
It’s tough to conserve natural resources when they’re your best shot at making a living. And that’s the reality for most people living in rural India.
KJ: Sometimes what happens is that because of the constraints they live, they eke out a living, some of these larger concerns of equity, sustainability may not come very naturally to them, because everybody is in a struggle to meet their livelihoods.
But there have been a lot of experiments to show that communities can be stewards of their land, water, and ecosystems – if they get the right support.
TP: Friendly bugs, enemy bugs, now I know the difference between the two.
So what does it really take to help communities preserve nature, while still getting what they need? And is it really all in their hands, or are there larger forces at play?
Welcome to In Our Nature, a podcast by the ECOBARI Collaborative that uncovers what we need to do to protect ecosystems, so that they can protect us. I’m your host, Isha, and in this series, we explore our deep connections with the natural world, and how restoring nature can help us adapt to climate change. ECOBARI is a shared initiative of nine founding partners, and is convened by the Watershed Organisation Trust.
Our fifth episode explores the role local governance plays in protecting nature – and what tools communities need to be able to effectively manage their natural resources.
KJ: My name is KJ Joy. Generally, people call me Joy. I’m part of an organisation called Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, SOPPECOM to be brief.
Joy, a Founding Member and Senior Fellow at SOPPECOM, has over 30 years of experience working with communities across rural Maharashtra. He says the first step to empowering a community is recognising that it isn’t just one big blob.
KJ: Communities also need to be disaggregated. Community is not one. There are different types of fault lines within the community. Now for example, there can be a richer farmer versus a very marginal or agricultural labour, they are also ‘community’. Or around the caste, there could be different fault lines. Or gender and patriarchy, or ethnicity. So I think we should be sensitive to these types of fault lines because they come with hierarchies and power structures. So when we talk about community empowerment or communities participating, we should be able to ask this question – which community is this? And are we preparing a level playing field for all these communities? Because they are at different ends of either resource endowment or access to resources.
So to help people manage their resources better, we have to acknowledge what it means to share them fairly. Joy gives the example of public irrigation systems, which usually draw water from rivers and dams through irrigation channels.
KJ: SOPPECOM worked in a village called Khudawadi in Osmanabad district. So there is a particular medium irrigation project called Bori dam. Though the dam was functional, the irrigation had started, for the first 10-12 years, people in the Khudawadi village at the tail end of the command area didn’t get access to any water.
Often, the water coming through these systems gets used up by farmers who live closer to the source of the water. By the time we get to the last few villages in the area, the water has pretty much dried up.
SOPPECOM agreed to help solve this problem by creating a Water Users Association, which brings together all the people using water from a particular irrigation system – but on one condition. Once the village had access to water, they had to manage it equitably. But what does that actually mean?
KJ: We did not go with a blueprint, saying that this is equitable access to water and you have to abide by this. We put different experiences before the people. We talked to them about, let’s say, Pani Panchayat experience, where every household will get access to two and a half acres, that is one hectare, you know, two seasonal irrigation, no sugarcane, et cetera. But interestingly, they listen to us about all these experiences. But they chose their own option.
Joy talks about Pani Panchayat, a movement spearheaded by Vilasrao Salunkhe in Maharashtra to help communities better manage their water, which was a great source of learning and inspiration for him. Back in Khudawadi, the villagers eventually agreed to a system where everyone gets enough water to grow one hectare of crops. If there’s additional water, everyone gets to grow a little bit more, and 15% of the water is always reserved for landless people.
So it’s clear that communities, when brought together, can find effective ways to govern their resources. And the successes in these kinds of programs have snowballed beyond isolated pockets to now being enshrined in policy.
KJ: In 2005 we see that there’s a policy under the same act, making it compulsory that in any public irrigation systems, especially surface irrigation systems, the water users or the farmers have to form their own Water User Association even to get access to water. So, in fact, we did a very pioneering work in reforming public irrigation systems through the people’s own participation.
A key part of all this is the approach that SOPPECOM took – to leave the final decision to the community.
KJ: This is a choice which people made. Now, we did not impose that everybody should get access to 1000 cubic metres of water or anything, but we just put different information, experiences before the people. And people choose. So I would say that when we talk about community empowerment, community participation, community-led governance of resources and things, I think the most important thing is how do communities make informed choices between different options? Sometimes what happens is that because of the constraints they live, they eke out a living, some of these larger concerns of equity, sustainability may not come very naturally to them, because everybody is in a struggle to meet their livelihoods.
So what does the process actually look like, of getting people to see the bigger picture?
KJ: So what we do is that we generally try to bring all the social sections together, including women, Dalits, agriculture, libraries and other farmers together into discussions. We also do research and other things, data gathering how the present water use or the land use or cropping is taking place. Now, for example, if a larger farmer is going to have a much deeper bore well, it can impact somebody else.
Once they have this data, they show it to the people, and based on this, people make decisions on how to share.
KJ: So the only thing is that if the majority of the people in the village are with this idea, then probably you can put pressure so that everybody comes on.
But of course, it isn’t always straightforward. Like Joy said at the start, the community isn’t one – and overcoming those differences can be a real challenge.
KJ: Of course, this whole unequal structures within the system is a big challenge. Because very often you need to build consensus within the communities, if you have to really manage a resource properly and things. If you are to get these marginalised social sections, whether women, Dalis, et cetera, you need people who are capable of working with those sections and bring them into this.
So you need local leaders from marginalised groups who have a strong voice and can bring their community together. Very often, there are also local groups that have been working to mobilise marginalised people – and they make great allies.
KJ: We very often work with the local organisations and movements who have got a good social base. I think it’s important to realise that unless you are socially rooted in that context, you can’t just parachute there for five years and work and get out and things. There’s a larger commitment, there’s a larger involvement which is involved. Because then there’s an agency, even if you withdraw from a particular context, there’s an agency which will take forward what you have been able to do there and things.
Joy talked a lot about water, and how communities can come together to manage it through groups like Water User Associations. In Jalna district of Maharashtra, WOTR has been working with Farmer Producer Companies, or FPCs, as another community group that can influence the behaviour of its members towards more sustainable practices. I spoke to Taratai Pawar, a member of Krishiyug Farmer Producer Company and part of a pioneering local women’s group working to produce organic fertilisers and pesticides.
TP: Just like a man can die from taking too much medicine, the same thing can happen with the soil.
Tara talks about how the overuse of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers was rampant in her community – because many farmers in her village felt that more using chemical inputs would result in a higher yield. But, in her words, just like a man can die by taking too much medicine, so too can the soil.
TP: I used to get 20 quintal of cotton per acre, but now it’s halved – it’s become 10 quintal. At first, nobody thought about why this happened. Then I realised it’s because of chemical overuse, which ruins the soil.
Tara noticed that the production of cotton from her field had declined to half of what it used to be. At the same time, WOTR was working with Krishiyug to help its members transition to more sustainable farming practices – and through this process, she started to attribute this reduction in yield to the overuse of chemical inputs.
TP: At first, I didn’t know about the meaning of friendly insects and enemy insects. I used to tell my husband to bring pesticides to kill all the bugs in our farm, even the good ones. But now I know the difference between the two.
She also learned about friendly bugs, which she calls ‘mitrakeeda’, that can improve yields through pollination or controlling other pests. This helped her make better decisions about the kinds of pesticides she uses on her farm – to prevent wiping out all of her little friends.
TP: In our village, there are 10 self-help groups. We took 2-3 women from each group and made a group of 15 women.
Since there were already a bunch of women’s groups active in the area, WOTR engaged them to form a smaller group of around 15 women dedicated to making organic fertilisers and pesticides. She says that this was a pretty big help, since it’s labour-intensive to make these inputs – and having a group makes it much easier than having to do it alone.
TP: It’s easier to make these inputs as part of a group, because most farmers don’t feel like making it at home alone.
Tara noticed that using organic inputs meant her veggies would last longer and taste better. It also reduced her costs, and she wasn’t the only one – her neighbours also realised that her onions and garlic lasted much longer than theirs did, and looked much fresher.
TP: Our onion and garlic [grown with organic fertiliser] lasted for over a year, it didn’t get spoiled. We saved the money we would spend on buying synthetic pesticides and fertilisers, and the taste of the vegetables became really good.
Tara starts to send around photos of her crops and invites other farmers to see her fields and yields – to see the difference between using organic and chemical inputs. And she’s invested in getting more people to take up natural farming practices – especially because selling these inputs is important for the growth of her business.
TP: I show people photos and invite them to see my field, to demonstrate the difference between plots where I’ve used organic inputs and where I haven’t. When other farmers see this, they ask how there is such a difference, since the soil type and crop variety is the same? And we tell them, we’ve used organic inputs in one, and chemical inputs in the other.
But through the work of the FPC, she has seen a pretty significant change in her community already. She says that 60% of people in her area grow vegetables for their own consumption without any chemical inputs, and 40% are transitioning overall to organic farming.
TP: Once they became aware [of the benefits of organic farming], 60% of people started growing vegetables for home consumption without any chemical inputs, and 40% of people are doing overall organic farming.
So Joy’s example points more towards the equitable sharing of a common resource, like water, while Tara’s is about how community action can inspire better practices like preserving soil health. But both draw on common denominators – like working with existing community groups or local organisations and providing the right information to support decision-making.
But the buck doesn’t stop here.
KJ: When you talk about local governance, we should also see that all the issues cannot be solved at the community or the local level. There are macro level issues which are happening, which have a direct bearing on the micro or the local, what the local communities do. Now, for example, the type of water policy you have, or the type of forest policy you have, or the type of land use policy you have. Or the type of macro development in terms of, let’s say, if you see in Maharashtra, whole lot of water is going out to the industries and the urban, you know, drinking water, domestic water, and things.
If a community is working successfully to manage its water but a factory comes up in the same geography, suddenly the water use and availability in the area will change drastically – and that’s something they’ve got no control over.
KJ: You need to walk on both the legs, one firmly rooted in the community where you are working, and trying to mobilise. And also, on the other hand, you need to engage with other larger forces which may be detrimental to the local communities, in terms of resource extraction, where does the resource go, etcetera etcetera, and the larger political economy, ecology.
This means that it’s not just about building governance at the community level – we also have to reform the way we govern natural resources as a whole.
KJ: For example, water is an interconnected resource. It has got different scales. So you need, for example, a village level institution or a micro-watershed level institution. It has to be connected with even other different layers of institutions. Now for example, the basin scale, because whatever you do in a particular place, like a micro-watershed or village, can impact the rest of the basin. Now, if you are going to over-extract water in a particular upper part of the basin or something, it can definitely have an impact on the flows downstream and things.
Joy mentions the basin scale, which essentially means looking at water use across an entire river basin, say the Brahmaputra or Narmada. These are huge areas, including the entire region that a river and all its tributaries cover on their path. Looking at any one piece within the puzzle would be incomplete, because of how interconnected it all is.
KJ: When you talk about ecosystem-based governance, then there is the issue of boundaries coming in, because all our administrative things work on geographical boundaries, like a district, a taluka or a village, et cetera. Resources don’t know these boundaries. But even in an interstate river thing, one state doesn’t talk to the other state, whether it is Krishna, Kaveri, Godavari or any of these, you know, disputed places. We can’t, we have not even created such institutional spaces which is cutting across this. So we need to rethink about some of these boundaries which are created, because resource boundaries are different.
This is a major sticking point. We can’t effectively manage our resources unless we accept the reality that they are interconnected. The Krishna river is not going to see the difference between Maharashtra and Karnataka’s state borders. But the amount of water reaching Karnataka depends on how Maharashtra uses water upstream.
So what’s the solution? There’s an interesting phrase that Joy uses here…
KJ: I don’t know if it will sound jargonistic, but it’s called a nested institutional framework.
A nested institutional framework essentially means that you have an institution right at the top that is responsible for overseeing water flow of the entire river basin, which cuts across states and other administrative boundaries. And that institution is closely connected to a number of smaller institutions that go down to the individual village level, to keep tabs on how water is being used, when and where. And, he says, they all need to talk to each other.
KJ: When we talk about governance, we talk about accountability, and very often, the local institutions are supposed to be accountable to the higher level institutions. That is the way it functions. But here we need to talk about reverse accountability, saying that even the higher level institution needs to be accountable to the institution which is below that. So unless you build in this type of reverse accountability, then very often it’s the high level institutions which take decisions, and these people are only to just abide by it.
But this thinking is more than just the creation of government bodies. It’s also about how we see our natural resources as a whole. And it gives us a sense of humility – because we have to play by nature’s rules – not by the rules and boundaries we’ve created. And closely related to that is the idea of environmental flows.
KJ: There is an increasing sensitivity, even among the various departments, about environmental flows or ecological flows, because we find, if you look at any of the latest, you know, water policies, they do talk about environmental flow as an important thing. I mean, even in the state of Odisha has in their water policy, like every policy, whether it’s the national or state level, you have a priority of water use. For example, first priority is generally given to drinking and domestic water. Second may be to agriculture and industry, et cetera, et cetera. So there, I think Odisha, for the first time, talked about the second priority to be given to environmental flow. I mean certain type of water need to be kept in the rivers as untapped or unbound, it should flow, so that it can meet some of the ecosystem needs, the riparian, maybe the vegetation, the fish, all types of things. So I think there’s an increase in recognition of this.
Ecological flows are the amount of water that needs to flow in the river for the health and survival of the ecosystem itself, which is just starting to be recognised by policymakers across India. And this is important, because it shifts the focus from simply thinking about human needs to actually seeing humans as part of a bigger picture.
KJ: Probably it can be used as a peg to anchor some of the concerns we have about the whole philosophy that every drop of water needs to be harvested and put into human use. So very anthropocentric way of looking at rest of nature, or rivers and things. So our this whole maximum saying that any drop of water going to the sea, say, waste, it comes from that mindset.
Because, at the end of the day…
KJ: We are part of nature. So I say humans and the rest of nature, otherwise, people have a tendency to think that we are outside somewhere. It’s not, yeah.
And, Joy says, this is even more important in the era of climate change – where causes and impacts can often be spread out, and boundaries start to fray.
KJ: The biggest lesson which we need to learn from climate change in the crisis is this – that we need to, you know, because climate change operates at a scale very different and there, I think, then this whole issue of cooperation across boundaries is an important thing. So I think climate change is a wake up call for all of us to go beyond these boundaries, which you have created here.
Thanks for listening to In Our Nature! If you like this episode, please share it far and wide to help us get the word out there. We’re super grateful for your support and your attention.
ECOBARI stands for Ecosystem-based Adaptation for Resilient Incomes. Our collaborative aims to spotlight and enable solutions that build climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods by restoring, protecting, and enhancing nature. It’s a shared initiative of nine founding partners with diverse areas of expertise, including rural development, action research, sustainable finance, nature conservation, and policy engagement. To learn more about ECOBARI, visit our website at www.ecobari.org
Speakers
- KJ Joy, Founding Member and Senior Fellow, SOPPECOM
- Tara Pawar,
- Isha Chawla, Anchor, ECOBARI
Credits
Produced by Isha Chawla
Original score by Anurag Baruah
Sound effects from Freesound.org
Music from:
- Epidemic Sound
- Chinmaya Dunster: Empathy 1 (1:47, 3:08) and Track 06 (12:07)
Listen to the series here