past experience of struggle for land redistribution and a current project to create a Peasant Reserve Zone to show how this long-term process is entangled with the improving conditions of the high-Andean forests. The paper reflects on how peasant agencies and landscape transformations are entangled in political ontologies that contest dominant understandings of conservation and agriculture. It also delves into reflections about the necessity to include landscape transformation and ecological processes of change as relevant agents of struggles for social and environmental justice. This poses methodological, theoretical and even ontological challenges to researchers who intend to side their(our) research with such struggles to contribute to scaling them up. the paper makes a call to build a double hybridization of 1) politically engaged academics and rural activists and 2) human and non-human agents, constituting what Escobar (2015) calls the entanglement of socionatural worlds towards alternative pathways to development that have autonomy and social-ecological justice at their core. The paper aims to contribute to the Latin-American debates around the eco-territorial shift of agrarian struggles – from land struggles to environmental and cultural claims for recognition- and to the broader conversation about the relevance of ontological dimensions of dispossession and resistance taking place within critical geography and agrarian studies, commonly referred to as the ontological turn.

Abstract

While the war in Tigray, Ethiopia, has evidently been a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, a largely overlooked issue in the reporting and coverage of the war is how it may have impacted Tigray’s fragile environment and thus the future of nature and people in the region. In crisis contexts, life decisions focus on surviving today as tomorrow is uncertain and invisible. While the focus is understandably on the humanitarian side of the crisis in Tigray, the impact of the war on the environment is as important when it comes to thinking about the future of the region and its people.
In this paper, I analyze the broader impacts of the war on Tigray’s fragile environment. Moreover, the paper explores how the relationship between people and nature have been altered due to the war and the long-term implication of such changes. I carefully document the different impacts of the war on forests, farms, irrigation schemes and the broader social and ecological implications of changes following the war. The paper is based on empirical material from reviews of reports, media stories, key informant interviews, and analysis of satellite images of the Tigray region. The environmental cost of the war on Tigray is without a doubt immense. It is important that the environmental impacts of the war are further assessed on the ground to inform recovery strategies. Only if the environment thrives can the long-term well-being of survivors be assured.

Abstract

While the war in Tigray, Ethiopia, has evidently been a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, a largely overlooked issue in the reporting and coverage of the war is how it may have impacted Tigray’s fragile environment and thus the future of nature and people in the region. In crisis contexts, life decisions focus on surviving today as tomorrow is uncertain and invisible. While the focus is understandably on the humanitarian side of the crisis in Tigray, the impact of the war on the environment is as important when it comes to thinking about the future of the region and its people.
In this paper, I analyze the broader impacts of the war on Tigray’s fragile environment. Moreover, the paper explores how the relationship between people and nature have been altered due to the war and the long-term implication of such changes. I carefully document the different impacts of the war on forests, farms, irrigation schemes and the broader social and ecological implications of changes following the war. The paper is based on empirical material from reviews of reports, media stories, key informant interviews, and analysis of satellite images of the Tigray region. The environmental cost of the war on Tigray is without a doubt immense. It is important that the environmental impacts of the war are further assessed on the ground to inform recovery strategies. Only if the environment thrives can the long-term well-being of survivors be assured.

Individual Presentation Submission

TITLE: CASTELESS ENVIRONMENTALISM: ETHICAL RATIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF HUMANS AND AGRICULTURE IN MODERN INDIA

ABSTRACT: Caste is a birth-based division and social segregation of women, men, and children. The invention of caste/casteism, like race/racism, is not only meant to subordinate and exploit the free labor of fellow Indians by demeaning their bodies, it is also to dispossess their water, land, and knowledge-based skills, products, and environments. This means a large percentage of Indians have been oppressed as untouchables, on the one hand, and they, their body-based and touch-dependent labor and produce, are central to the very survival of privileged caste-groups, such as brahmins, kshatriyas, and vaishyas, in diverse environments of India (Hjejle 1967; Olivelle 2005; Washbrook 1994; Sharma 2017).

In contrast, this paper shows that the Buddhists in modern India, since the early twentieth century, show a remarkable this worldly ethical castefree understanding of human body, agriculture, and environment. I draw upon the Tamil Buddhist archives, such as The Tamilian, a weekly published from 1907 to 1914, and ethnographic field study in India, to argue in this paper that the Buddhists and their writings on castefree medicinal tradition (siddha), their practices of agriculture, demonstrate their historical sense of castelessness. And that, more importantly, the anticaste Buddhists had their own casteless understanding of human body, gender, and environment. In contrast to the racial-capitalism and the collusion of caste-accumulation with it, since the colonial period, the casteless Buddhists had ethical-rational discernment of themselves and fellow-humans, and their environs. It is here we see the seeding of casteless environmentalism in modern India.

KEYWORDS: caste/casteism; race and caste; casteless Indians; Tamil Buddhism; casteless nature; casteless environmentalism