Securing Community Tenure over Common Lands
Grassland type Semi-natural
Name of practice Securing Community Tenure over Common Lands
Name of main actor Village communities, Foundation for Ecological Security (FES)
Type of actor(s) Farmers, Pastoralists, NGOs, Communities
Location India
Agro-ecological region Arid/semi-arid
Sustainability dimension involved Governance, Environmental, Economic, Social
Sustainability sub-themes Participation, Rule of Law, Water, Land, Biodiversity, Investment, Decent Livelihood, Equity
Year of implementation 1998
Description of best practice The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) works to address the degradation of commons and help secure fodder and fuel-wood requirements of rural communities.
In the state of Madhya Pradesh (India), the project to secure community tenure over common lands and develop democratic village institutions for community-based natural resource management began in 1998. The project supports 47 villages, covering 6,796 ha of common lands. It is concentrated on the poorest villages in the area with just under half of the population belonging to socio-economically marginalized castes. Agriculture and animal husbandry are the dominant livelihood options. Almost all households keep livestock to supplement their income. In particular, 64% of landless people (11% of total population) keep livestock. Common lands, largely under open access, have been severely degraded and are subject to widespread encroachments. Small and marginal farmers are especially impacted as they largely depend on common lands for fodder needs.
Securing community tenure has been an important institutional pre-requisite for facilitating community ownership and protection of common lands. Creating and nurturing robust, democratic village institutions has been essential for the equitable distribution of benefits and for resource poor households to access benefits from common lands. As a facilitating agency, FES has played an important role in the process by helping the community define governance structures and procedures to manage and share benefits. This includes facilitating universal membership of adults, encouraging the role of village institutions as a platform for collective action and making concerted investments to strengthen the capacity of marginalized groups to participate. At times it has been necessary to mediate between conflicting interest groups through extensive consultations to reach consensual decisions.
Outcomes and impacts Securing community tenure over common lands and natural-resources management by community-based institutions has provided direct benefits from improved commons and indirect benefits from developing village institutions.
Direct material benefits include a significant increase in biomass from conservation and regeneration of watersheds. Palatable biomass in Ladwan watershed was 4.98 tonnes/ha compared to 0.95 tonnes/ha in an adjoining area not covered by the project. The value of common resources was estimated to be Rs. 0.59 lakh/ha in project supported villages compared to Rs. 0.12 lakh/ha in villages outside of the project. The increase in grass, scrubland and riverine forest vegetation has provided increased fodder for livestock and reduced spending on fodder purchases. Increased water availability has reduced the stress period of water scarcity for livestock from 4 months to nil. Overall, the regeneration of common lands has increased the number and diversity of livestock.
Indirect benefits from the development of village institutions include clarification of boundaries of village commons which has helped restrict encroachment. Furthermore, collective action facilitated by the project has helped strengthen social capital in village communities.
The success of the project illustrates that securing community tenure can be an effective strategy to regenerate degraded common lands. It challenges the misconception that community-managed commons tend to be more degraded than privatized commons. Secure tenure rights have provided a flow of benefits and assurance that has enabled the poor to expand and diversify household assets to improve their livelihoods.
This case-study has been adapted from the Good Practice Note authored by Archana S, Varun Sharma, published by the South Asia Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Programme: SA PPLPP (2009) Code: SAGP13, “Securing Community Tenure over Common Lands”. Good Practice Note, Delhi, India. Available: http://sapplpp.org/goodpractices/cpr-livestock/SAGP13-Securing-Community-Tenure-over-Common-Lands.
The SA PPLPP website features a series of Good Practices and Case Studies from India, Bangladesh and Bhutan: http://sapplpp.org/goodpractices
