Sarmistha Pattanaik

Conservation of Environment and Protection of Marginalized Fishing Communities of Lake Chilika in Orissa, India

Abstract Situated in the coastal belt of Orissa in India, Lake Chilika has been designated under the Ramsar Convention as a Wetland of International importance (IUCN) especially as water fowl Habitat (Iran, 1981). But, during the last few years the Lake has developed serious environmental problems so much so that the Bureau of Ramsar convention has placed it on its red list. Among those problems, the siltation at the Mugger Mukh (one ofthe openings ofthe Lake to the sea) and consequent reduction in tidal waves, decrease in the depth of water level, decreasing salinity, shrinkage of Lake area, deterioration of the condition of the Nalabana Bird Sanctuary situated in the Lake have been cited as the major ones. While various natural factors have been attributed to such an environmental degradation, an artificial factor i.e. shrimp aquaculture practiced by a few economic elites of the state and also a group of businessmen has been cited as a potential cause. The economically marginalized and environmentally conscious fishing community living near the Lake have thus started a very powerful movement supported by various other sections of the state. Since the Lake ecology and sustainability of the marginalized fishing masses are interrelated in this case, the paper attempts to focus on the artificial problem that has substantially contributed to the environmental degradation and analyze the socioeconomic problems that have evolved in a sociological context.

Alienation, Conflict, and Conservation in the Protected Areas of Urban Metropolis: A Case Study of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai

This paper examines the ways in which conservation politics centring the Protected Areas in cities has affected the livelihood and survival of the tribal community residing within Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai. Using the Marxian theorisation of alienation and extending its dimension to the field of political ecology, the study tries to relate the estrangement of the tribal people in a metropolis in terms of their cultural resonance, socio-economic activities, and, on the whole, the concept of ‘species being’ as used by Karl Marx. The study highlights social exclusion of the communities within the Protected Areas of Mumbai, contrary to the bucolic conservationist claims on which most of the existing literature harps.

Urban development, environmental vulnerability and CRZ violations in India: impacts on fishing communities and sustainability implications in Mumbai coast

Coastal Regulations in India are traced back to the UN Conference on Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. The Environment Protection Act (EPA) 1986 was enacted to implement India’s commitments as a signatory. The Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification of 1991 was made under the provisions of the EPA in order to protect coastal environments and social and livelihood security of fishing community. This paper assesses the effects of CRZ rules and violations in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, which has experienced tremendous growth due to the rapid industrialization and urbanization. This process has led to the destruction of mangroves and other important species of fish which play a crucial role in sustaining the coastal ecology and urban biodiversity; high population density and uneven growth have exacerbated adverse environmental and socioeconomic consequences. The Koli (fishing community) in this region faces huge problems of survival and sustenance in small-scale fishing, due to the rampant commercial fishing by big trawlers and large-scale dumping of waste materials by the industries surrounding the vicinity into the sea. In small but significant ways, the fishing communities through their traditional commons-based resource management and livelihood systems protect the coastal ecology and help the cities in reducing their carbon footprints. On the basis of primary field research in Thane–Mulund Creek Bhandup, Chimbai, and Sewri, this paper attempts to assess CRZ violations taking place on coastal areas and is causing damage to the coastal ecology. The research specifically has focused on the particular fishing-related activities and spaces—such as: jetties, parking of boats, access to sea, weaving and drying of nets, landing grounds, drying and cleaning of fish that are more affected by encroachment of seashore area and by CRZ rules violations. It evaluates the actions taken by Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority and Bombay Municipal Corporation while implementing rules and making Integrated Coastal Zone Management plan for management of marine environment. It raises broader issues relating to the contradictions and complementarities involved in ICZM plans vis-a-vis management of biodiversity, within a larger context of rapid urbanization and demands for real estate growth. The paper argues that urban biodiversity management requires clear valuation of the long-term ecological and socioeconomic benefits of sustenance of coastal ecology and related livelihoods.

The political agenda of implementing Forest Rights Act 2006: evidences from Indian Sundarban

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) is a landmark statutory law which aims to grant ownership rights and forest management powers to the marginalized forest-dependent communities in India. Our study, conducted in Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) region of West Bengal, reveals that at particular locations where the act suffers from implementation deficits or lack of coverage, it is imperative to investigate the role of local politics in facilitating or impeding access to forest rights. The study identifies the political drivers which influence the (non) implementation of the act in the SBR. It argues that despite being a rights-based law, the implementation of FRA is deeply implicated within vested political interests at specific geographical locations. The study concludes that a critique of the political economy of forest conservation is inadequate to explain the limitations of FRA implementation.

Urban at the Edges: Mumbai’s Coastline Urbanisms

Uneven and combined urban development is a hallmark of the changing Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). Mumbai’s coastline urbanism is markedly different from the dominant urbanisms in the city centre. The growth that makes the city centre a global destination is experienced as phantom violations of nature at the edges. The effects of CRZ (Coastal Regulation Zone) rules and their violations in the MMR have reconstituted the urban in the seashores, with huge impacts on the traditional fishing communities. The marginal people at the marginal spaces are in the receiving end of Mumbai’s quest to become a global city. The resultant intensified urbanization leads to the destruction of mangrove forests and coastal ecosystems, which are crucial in sustaining biodiversity; high population density and uneven growth have exacerbated environmental and socio-economic consequences. The Koli (fishing community) in this region face problems of survival and sustenance in small-scale fishing, due to the rampant commercial fishing by big trawlers and large-scale dumping of waste materials by the industries in the vicinity into the sea. This paper focuses on the transformation of spaces and activities related to the lives of fishing community that is worst affected by encroachment on coastal areas and rampant CRZ violations. It discusses the frequent reclassification of CRZ rules in order to facilitate many developmental projects like Special Economic Zone (SEZs). Within the larger context of evolving urbanisms in the coastal areas of Mumbai, the broader issues related to the contradictions and complementarities involved in Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) plans vis-a-vis management of biodiversity are scrutinized in the study.

Communities in a ‘Protected’ Urban Space and Conservation Politics in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park

Rapid but uncontrolled economic growth, unstructured working class neighbourhood, unplanned policies of the government, etc., have changed the contours of the emergent city life and its inhabitants in the recent decades. The urban elite interest of a pristine neighbourhood, which is fused with that of the state, has often tried to ‘conserve’ environment with the help of ‘legitimate’ tools like Public Interest Litigation (PIL). Through an ethnographic study, the paper manifests conditions under which the politics of conserving Protected Areas (PAs) operates not only in the village forests but also in cities, in highly inequitable and fabricated ways. It also examines how, in the absence of any established land rights in the cities, due to lack of any particular generational roots of cultural identity, the marginalized population structure within the PAs in Mumbai constitute and establish themselves as a ‘community’ in itself to prevent themselves from getting confined or trapped within discourses of indigenous novelty and cultural belongingness.

A paradox of the ‘community’: contemporary processes of participatory forest conservation in the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) region of West Bengal

ABSTRACT This article provides a comprehensive critique of the culturalist idealizations of community, associated with an essentially tenuous version of environmentalism. To this end, it analyses an ‘eco-governmentality’, observed in the implementation of joint forest management (JFM) policy in India and, in doing so, engages with a rethinking on the historical definitions of community. An explanation of community, popularized by the works of pioneering sociologists like Ferdinand Tonnies and Louis Wirth, had largely built on some immutable dimensions. Most of such dimensions offered are organized on the notion that communities are intractable as well as organic, inhabit a distinct geographical location and have a socio-cultural system relatively undisturbed by external forces. The present study, based on empirical observations from the eco-governmentality of JFM in India, brings in insights to critique the aforementioned line of thought. It offers two levels of insights: (1) a collective can represent itself as a community through shared experiences of marginalization as well as subject-formation, (2) the solidarity of a collective as a community is often invoked as a ‘moral rhetoric’, to ‘exploit the political obligations that the government have for looking after the poor and the underprivileged section of the population’.1

Development or Disaster? Land Acquisition and Dispossession in the Mining Belts and Coastal Zones of Rural Odisha, India

Based on the above statement, there often has been the critics of neo-liberalism in India on the issue of growth and distribution being the major aims of neo-liberal economic policy that this doctrine should be criticised not only for its effects on trade, investment and finance, but also the consequences it has for social welfare, environmental sustainability, control of the economy and labour.