Environmentalism in India- HS- 200-ks-iitb-sociology- Lecture-7 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Environmentalism in India- HS- 200-ks-iitb-sociology- Lecture-7

Forms of conflict, tactics/strategies of resistance, and ideologies

 Environmentalism that gives rise to collective action

problems, operates at diverse and disparate number of sites or locations;

 accompanied by globalization of economy and polity,

important concerns and their solutions on a global scale have gained ground in today’s world.

 We would analyze these themes, we draw from the

ecological-symbolic perspective, which

 focuses attention not only on the material basis of ecological

problems but also construction of meanings.

Collective actions

 social responses to hazards and disasters are affected by

both the nature of the disruption in human/environmental relations, and the appraisals people make of those disruptions.

 So, human responses to ecological hazards are mediated by

interpretative processes (Kroll- Smith and Couch 1993).

Collective responses as mediated

 Many international problems are addressed through

cooperation among states, but their causes and solutions typically involve a complex of non-state actors such as industry groups, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and indegenous peoples.

 Now the ecological problems pose a host of issues that may

not be tackled in the so-called conventional traditional sovereign state model based on a clear division between domestic and international[inter-state] relations; there is now a declining importance of direct force in environmental negotiations.

Strategic linkages between agencies

 In academics as well as in policy arena, there are defenders

• f the global economy and polity who describe new forms of

social actions in terms of legal and political decision –making as indispensable for more inclusive and advanced forms of self government or so-called `advanced liberalism’;

 while the critics show its limitations, pointing to inadequacies

• f global responses in environmental protection.

 Ecological transformation confronts our everyday life with

differentiated and often conflict-filled processes ;

 As the sources of environmental harm are more ambiguous,

community relations can become extremely contentious.

 Environmental conflicts erupted in specific communities may

be divided over their respective perceptions of environmental /health risks;

 And there may be competing interpretations of potential

health effects supported by officials as well as by the scientists.

Conflicts in community relations over perception of env/health risks

 The ambiguity associated with environmental hazards fosters

conflict as groups differ in their interpretations of risk.

 While residents may be confronted with similar environmental

conditions, they often use different sets of criteria for making their assessments of environmental harm.

 Conditions are further complicated by the ‘‘invisibility’’ of

environmental hazards, which often render them impossible to detect through the human senses (Beck 1992).

 Local, state and company officials, along with regulatory

agents, often exacerbate the ambiguity by either withholding relevant information or by sending contradictory messages.

Nature of conflicts

 In several instances, studies done by social scientists, it is

found that

 Conflicting interests and competing interpretations of

environmental impacts lead to environmental disputes,

 which often divide residents and contribute to the emergence

• f contentious factions over different issues and the

disintegration of community relations

 Issues: mining operation, construction of dam and the

consequences, pollution and controversy over chemical contamination and health risk etc] Freudenburg and Jones (1991

Communities are divided over environmental disputes

 In some communities, it is found that environmental hazards

create a stigma that becomes attached not only to the community, but also to the residents themselves (Edelstein 1993).

 Some community residents attempt to minimize the stigma

associated with environmental hazards, whereas others work to publicize the threat in an effort to have their grievances addressed.

 Somewhat paradoxically, as residents draw increased

attention to local environmental hazards, they contribute to the stigmatization of the community, often further reducing their own property values and threatening community solidarity [ Edelstein 1993].

Community responses and hazard appraisal

 Several distinct themes emerge from the literature over

issues involving environmental harms: 1) the emergence of competing groups, 2) the ambiguity of harm, 3) conflicting economic concerns, and 4) variations in attachment to community.

Distinct themes over harm detection

 Social action and environmentalism which constitutes the

bedrock of environmental movements could broadly be identified in three generic modes (i.e. struggle, publicity and restoration) .[see Godgil and Guha 1994].

 While such activism has characteristically been localized

• with most groups working within a district or a region, there

has always been links between the micro and macro spheres- between local and global level of representation

Three generic modes of responses

 In India, for instance, NGOs/social movement organizations

[smo] recently assumed salience not only as translators of national and international law at the local level but also as channels for the assertion of customary collective rights over local commons in national and international fora.

 Social movement organizations [SMO] as mediators, linking

the global with the local movements,

 Grassroots NGOs have established transnational

connections

 They are an important interface between nation-states,

supranational institutions and local communities.

Social movement organizations and NGOs as mediators

 For instance, Human rights NGOs present a case for

peoples’ rights over natural resources which goes much beyond the highly limited protective approach to displacement outlined in the World Bank policy .

 And there are important questions about patterns of resource

use that may conflict with subsistence rights, namely extraction of raw materials, alterations of ecosystem and reprogramming of organisms, and destabilization such as due to climate change

Presentation of the environmental issues

 In a global system of `borderless economy’ when patterns of

resource use overstretch the resilience of the biosphere and frustrate the balance of the ecosystem, may give rise to demand for environmental justice which constitute three senses of rights for justice: justice as fairness; justice as equitable distribution; and justice as human dignity [see Wolfgang Sachs, 2003]

Environmental justice claims

 In the first, it is a question of organized procedures for

allocation of advantages and disadvantages that are fair to everyone involved. This is a procedural conception of justice.

 In the second, it is a question of proportionate distribution

• f goods and rights among individuals and groups , that is

the relational conception of justice.

 And in the third, it is a question of minimum goods

/services or rights necessary for a dignified human

• existence. This is the absolute substantive conception of
• justice. In this sense, patterns of resource use that may

destabilize the ecosystem and that which may come in conflict with subsistence rights may raise issues of human

Justice

 Whether environmental change is rendered governable by

advanced liberal government has important implications for the available policy options.

 Environmental change in a regime of environmentalism is

produced by experts as an issue requiring global management, thereby making government interventions look inevitable {Beck 1992}

Governmental intervention

 Environmental change as framed by experts creates the

basis for justifying far-ranging policy interventions and even the extension of state power in the name of ‘survival’ of life on planet Earth;

 Advanced liberal government, on the other hand, renders

climate change governable as an issue of state failure requiring market-based solutions or the creation of markets.

 The extent to which action is to be taken on climate change is

not a moral issue but instead a matter of cost-benefit analysis.

 If the costs of destruction caused by climate change exceed

the costs of preventing it, taking action is legitimate

Governmental interventions

 Nature-based conflicts have increased in frequency and

intensity

 In India, they mostly revolve around competing claims over

forests, land, water and fisheries and so on.

 These claims have generated a new movement struggling

for the rights of victims of ecological degradation.

 The environmental movement has added a new dimension

to Indian democracy and civil society.

 It also poses an ideological challenge to the dominant notions

• f the meaning, content and patterns of development.

. Nature-based conflicts[see Godgil and Guha, 1994]

In land related

issues, such as dispossession

• f land has

Politics of dispossession and land related issues involving displacement

 Many of these movements are represented by different

classes, castes and ethnic group, farmers and industrial workers ;

 Farmers demand the provision of subsidized power and

fertilizer; slum dwellers claiming for water connection and sanitation facilities;

 industrial workers campaigning for higher pay and job

security;

 ethnic minorities fighting for a separate state and so on.  Cities , [especially, the capital city- ie.,New Delhi]-are

strategic sites of demonstration of protests

Forms of conflict and representations

 all recognize the symbolic significance of a show of strength

in the national capital.

 widespread coverage by the print media,  these demonstrations are often held at the the strategic sites

[near the houses of Parliament and the government secretariat, near PM’s Bunglow ]

Forms of conflict and strategic/tactical choice of sites

 Demonstrations represented by poor people of Madya

Pradesh and some were from Gujarat and Maharashtra.

 --villagers were to be displaced by the massive Sardar

Sarovar dam, being built on the Narmada river in Central India, assembled in a peaceful dharna

 In response to that, in May 1990 saw a series of events in

New Delhi–

 Series of Demonstrations followed, within a week, by a

counter demonstration.

 the demonstration lasted for several days, with singing,

dancing and exhortative speeches by the protest leaders;

 It made tremendous impact and there was widespread media

coverage.

What happens when such demonstrations take place [see Godgil and Guha, 1994]

 Most of the demonstrators had come from Madhya Pradesh,

the state containing a majority of the villages to be submerged by the dam;

 They dispersed only after the Prime Minister met a delegation

• f the protesters, and assured them that the Sardar Sarovar

project would be reviewed

• 11. Demonstrators– poor villagers

 Immediately after they left, politicians from Gujarat, and the

farmers from the state that stands to benefit most from the project, set about organizing a counter demonstration

 A few months later, the two opposing groups were

involved in a face to face encounter hundreds of miles from New Delhi, on the Madhya Pradesh- Gujarat border

demonstrators- politicians and rich peasants from Gujarat

 The Narmada controversy is just one, especially charged

example of a wide spectrum of social conflicts over natural resources in contemporary India

 With the resources in question becoming increasingly scare ,

such conflicts becoming more widespread

Forest and water issues and competing claims among resource users

 Setting up of independent

Inspection panel

This represents an

innovation in international law, whereby individual

State’s tactical responses[see Shalini Randeria 2007]

 The primary purpose of the Panel, >  is to examine the compliance by Bank staff with the

safeguard policies and procedures laid down by the Bank >that are also binding on the borrower;

 The latest series of complaints, submitted in 2004 and 2005,

concern the Mumbai Urban Transport projects in the country. This drew attention to the high-handedness of the MMRDA, which had failed to address their concerns

 In order to forestall controversies about forced displacement

and inadequate rehabilitation, which involved the controversies funded by the world Bank in India, civil society

• rganizations were entrusted with the implementation of this

part of the project ;

state’s tactical/strategic move

 SPARC, the NGO was in charge of resettlement   However, Neighbourhood associations that represented the

affected citizens accused the NGO of corruption and mismanagement.

 The NGO that represents itself as one body representing

(i.e. the World Bank, the Indian railways and the regional government of Maharashtra) and for those protesting inadequate resettlement,

 But the battle lines are drawn rather differently.

 In each of these controversial projects, as in the Narmada

dam project, the strategy of the state has been to contravene Bank norms and to switch donors after serious violations of World Bank policies.

 But a replacement of donors leaves those adversely affected

by the project with no one to hold accountable.

Who is to be accountable for project affected people?

 The politico-legal context has led to a kind of legal plurality

and overlapping sovereignties with a differentiation of citizenship rights.

 For example, different standards for resettlement and

compensation apply to those displaced under a World Bank financed project as compared to those affected by other projects.

 The changes made with respect to donor agency’s

involvement not only affect the local people in which processes of displacement occur, but also the dynamics of collective action on the ground.

• verlapping sovereignties and

differentiation of citizenship rights

 The set of norms that are applied depends not merely on the

financial involvement of the World Bank but also on the bargaining strength of the civil society actors involved.

 Their success varies with the extent of local resistance, the

scale of national political mobilization and media attention, the pressure from the Bank on the state, the possibilities of legal redress at various scales and the transnational support that a struggle is able to generate.

politics and the role of mediation

 A revealing indication of this shift is contained in the

dedications of the first two citizens’ reports on the state of India’s environment (CSE, 1982 and 1985).

 While the first was dedicated to the ‘Women of Chamoli’ who

were amongst the originators of the Chipko movement, the second was dedicated simply to the ‘Dam-displaced people

• f India’.

 Through the 1980s and beyond, different river valley projects

– from Tehri in the north to Silent Valley in the south, to Sardar Sarovar in the west - have been the subject of bitter controversy.

 Instances of protest of the Dam displaced people have much

longer history since colonial period [ ie Mulshi

Media attention to environmental movement

 Popular movements in defence of customary rights have

focused on two issues central to the direction of forest management.

 First, they have contended that the control of woodland must

revert to communal hands, with the state gradually withdrawing from ownership and management.

 Second, those opposing forest management have pointed to

the contrast between the subsistence orientation of villagers and the commercial orientation of the state.

Conflict over resource use

 Localized opposition has also arisen amongst village artisans

facing increasing difficulty in obtaining raw material from forest areas. Typically, the state has diverted to industrial enterprises, resources previously used for generations by artisans.

 Thus reed workers in Kerala, bamboo workers in Karnataka,  and rope makers using wild grass in the Siwalik hills of Uttar

Pradesh have all resisted the Forest Department’s plans to give preferential treatment to the paper industry in the supply

• f biomass from forests owned by the state.

Conflict over resource use

 Fisheries  Another category of nature-based conflicts involves artisanal

fisherfolk,---distinct endogamous groups of fisherfolk, both along the sea coast and on rivers, have long been a feature

• f the Indian landscape.

 These communities, which depend more or less exclusively

• n the catching and sale of fish, have recently been

threatened by massive encroachments on their territory.

 Like forest conflicts, struggles over fish stocks have arisen

• ut of the competing claims of different groups.

Conflict over resource use/ Fisheries

 Mining conflicts took place in the Doon valley in northwest

India.

 Here, the intensification of limestone mining since 1947 has

led to considerable environmental degradation -

 --deforestation, drying up of water sources, and the laying

waste through erosion and debris of previously cultivated fields.

 Opposition to limestone quarrying, which gathered force in

the late 1970s and early 1980s, has come from two distinct sources

Mining conflict

 1]‘Friends of the Doon’ and the ‘Save Mussoorie’ committees

were formed to safeguard the habitat of the valley.

 They were joined by hotel owners in Mussoorie, worried

about the impact of environmental degradation on the tourist inflow into this well known hill station.

 These groups may fairly be characterized as NIMBY (not in

my backyard) environmentalists, preoccupied above all with protecting a privileged landscape from overcrowding.

Opposition to limestone quarrying

 On the other side, villagers more directly affected by mining

were organized by local activists, many of whom had joined in Chipko movement.

 While the first group lobbied hard with politicians and senior

bureaucrats,

 --the latter resorted to sit-ins to stop quarrying.  Finally, both wings collaborated in a public interest litigation

that resulted in a landmark judgement of the Supreme Court, recommending the closure of all

 but six limestone mines in the Doon Valley [ shifted to the

interior hills so that Dehradun and Mussoorie would be spared

Representation of Chipko local activists

 Another movement with broadly similar contours has been

directed against bauxite mining in the southeastern state of Orissa

 Another movement with broadly similar type has been

directed against bauxite mining in the southeastern state of Orissa [By the end of 1986, here, BALCO operations had been forced to a halt.

Mining conflicts in Orissa

 Analysing the Indian environmentalism, Godgil and Guha

distinguished three distinct forms of expressions of resistance

 The material context is provided by the wide-ranging

struggles over natural resources

 the political expression of Indian environmentalism

has been the organization by social action groups of the victims of environmental degradation; confrontational [ Jail bharo, sit on dharna, bhook haratal, padayatra , and with skillful use of media,

 and constructive with programmes for rehabilitation ,

aforestation and so on.

INTERPRETING INDIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM

 While there is widespread agreement within the

environmental movement as regards the failures of the present development model,

 there is little consensus on plausible alternatives, all

responding to the range of conflicts,

 It is, however, possible to identify three distinct ideological

perspectives within the movement [Godgil and Guha 1994] ;

 Gandhians, Appropriate Technologists and Ecological

Marxists represent the three most forceful strands in the Indian environmental debate

Ideological trends within the Indian environmentalism

 Gandhian, relies heavily on  religious idiom  in its rejection of the modern way of life.  Here, environmental degradation and social conflict are

viewed above all as a moral problem,

 their origins lying in the wider acceptance of the ideology of

materialism and

 consumerism, which draws humans away from nature  For Gandhians, indifference to economic gains is the

essence of eastern culture ;

 through the written and Spoken word, they propagate an

alternative, non-modern philosophy whose roots lie in Indian tradition (Bahuguna, 1983; Nandy, 1987, 1989; Shilva, 1988).

 Marxists in inspiration, the polar opposite of the Gandhians  see the problem in political and economic terms,  argue that it is unequal access to resources, rather than the

question of values, which better explains the pattern and processes of environmental degradation and social conflict.

 In this sharply stratified society, the rich destroy nature in the

pursuit of profit, while the poor do so simply to survive; the creation of an economically just society is a logical precondition of social and ecological harmony.

Ecological Marxists, ideologies and solutions

 Gandhians and Ecological Marxists can be seen as

representing the ‘ideological’ and ‘political’ extremes of the Indian environmental movement, respectively.

 Because of their ideological purity and consistency,  They give rise to different sets of people and actions for

ecological restoration

Gandhians and Marxists are ideological and political extremes

 In between these two extremes, and occupying the vast

middle ground, lies a third tendency, which may be termed Appropriate Technology.

 Less strident than the Gandhian in its opposition to industrial

society,

 this strand of the environmental movement strives for a

working synthesis of agriculture and industry, big and small units, and Western and Eastern or modem and traditional- technological traditions;

 Appropriate Technologists have done pioneering work in the

generation and diffusion of resource conserving, labour intensive and socially liberating technologies

Appropriate Technologists

 In the western form, environmentalism is ‘a natural product of

a rising real standard of living, represented primarily by an interest of the upper middle class; a direct consequence of economic affluence;

 environmentalism is organically related to the expansion of

leisure opportunities in a ‘postindustrial’ society - it is itself an expression of a ‘postmaterial’ world view ; safe and cleaner environment and health and higher quality of life are the priorities in the western environmentalism;

 Greenness is the ultimate luxury of the consumer society;

public attention has shifted, from problems of environmental sustainability, such as the steady supply of forest produce, or the protection of soils, to issues of environmental quality like

Western environmentalism

 In the third World more generally - it has simultaneously

faced problems of land and resource depletion, pollution, and the decimation of biological diversity.

 history of colonial exploitation and the process of planned

development after Indian independence have contributed to environmental degradation

Eastern /third world/represented by Indian environmeentalism

 Environmentalism in India has its origins in conflicts between

competing groups - typically peasants and industry - over productive resources

 By contrast, environmental conflicts in the West have

characteristically emerged out of threats to health and leisure

• ptions.

 The forces for environmental destruction are, in both cases,

state agencies and private enterprise.

Indian environmentalism

 In one scenario, intensification of resource use undermines

existing- subsistence-oriented economic activities,

 while in the other it poses a threat to the health or amenities

• f local communities.

 In advanced industrial societies, quality of life issues such as

environmental protection, have somewhat displaced economic conflicts as the motivating factor behind collective action;

 while in the ‘developing’ world, environmental conflict is, for

the most part, only another form of economic conflict.

Indian and western envirornmentalism

 A fourth important difference concerns the role of

science and scientists.

 In the US, scientists have played a key role: I  the writing of and reaction to the book Silent Spring by

the biologist Rachel Carson (1962).

 In subsequent decades, the work of scientists such as Barry

Commoner, Paul Ehrlich, Garret Hardin and the co-authors of the Limits to Growth report have all helped bring ecological concerns to a wide public audience

 In India,  scientists (and social scientists) have played a severely

circumscribed role in the environment debate.

 Rather, journalists, Gandhians and environmental activists

themselves have been in the forefront.

• 53. Indian environmentalism compared

with the western

 Schools of thought represented by third world

environmentalism [of which Indian environmentalism] - as found expression in the works of Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, Vandana Shiva , Archana Prasad and some others’ writings that reflect the ambiguities of environmental policy making in Indian situations.

 On the activist front representing environmental

movemenrs , we may include several names, but some names , such as Medha Patkar, Sunderlal Bahuguna and some others representing specific organizations and NGOs, figured prominently on the media

Environmental thinkers and activists in India