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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
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
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.
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
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.