Land Tenure, Livelihood and the Environment
In Centre for Environmental Law, WWF-I v. Union of India and others,11 the petitioners, World Wide Fund for Nature, approached the Supreme Court of India by way of a public interest petition in 1995. All over the country, state governments had issued notifications of intent under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, demarcating areas for wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. However, the process for assessing claims for compensation of those who would be dispossessed was not being undertaken and as a result, the final proclamation notifications under section 21 of the act were not being made. At the request of the petitioners, the court issued a blanket direction in August 1997 to all the state governments to complete the compensation procedure and issue final notifications within one year.12
The results have been catastrophic. The court did not consider that thousands of people are dependent for their livelihood on the forests and grasslands falling within the demarcated areas, and many others live there. The recording of usufruct rights over forest areas was last undertaken a hundred years ago when India was under colonial rule, and thus a large number of people who are exercising traditional usufruct rights are not able to produce documentary proof of such rights. Their claims cannot possibly be settled in a year. Nor did the court examine the current debates within activist and academic circles questioning the conservation model on which the existing law is based, which excludes rather than involves people in conservation. The state governments have used the Supreme Court’s directions to advance their own agendas of evicting whole communities from these areas, often only to make way for large industrial projects. In many areas no claims for compensation were filed by the people likely to be affected as state governments short-circuited claims procedures under the guise of meeting the deadlines issued by the Supreme Court.
One affected area is the Great Himalayan National Park in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh. The GHNP comprises mainly high altitude pastures on which more than 11,000 people depend for their survival. These rural communities have traditional grazing rights in the alpine pastures and each year an estimated 35,000 goats and sheep are taken into the pastures during the warm summer months. The people also extract medicinal herbs and plants from this area, to meet the needs of traditional medicine systems, as well as for trade. In pursuance of the Supreme Court’s orders, the government of Himachal Pradesh issued a final notification on 21 May 1999 declaring the boundaries of the national park, and forbidding further exercise of traditional usufruct rights in the area. Compensation was given to only 312 families, since the state relied upon records of rights made during the British Raj 110 years ago. No independent inquiry into current rights exercise was undertaken.
A further twist in the tale arises out of the Parbati Hydel project being constructed by the government in an area adjoining the park. One part of the area demarcated for the park, which formed part of the core area, was “left out” from the final notification in order to make way for a surge tunnel, which would feed the Parbati project. Thus, while the government has excluded rural communities from any participation in the conservation of this ecologically rich area, which these very communities have preserved over centuries, it has not thought twice about allowing so-called “developmental interests” to have their way. The tragedy is that the Supreme Court and the state have refused to hear the voices of these rural communities. An application by several NGOs that are working with communities dependent on these areas, seeking permission to be heard by the court, has been rejected
ILO Convention No. 117, The Social Policy (Basic Aims and Standards) Convention of 1962, covers measures to improve the standard of living for agricultural producers.� They are to include control of the alienation of land to nonagriculturalists, regard for customary land rights and the supervision of tenancy arrangements.
The ILO’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 of 1989 is a key instrument in the evolution of concepts of land rights in international law.13 That convention
- recognizes the special relationship between indigenous people and their lands;
- requires states to adopt special measures of protection on their behalf;
- provides safeguards against the arbitrary removal of indigenous people from their tradi�tional land, with procedural guarantees; and
- includes other provisions related to the transmission of land rights and respect for cus�tomary procedures.
ILO Convention No. 117, The Social Policy (Basic Aims and Standards) Convention of 1962, covers measures to improve the standard of living for agricultural producers.� They are to include control of the alienation of land to nonagriculturalists, regard for customary land rights and the supervision of tenancy arrangements.
The ILO’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 of 1989 is a key instrument in the evolution of concepts of land rights in international law.13 That convention
- recognizes the special relationship between indigenous people and their lands;
- requires states to adopt special measures of protection on their behalf;
- provides safeguards against the arbitrary removal of indigenous people from their tradi�tional land, with procedural guarantees; and
- includes other provisions related to the transmission of land rights and respect for cus�tomary procedures.