Property, Sustainable Food Production and Forest Management in Sloping lands

Kanchi Kohli and Manju MenonIndia

Forest Asia Summit, Jakarta, 5th May 2014

Separation of farms and forests –important for the colonial project

Post 1947 these continued and ouragricultural and forestry policies giveimpression that they provide for differentthings (schemes and programs of forest andagriculture departments: not linked).

Different historical experience of a centuryof forest regulation in different parts ofIndia

Forests were separated from food producing areas, but forests provide food, farms provide cash too.

What got affected by these hard boundaries was not just mobility, but freedom to choose what is food and how it should be procured

Revenue collections improved; forests freed up for business (timber)

Upland Agroforest Mosaics

Uttara Kannada (Karnataka): Western ghats, dominated by farming Brahmins, most studied areas but missed government intervention due to elevation limit (600 m as per planning commission).

North Sikkim (Sikkim): border areas, Eastern himalayas, ethnic minorities, understudied, extensive policy interventions to rid backwardness

Farm- Forest continuum in Uttara Kannada

Paddy /Millets

Cultivation

Reserved Forest

Betta land

Sacred grove

Spice Garden

Multi layered Horticulture system

Areca nut

Pepper

Vanilla

Cocoa

Banana

Coconut

Ginger

Turmeric

Cardamom etc,

24 crops,

46 fruits/ medicine plants

British officers were persuaded to allow farmer user rights in betta forests. The boundary was light.

Forests are close by and part of the productive system, visited everyday, very valuable and cherished.

The district has a 70% forest coverage.

Migration away from farm-forests to cities

Rights discourse threatens takeover of betta by farmers .

Landuse change: sale of land even though threats from hydro power generation averted in some parts of Uttara Kannada

Landscapes and Forest Check Posts in North

Sikkim

Rice Terraces and forests near Gangtok

Cardamom plantations in Mangan

Home gardents in Heegyathan

village, Dzongu, North Sikkim

In Sikkim, post 1975 (from independent kingdom to an Indian state):

Forest management followed the usual method of separation between forests and farms. Small landholdings more than 65% in Sikkim

Prior to this people followed shifting cultivation like most of the rest of the North East India.

Cyclical opening up of plots for multicropfarming. Remaining plots were ‘regenerating fallows’.

Living off farms without forests

Large cardamom plantations introduced in North Sikkim to improve the situation of farmers who could now no longer access the forest.

Cardamom failure, due to over harvest and pests (Accidents that policies don’t plan for)

Integrated systems lost because of individual property rights and hard divisions between forests and farms.

Small holder farms and community forestry in upland

areas: Emerging Issues

Considered ‘Economically backward’

(Steep slopes, poor soils unsuitable for

large scale mainstream cultivation):

trapped in geography

Program interventions will continue;

dams, roads, plantations

Emphasis on maintaining forest cover;

exclusive conservation areas, sinks

(REDD+, sequestration)

Climate impacts; distress sale and migrations.

Land use change: resistance against dams in Sikkim (land based identity politics)

Changed scenario due to cardamom failure?: will resistance to land use change still persist

Repairing fractures

Reestablish farm-forest connections

Systems that allow diversity and choice

Encourage mobility for optimal use over seasons and species

Emphasise collaborative user mechanisms rather than property rights

Outcomes – better life experience, freedom and control over life rather than a set of itemised rights.