EnvStud 741 – Conflicts Over Natural Resources in India
Content:
Ecology movements and conflicts over natural resources
The recent period in human history contrasts with all the earlier ones in its strikingly high rate of resource utilization. Through combination of resource intensity at the material level and resource indifference at the conceptual and political levels, conflicts over natural resources generated by the new pattern of resource utilisation are generally shrouded and overlooked. These conflicts become visible when resource and energy-intensive industrial technologies are challenged by communities whose survival depends on the conservation of resources threatened by destruction and overexploitation, or when the devastatingly destructive potential of some industrial technologies is demonstrated as in the Bhopal disaster. For centuries, vital natural resources like land, water and forests had been controlled and used collectively by village communities thus ensuring a sustainable use of these renewable resources. The first radical change in resource control and the emergence of major conflicts over natural resources induced by non-local factors was associated with colonial domination of this part of the world. Colonial domination systematically transformed the common vital resources into commodities for generating profits and growth of revenues. The first industrial revolution was to a large extent supported by this transformation of commons into commodities which permitted European industries access to the resources of South Asia. With the collapse of the international colonial structure and the establishment of sovereign countries in the region, this international conflict over natural resources was expected to be reduced and replaced by resource policies guided by comprehensive national interests. However, resource use policies continued along the colonial pattern and, in the recent past, a second drastic change in resource use has been initiated to meet the international requirements and the demands of the elites in the Third World, leading to yet another acute conflict among the diverse interests. The most seriously threatened interest, in this conflict, appears to be that of the politically weak and socially disorganised group whose resource requirements are minimal and whose survival is primarily dependent directly on the products of nature outside the market system. Recent changes in resource utilisation have almost wholly by-passed the survival needs of these groups. These changes are primarily guided by the requirements of the countries of the North and of the elites of the South.
Course Lecturer: Gerhard Berchtold, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Coursebook:
Ecology and the Politics of Survival • Conflicts Over Natural Resources in India
VANDANA SHIVA
in association with J. Bandyopadhyay · Pandurang Hegde · B.V. Krishnamurthy John Kurien · G. Narendranath · Vanaja Ramprasad S.T.S. Reddy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in 1991 by Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd. 32, M-Block Market, Greater Kailash I New Delhi 110048
Sage Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Newbury Park, California91320
Sage Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street LondonEC2A 4PU
AND
United Nations University Press The United Nations University 53-70 Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-ku Tokyo 150, Japan Published by Tejeshwar Singh for Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd. phototypeset by Mudra Typesetters, Pondicherry, and printed at Chaman Offset Printers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shiva, Vandana.
ISBN (0-80309672-1) (us.-hbk.) 81-7036-249-0 (India-hbk.)
The United Nations University's Programme on Peace and Global Transformation was a major world-wide project whose purpose was to develop new insights about the interlinkages between questions of peace, conflict resolution, and the process of transformation. The research in this project, under six major themes, was coordinated by a 12-member core group in different regions of the world: East Asia, South-East Asia (including the Pacific), South Asia, the Arab region, Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, and Latin America. The themes covered were: Conflicts over Natural Resources; Security, Vulnerability and Violence; Human Rights and Cultural Survival in a Changing Pluralistic World; The Role of Science and Technology in Peace and Transformation; The Role of the State in Peace and Global Transformation; and Global Economic Crisis. The project also included a special project on Peace and Regional Security.
This book analyses environmental conflicts in contemporary human society. In general it relates to societies all over the world, but in particular it addresses the most intense and emerging social contradictions in India related to conflicts over natural resources. Science and technology are central to these conflicts because while scientific knowledge has been used by contemporary societies to considerably enlarge man's access to natural resources, it has also allowed the utilisation natural resources at extremely high rates.
The ecology movements that have emerged as major social movements in many parts of India are making visible many invisible externalities and pressing for their internalisation in the economic evaluation of the elite-oriented development process. In the context of a limited resource base and unlimited development aspirations, ecology movements have initiated a new political struggle for safeguarding the interests and survival of the poor, the marginalised, including women, tribals and poor peasants.
The intensity and range of ecology movements in independent india have continuously widened as predatory exploitation of natural resources to feed the process of development has increased in extent and intensity. This process has been characterised by the massive expansion of energy and resource-intensive industrial activity and major development projects like large dams, forest exploitation, mining and energy-intensive agriculture. The resource demand of development has led to the narrowing of the natural resource base for the survival of the economically poor and powerless, either by direct transfer of resources away from basic needs or by destruction of the essential ecological process that ensure renewability of the life-supportirig natural resources.
In the light of this background, ecology movements emerged as the people's response to this new threat to their survival and as a demand for the ecological conservation of vital life-support systems. The most significant life-support systems in addition to clean air are the common property resources of water, forests and land on which the majority of the poor people of India depend for survival. It is the threat to these resources that has been the focus of ecology movements in the last few decades.