RE Projects & Conversion of Commons

[Hansika Singh]

Dear All,

I would like to pick your collective genius on a question I am grappling with.
A lot of big RE projects that are coming up in India are built on what is categorized as ‘wasteland’ by the government and in absence of mandatory EIA requirement, most Civil society voices don’t find a legitimate means to engage through a public consultation process. And hence RE developers do not have to engage with the issue of commons at all. Even in cases where the investor of a project does mandate the developer to conduct SIA/EIA assessments, the issues end up being limited to fair compensation etc, and I don’t see the issue of commons being addressed even when an investor follows strict ESG guidelines or is a signatory to various responsible investment pledges (like equator principles and UNPRI). Given this context I would like inputs on 2 things –

1) What are the laws/regulations that can be used to bring in the aspect of governance of commons in large RE projects (particularly relevant to pastoral land in arid/semi-arid areas which is most likely to be categorized as waste land).

2) I am also interested in finding out other ways to articulate the issues around commons into responsible investing principles/guidelines for investors (like large pensions funds of other countries who are likely to consider this once this understanding is built into the ESG frameworks they use). Are there any examples of this? Any suggestions on how this could be approached?

[Author]

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