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Assessment and Empowerment

Manoj Nadkarni

&

Malavika Chauhan

Bridging Scales and Epistemologies Conference The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

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Development and environmental management are inextricably linked

Development, both rural and urban, which does not incorporate environmental protection will not be sustainable

Development based only on “sources and sinks” notion of the environment is not likely to succeed

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Development is progress; Progress means empowerment

“Empowerment” is political process which increases choices, choices pertaining to

Participation in the community Professions and careers Use of resources Education Gender roles

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Environmental management depends on assessments

The acquiring of qualitative or quantitative knowledge Information needed:

biological, geological, hydrological and ecological processes

The relationships of people – local, regional and global – to the environment

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For development and environment linkages… Assessments based on traditional knowledge are

often required (Buzzwords…..

bottom-up approaches grassroots movement participatory management PRA (participatory rural appraisal) PLA (participatory learning and action) CBC (community based conservation) “decentralization”…)

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Traditional knowledge is important

Made it possible for people to survive for generations without degrading their environment

This culturally embedded knowledge helped meet local food, fuel, fibre, fodder and medical needs and live sustainable lifestyles, so there are resource management lessons to be learnt

Some such lessons could lead to commercially viable products in modern non-traditional settings, another

reason traditional knowledge is sought

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The holism of traditional knowledge

Such knowledge is location specific and generated by the set of experiences of a particular group of people in a particular place and time, and exists by virtue of its position in a culture

A practical knowledge is always linked to other practices, which are in turn held together by theory, even if this theory is not known to everyone and perhaps only expressed in a ritual form

It is often not possible to tease out different strands, let alone separate out “facts” of these theories/rituals

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Holism & sustainability

The two important facets of traditional knowledge

Both make traditional knowledge attractive to those who blame Western science for the destruction of the environment

through reductionism, and for the failings of the material-urban-consumerist-growth oriented-development model it

advances

In effect, the view is that well-understood, documented and actively used such knowledge can lead to both poverty

reduction and conservation, all the while allowing people to retain their cultural identity

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What is of concern is...

…The political location of that traditional knowledge

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Because …

…traditional knowledge is also linked to traditional oppression

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This can happen in two ways:

1. The sought after knowledge itself is bound up in oppressive practices and/or other oppressive traditions

2. The traditional ecological knowledge is dependent on exclusion

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1) The tradition itself is bound up in oppressive practices

Example: Ayurveda and the caste system

The Ezhavas, a low caste community with a great knowledge of medicinal plants, are often consulted for medical advice by higher castes. Yet Ezhavas traditionally have had no access to the codified ayurvedic texts, available only to the Brahmin caste

Can a researcher use the Ezhavas knowledge without in some way supporting the caste system?

Example: Sati and sacred groves

Sacred groves are increasingly seen as a way to foster biodiversity conservation.

A sacred grove in the Indian state of Maharashtra started in a spot where a woman committed sati. The practice of sati is outlawed, so should this site and its sacredness be recognised?

Another common practice is that in many areas women are prohibited from entering sacred groves

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2) Ecological knowledge is dependent on their exclusion Example: the knowledge possessed by rural women

Woman traditionally are denied access to market economies and stick to subsistence roles

The lack of power implicit in women’s knowledge of resources is indicated by their dependence on the commons and interstitial spaces

Traditionally women have usufruct rights rather than real ownership, therefore the traditional knowledge possessed by them and valued by researchers is the knowledge of how to survive when nothing really belongs to you and can be taken away at any moment

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Assessment interactions have impacts that are political

The person, the knowledge source, is useful/valuable only because of the

knowledge he or she has

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Usefulness and value is demonstrated in many possible ways

The fact that an outsider elicits their views already indicates that the local person’s position in local society has changed, perhaps risen, in the social order

Perhaps a salary will be paid to the person, showing the financial worth of that knowledge

If the local person chooses not to work with the project, the project will either find someone else, or will shut down

One particular guide may be considered difficult and another one chosen instead

He/she may be getting attention, possibly from the state, when previously state machinery was geared to eradicate local practices

The science he/she practices may suddenly get attention, whereas it was earlier ignored

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The assessor is saying something in all these cases It signals the validity of the practices, (patterns

of exclusion) and leads to empowerment of the group which “owns” that knowledge.

(Which in development terms is positive or negative depending on if the group is oppressive or not)

Or It signals the validity of the situation which lead

to those practices, for example, poverty

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The fear is that… …Assessors can, at best, be a contributing

factor in legitimizing the political status quo, allowing structures that may be regressive the positive attention that they should not be given

At worst, assessors themselves can become a part of the process of creating and maintaining oppressive practices

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Poverty for choice,

Or the lack of power for ecological understanding

It is important not to mistake

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Summing up:

Most rural communities have systems of managing natural resources. Traditional management practices usually result in the maintenance of long term ecological integrity of the local environment

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…but…

Traditional rural communities also have systems of repression and oppression, and ways to demarcate insiders from outsiders; distinguishing those who belong from those who do not

Often these two systems are related

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Choices that need to be made: Decontextualizing such knowledge may be

beneficial in the political sense but negative in its sense of scientific knowledge

Assessment procedures, therefore may deny people empowering choices, but, on the other hand giving them this choice may be detrimental to the local environment