Natural Resource-based Interactions

Actors, agencies and organizations

CDP 532: Unit 1 (d)

Contents• Natural-resource based interactions• Actors, agencies and Organizations

– State– (I)NGOs and civil societies– Community Based Organizations– Indigenous People’s Organizations

• References– Bryant RL, Bailey S. 1997. Third World Political Ecology. London: Routledge.

(Chapter 2, 3, 6 and 7) – Daniel Buckles and Gerett Rusnak. 1999. Introduction. Conflict and collaboration

in natural resource management. In D. Buckles (ed.) Cultivating Peace: Conflict and Collaboration in Natural Resource Management, pp. 1-10. Ottawa: International Development and Research Center (IDRC). Available online: http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/899-6/

– R. Dove Michael. 2006. Indigenous People and Environmental Politics, Annual Review of Anthropology 35:191–208

– Sarah Webster and Om Gurung. 2005. ILO Convention 169 and Peace Building in Nepal. Kathmandu: NEFIN and ILO Nepal.

Introducing people’s environmental interactions at different geographical

scales and categories

Examples• Local – Sub-national – National – Regional – Global levels• Highland – Lowland interactions• Upstream – Downstream interactions• Rural – Urban Interactions

Interactions occurs at the actor levels: Individual / households / communities / organizations

All have ecological, social, economic and political dimensions! Lets see in the Highland – Lowland Interaction

Highland lowland interactionEcological dimensions• Geology, topography, hydrology, sediment flow,

gravity, uncertainty• Natural vs. human cause on environmental

changes / hazards and their perception (highland-lowland)

• Degree of uncertainty and complicated by human impact

• Mountain specificities: inaccessibility, remoteness, isolation, complex and difficult terrain, marginality, fragility, high diversity…How they lead to other dimensions in highland-lowland linkages…???

Highland-lowland interactionSocial dimensions• Migration: an important aspect combining all causes and

consequences (environmental, economic, socio-cultural, political, demographic)…both way uphill -- downhill

• Globalization and modernity: market penetration, cash-based economy / livelihoods, material benefits and aspirations

• Recent trend: migration for employment opportunities, previously: highland youths seeking trade / wage opportunities at lowland, and frontier settlement from highland to lowland

• Streams of migration: rural / highland urban / lowlands• In highlands: Higher level of cultural diversity…but isolation /

marginalization of certain groups with pervasive poverty…who is controlling resources / institutions / state (highlanders or lowlanders…???)

• Development of new institutions / new formations / new changes…endogenous or exogenous?

Highland-lowland interactionEconomic dimensions• Trade and tourism• Local economy: environmental resources and

distribution of benefits• Transportation and infrastructures…beneficial to both

highlanders and lowlanders, but the cost?• Changing economy and new opportunities by market• Mining and protected areas: exploitative or beneficial

for local / indigenous people…struggles against them?

• Development and modernization: e.g. new agriculture• Migration and remittances (age-old pattern or recent

phenomena)

Highland-lowland interaction

Political dimension• Most important, often determined by military power, often

having serious social, economic and environmental repercussions

• Most of violent actions in mountains… with environmental / natural resource dimension (e.g. water, forest product, land etc.)– Mountain as niches for minorities (ethnicity and conflict)– Mountains as last frontiers (migration and conflict)– Mountains as enclaves of poverty (marginalization and conflict)

• Environmental causes and consequences of highland conflict and impact to lowlands

Upstream (headwater)- downstream (downwater) interaction

• Water flows downhill: Upstream and downstream are naturally situated…but what about their interactions?

• Who is powerful politically / militarily, and economically (upstream or downstream?)…that have more leverage in the interaction– At the national level: who has more rights, sharing of water,

use of water, building infrastructure, floods and landslides– At the international level: border issue, sharing of water and

its use / benefits, building infrastructures, water-induced disaster

• Environmental, socio-political, economic consequences of these interactions

Issues in rural-urban interactions

• Resource need for urban areas…has footprint in the rural areas…think about following issues– Water need in cities– Agriculture intensification to meet the food requirement for

cities…polluting rural areas…but with economic opportunities?

– Dumping of solid wastes– Rural-urban migration and issues of slums and squatter

settlements– Tourism and remittances for rural areas– Concentration of services (e.g. health, education) in urban

areas– More examples of rural-urban interaction…

Organizational interaction in Environment

• Environment as contested site (politicized environment)… a place of organizational interaction at different levels– State– Market– Civil society, including NGOs, CBOs and Indigenous groups / organizations

• At different level (local, sub-national, national, regional, international)• Issues:

– Distribution of environmental costs / impacts and benefits associated with environmental problems / management or conservation of resources at different scales

– Role of different actors in efforts to resolve environmental problems at different levels (state at the center)

– On defining environmental problems and cause behind those problems (who / who’s activities responsible and how to solve)

• Different Actors have different power (to influence the interaction), legitimacy (to make decisions) and urgency or interests (based on their relationship with the interaction, how much they will be affected): Stakeholder analysis

Conflict analysis leading to stakeholder analysis

Conflict elements• Issues: underlying problems (causality structure)

– Resources– Livelihood– Distribution– Values– Identity

• Background, history, context– External aspects that influence (+ or -) the causes,

process and outcomes of a conflict• Detonator• Stakeholders: influence, power, relationships,

positions, interests, values

Stakeholder analysis in environmental interaction

Key Elements• Values, views• Needs, interests and objectives• Resources, influence, power sources• Networks, relationships among each other and

how these might be transformed• Grade of affectedness (distributional and social

impacts)• How do the analysis contribute to the solution?

Stakeholder analysis Example of interaction in a mining activities

Understanding Natural Resource Interaction through Political Ecology• It focuses environmental issues as arenas for political

struggle, both overt (as in land rights or environmental contamination conflict) and covert (as in conflict between “standard conservationists view” of pristine nature vs. “local / indigenous people’s view” of homeland and places for livelihoods, focusing on meanings, knowledge, discourses and power).

• It is derived from political economy (usually a Marxist / Neo-Marxist perspective), concerned with social inequalities, power relationships and distribution of ecological benefits.

• It is developed in the response of greater emphasis of ecological explanation of human behavior (cultural ecology) which has largely neglected political factors.

Approaches in Political Ecology• Political ecologists share a broadly similar political-economy

perspective, but adopt a variety of approaches in applying that perspective to analyze human-environmental interaction. – Oriented around a specific environmental problem or set of problems

(e.g.soil erosion or deforestation)– Analysing concepts, ideas and discourses (e.g. social construction of

natural hazards, disasters; green development)– Political ecological analysis focusing on specific geographical region

(Himalaya, Sub-Saharan region)– Interpretation based on socio-economic characteristics such as class,

ethnicity, gender (capitalist means of production, indigeneity, feminist political ecology)

– Based on interest, characters and actions of different types of actors (Actor Oriented Approach)

• Neither exhaustive nor distinctive categories of approaches to describe all political ecological practices.

• Organizational interaction in the natural resource conflict rather fits in the actor-oriented approach.

Various approaches in political ecology (Bryant and Bailey)

Actor oriented approach

• Conflict (and cooperation too) as an outcome of interaction of different actors pursuing often quite distinctive aims and interests. – Conflict between / among pastoralists, agriculturalists and state

in various parts of Africa (associated with divergent interest of these actions)

– Interaction between / among transnational corporation, local communities and state for forest policy formulation in India

– Struggle of different actors (peasants, shifting cultivators, businesses) with state and within state departments (agriculture, forestry, infrastructure development)

• Sweeping generalizations about actors (stereotypes)– Ecologically ‘predatory’ states and TNC– ‘Eco-friendly’ NGOs and grass-root actors– ‘Pro-environmental’ Indigenous practices and knowledge (ITK)

Politicized environment• “Environmental crisis”

– Dimensions (everyday, episodic and systemic), – Scales (local, regional, global) and – Power (material, non-material)

• Power is key concept to specify the topography of a politicized environment– What are the various ways and forms in which one actor seeks to exert

control over the environment of other actors?– How do power relations manifest themselves in terms of physical

environment?– Why are weaker actors able to resist their more powerful counterparts?

• Many ways for exerting power:– An actor can attempt to control the access of other actors to a diversity of

environmental resources – By influencing or determining the location of the sites at which industrial

pollution is generated and released into the environment.– By controlling the societal prioritization of environmental projects and

problems– Indirect manner through discursive means (regulation of ideas)– Physical environment as manifestation of power

Cultural Theory to understand various solidarities having particular policy and technological choices

• Four solidarities– Hierarchist (state agencies)– Individualistic (Market)– Egalitarian (NGOs, social movements)– Fatalistic (a peasant)

Cultural Theory

Contested Terrain

ContentsActors, agencies and Organizations in Natural Resource-based

interaction– State– (I)NGOs and civil societies– Community Based Organizations– Indigenous People’s Organizations

• Each three actors (State / government, NGO / CBOs and IP / Social movements) will be discussed separately– First more general / theoretical discussion– Then specific to Nepal

• References– Bryant RL, Bailey S. 1997. Third World Political Ecology. London:

Routledge. (Chapter 2, 3, 6 and 7) – ADB / ICIMOD. 2006. Environmental Assessment of Nepal.

Organizational interaction in Environment

• Environment as contested site (politicized environment)… a place of organizational interaction at different levels– State (represented by government)– Market– Civil society, including NGOs, CBOs and

Indigenous groups / organizations

State in NR-based interaction / conflictUnderstand Access, ownership and control

• Access: rights to use / benefit from productive resources (ability to claim rights)

• Control: Effective exercise of such rights, often maintaining others’ access (Capacity to manipulate other’s access)

• Ownership: Relationship of actor with resources through defined (formally / informally) rights (property rights)

Where is the state in all these activities? Compare following:• Controlling other’s access (access control) vs. maintaining own’s

access (access maintenance)• Dominant actors (controlling) and sub- ordinate actors

(maintaining): Second gets access through the first

Organizational InteractionState / government organizations

• Politicization and securitization of environment is largely due to state: – It conditions how various actors interact in NR and environmental issues

(Policies and legislations)

• State enters into life of rural people by responding the 'NR / environmental' issues (legislations in forest, conservation, water, land)– In Seeing Like a State (1998), James Scott examines both the ways in which

the state simplifies complex local realities in order to make them legible and therefore administrable, and how “high modernist” projects resulting from this tunnel vision have failed. This is explored through a series of case studies (also related to NR / environment). Scott argues, failure of these projects is that they invariably ignore local communities’ knowledge and practices (metis).

• Government is the political authority of the state, interact as an / multiple actor(s)– Contradictions due to state’s dual role as developer and protector of natural

resources reflected in inter-state and intra-state environmental conflict– State encompasses multiple interests and agencies

State in environmental interaction• Source of power of state: Sovereignty and 'national interest‘

– From Hobbes to Hardin: Need of state for greater collective interest and managing conflict (failure of individuals due to personal interests): Hardin's 'Tragedy of Commons' and need for defined property rights (Hobbes' justification of state)

• Neo-Malthusians = Neo-Hobbesians (Need for Global Leviathan) – The case for a collective interest articulated and enforced by the state is

perhaps nowhere more vividly described than in Hardin’s (1968) essay on ‘the tragedy of the commons’. Hardin describes a situation in which individual herders graze their cattle on a common pasture. Each herder seeks to increase the number of cattle on the commons until eventually the ‘carrying capacity’ of the land is exceeded. However, rather than curtailing use of the commons, each herder continues to add cattle to the pasture, resulting inevitably in tragedy as the land is degraded and the livelihoods of the herders are ultimately impoverished. The ‘inherent logic’ to this process derives from the fact that the benefit associated with each additional animal accrues entirely to individual herders whereas the costs of additional cattle accrue to all herders. Individual action in Hardin’s metaphor leads inexorably to social and environmental ruin in the absence of a state to protect collective interests.

State in NR interactionLimitations to state-centric approach in environment: • Justifying authoritarian state action, e.g. in population control; • State acting through institutions is only the ‘environment protection’ from above• Enough evidence of incapacity of state on conservation• Transnational nature of environmental issue and their regulation (limiting the rise of

state?)• Role of state is contested by rise of market / business and other non-state actors

(NGOs)• Connections among “rise and growth of capitalism / industrialism”, “environmental

destruction” and “rise of state”• State's (and its elites') dependence on natural resources (in the name of economic

development)• Rise of market and shrinkage of state in NR issues in the third worlds• Challenges not only by market but also by NGOs, Indigenous people and other social

environmental movements (increasing challenge from non-state actors is a result of globalization and localization)

But still• State plays pivotal role in politico-ecological issue in future

State in NR / Env InteractionRise-Decline-Rise of states in relation to NR and environmental issues:

• Responding to natural resource and environmental issue over the time (first to extract, then to mange and protect): Rise of state

• 2nd generation 'global' environmental issues (e.g. biodiversity loss or climate change): decline of state? State is seen “too big” or “too smal”l for dealing with these challenges

• In relation to environment, 'nation-state' as a political form is in crisis:– Do fragmented sovereign states provide viable framework for collective

management of global environment (Earth vs. World)?, – Do Individual states to provide localized order within their territory? – Can State deal effectively with new challenges (complexities of

environmental challenges)?• But 'decline' is not true: Responding to global climate change from Kyoto

to Copenhagen: State still holds true authority whatever challenges are there.

State / government in NR / Environmental interaction

in Nepal

State in policy process in NepalVarieties of roles

ADB/ICIMOD (2006: 128)

State in NR policy and planning process in Nepal

• Various legal provisions having different levels of influence– Constitutions– Acts– Rules and regulations– Guidelines– Directives– Policies, strategies and action plans etc.

• Central planning e.g. Five year plan (since Mid 1950s), Sectoral planning, FY planning,

Nepali state responding NR issuesKey laws

Source: ICIMOD (2006: 41). Environmental Assessment of Nepal

State in NR conflictConflict in NR through policy process in Nepal

• Government introduces various programs and policies on managing the resources (e.g. CF, PA, Water, Mineral and Land resources)

• They have particular emphasis, priorities, concerns and objectives (e.g. Conservation, people’s need and use, economic development, political autonomy or sovereignty etc.)

• They apply different methods and they originate from different perspectives (e.g. international commitment, people’s demand or social movement, political process, legal mandate from constitution or supreme court, or any other )

• There might be conflict in property rights as seen in many resources

State in NR conflictNepal’s NR legislation from conflict perspective

• NR legislation: No enough discussion or demand inside the country, mainly due to International treatise and global discourse

• Mostly restrictive and centralized legislation• Strengthened state control and contradictions among these laws • Criticized for not being sensitive to social inequalities and concerns

of marginalized groups; no effective implementation / translation into the practice and problems in their respective agencies and authorities

• Recently there are some oppositions: e.g. Draft legislation on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing, pending since 2000, due to opposition by Adivasi Janajati

• Legislation in NRM (e.g. water, forests, protected areas): Focus on technical aspect or social and political aspect

• Interesting case related to conflict over resources due to policy process in Nepal: ILO 169