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Conservation Projects
Historically, most protected areas were carved out of spaces that were treated as commons or private settlements. Envisioning a landscape as set aside exclusively for wildlife has been a dominant narrative behind this conversion. Such narratives continue today and there is an increasing push for creating separate spaces for humans and wildlife given the larger environmental issues of climate change and resource scarcity. Apart from the state, now conservation organisations, companies and individuals are also driving the reassigning of land for conservation activities through formation of private and state protected areas and afforestation. In the process, commons such as forest commons, grazing grounds, streams, and places for cultivation, are converted to state or private property. While the social consequences of dislocation and displacement are widely recognized, the consequences of these changes to landscape and habitats are less understood.
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Encroachment and Land Redistribution
Illicit appropriation of commonly held spaces for a variety of purposes such as agriculture, housing settlements, and small businesses is a standard feature of changing rural and peri-urban landscapes. So also, from allotment for housing, building of schools to expansion of cultivable land, aquaculture and plantations, commons have provided a pool from which various government departments, programs, etc. have sought to extract. The devaluation of commons is what enables these processes of appropriation and redistribution. Experiences and observations regarding these may be done here.
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Industrial And Domestic Waste
Urban areas as well as rural environments are increasingly becoming recipients of industrial and domestic waste. Community controlled spaces are often the first to be used as landfills and dump yards. Managing this is a complex problem involving communities, governments and businesses. Field reports including initiatives and challenges as well as broader discussion of the problem with reference to the impact on commons are invited here.
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Infrastructural Projects
Infrastructural projects like SEZs, Renewable Energy plants (solar, wind), port development, large dams and road-building projects are among the interventions that have affected common property resources directly. Their presence frequently indicates tensions between local and larger interests. Discussions pertaining to negative and positive aspects of such projects may be taken up here.
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Mining
Mining sites are often located in habitats that are rich in natural resources and managed through community institutions. Land use change through mining invariably affects the livelihoods of local people as well as the local ecology. Discussions on social and ecological impact, recovery post mining and community efforts at restoration may be discussed here.
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Water Resources
Surface water bodies, both inland and coastal, are among the most complex sites of commoning due to their spatial distribution, variable access and the dynamic nature of the resource itself. These have been institutionally managed by communities through norms and customs. However, a push towards privatization of these water resources in terms of ownership as well as usufruct is to be seen in many places. Another factor complicating this picture is the role of the state in allocating and claiming control over surface water resources that often conflict with customary practices and rights held by communities. In contrast to surface water, ground water has been largely seen as a privately owned resource. Declining water table and expanding grey zones across the country, however, are now forcing us to consider alternate ways of managing and conceiving the utilization of ground water resources. Consequently, it is only in recent years that ideas and practices of commoning around ground water resources are being considered and sought to be applied. Experiences and case-studies from the ground, as well as conceptual reflections on both surface and groundwater may be shared here.
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