Decentralisation and democratic forest reforms in India: Moving to a rights-based approach

Kumar, Kundan; Singh, Neera M.; Kerr, John M.

doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2014.09.018

Cited by 81 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Nearly all evaluations of both JFM (Sundar et al 2001; Springate-Baginski and Blaikie 2007; Lele and Menon 2014) and the FRA (Saxena et al 2010;Bose 2013;Kashwan 2013;Kumar et al 2015;Maharashtra CFR-LA 2017) have found that neither programs' participatory promise has been met on a wide scale. Although several reasons have been identified for this failure, including weak institutional design, power imbalances, and problems of implementation, two elements recur in many explanations.…”

Section: Participation Supply In a Low Demand Low Skill Environment:mentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional supply, public demand, and citizen capabilities to participate in environmental programs in Mexico and India

Fleischman¹,

Solorzano²

2018

International Journal of the Commons

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In this paper, we argue that, like a three-legged stool, participatory programs require three elements for stability: a supply of participatory institutions, a demand from citizens to participate, and citizens with capabilities for participation. We illustrate the importance of these three elements using case studies from forest management in central India and southern Mexico, and use the evidence from these cases to suggest hypotheses for future investigation. We argue that when participatory programs are implemented in places where demand for citizen engagement is weak and citizens lack the capability to engage, participation is unlikely. On the other hand, where people demand to participate and have the capability to do so, they are sometimes able to overcome obstacles to utilizing participatory institutions. Individuals' agency for citizen engagement is developed in interaction with the structures of participation; this means that there may be a long-term synergy between the supply of participatory institutions and the development of skills and demand for citizen engagement. Our work implies that designers of participatory programs should pay equal attention to cultivating participatory capabilities, providing incentives that enhance demand for participation, and building institutions to open spaces for participation in governance. Building participatory environmental governance may thus require long-term, sustained attention to both citizenship and institution-building.

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Section: Participation Supply In a Low Demand Low Skill Environment:mentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional supply, public demand, and citizen capabilities to participate in environmental programs in Mexico and India

Fleischman¹,

Solorzano²

2018

International Journal of the Commons

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“…Unlike the CBFM case in Nepal, participants in JFM have little control over how commercial products, such as timber, are sold and how the proceeds allocated. More recently, India's Recognition of Forest Rights Act (RFRA) was enacted in 2006, as a result of democratic processes driven by demand for recognition of forest rights by forest dwellers (Kumar et al, 2014). The RFRA represents a political effort to reform forest governance through a provision of rights to forestdependent people, while India also continues to operate the JFM program.…”

Section: Country Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical linkages between devolved tenure systems and forest conditions: Selected case studies and country experiences

Shi

Yin

Zulu

et al. 2016

Forest Policy and Economics

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“…As in the case presented here, existing power structures and inequalities are determining and readily reproduced (Kumar 2002 ). In a similar vein, Kumar, Singh, and Kerr ( 2015 ) have reported that the implementation of democratic decentralization of natural resources governance has been strongly opposed by powerful interests and that many of its provisions related to community rights over forests have remained unimplemented in various regions of India (Kumar et al 2015 ). In much the same way, Parajuli et al ( 2015 ) demonstrate that in Nepal’s community, forestry benefits of a co-management program are greater in rich households and that the poor pay the highest indirect costs (Parajuli et al 2015 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Lost in Translation: State Policies and Micro-politics of Water Governance in Namibia

Schnegg

2016

Hum Ecol

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Water governance in rural Namibia has profoundly changed since the early 1990s. After independence and in accordance with global environmental policies, it became a central theme of Namibia's environmental legislation to transfer the responsibility for managing natural resources to local user associations. In this article, I explore the emergence of new social forms at the intersection of existing cultural models and new rationalities for governance. Doing so combines an analysis of state legislation with the micro-politics of water governance in 60 pastoral communities. The ethnographic analysis reveals that different actors, including state bureaucrats as well as rich and poorer herd owners, have different understandings of how to share water. While the poorer often agree with the state policy that water is an economic good and should be paid for accordingly, only in about half of the communities do corresponding institutional regimes emerge. Using critical institutionalism as a theoretical guide, I offer a contribution to understanding how more than 20 years after Rio local institutions of resource governance emerge at the intersection of different, and often heterogeneous and intertwined, social fields.

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Decentralisation and democratic forest reforms in India: Moving to a rights-based approach

Cited by 81 publications

References 16 publications

Institutional supply, public demand, and citizen capabilities to participate in environmental programs in Mexico and India

Institutional supply, public demand, and citizen capabilities to participate in environmental programs in Mexico and India

Empirical linkages between devolved tenure systems and forest conditions: Selected case studies and country experiences

Lost in Translation: State Policies and Micro-politics of Water Governance in Namibia

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