An interesting contrast in authorities’ conservation models emerged during my seven-day visit to communities surrounding India’s Chilika Lagoon in Odisha province. These models, experienced differently by each of the three small-scale fishing communities we visited during the trip, demonstrated benefits and challenges in the coexistence of community livelihoods and the success of conservation.
The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) is part of a global partnership with the Vulnerability to Viability Project. Every year, young emerging scholars and partners from six countries in Africa, Asia and North America are brought together through its V2V Annual Field School in India. Each cohort is taken through a learning process by visiting a coastal community to learn about different models of conservation and how communities respond to pressures on their livelihoods. The trip includes in-depth fieldwork, reviewing literature on the commons, focus group interviews, interactions with communities, and visits to strategic locations to guide and support scholars in their own research on coastal communities.
Team Blue Justice video on elements of blue justice in Chilika. (Voiceover and script by Siphesihle Mbhele)
This year’s gathering focused on the Chilika Lagoon commons in Odisha province. One of the key objectives of the V2V Annual Field School is to guide emerging scholars through the learning process of how communities move from vulnerability to viability (V2V). This is based on the premise that small-scale coastal communities are in a constant state of adaptation – whether to environmental or political and policy changes – that affect their livelihoods. These changes often lead to collective actions of resilience and adaptation by communities. In this context, the V2V concept looks at how these communities are transitioning from vulnerable towards resilient and viable outcomes.
India is the third-largest aquaculture and wild-caught fish producing country in the world, contributing about 7% to the global fish production. This economic and livelihood activity also contributes a total of 1.07% to India’s national GDP.
A key element of the conservation models that were successful in Chilika Lagoon was the nuance of social and cultural considerations when conceptualising the conservation project in Chilika Lagoon. It resulted in better cooperation between communities and conservation bodies, and mutually beneficial relationships. In the face of attempts at encroachment, communities situated along the Chilika Lagoon demonstrated strong acts of resistance and collective action that led to historical successes against government elites and private market-driven actors who chased profit at the expense of poor communities. The Chilika Lagoon example was a true testament to the power of movement building in resisting blue grabbing attempts and other injustices labelled as “economic growth” and other buzzwords familiar to governments and their associates across the globe.
PLAAS research associate Siphesihle Mbhele leading group work at the Krushna Chandra Jena Annual Chilika Field School in Odisha, India. Picture: Supplied
Chilika North: Indigenous communities and big corporations
The Chilika Lagoon has historically been a site of tensions and disputes. This is not only due to its rich biodiversity and bird habitat, but its diverse fish species attracting local elites and big industry aquaculture personnel to the area. These drivers of change in the 1980s saw elements of encroaching and blue grabbing – also known as decommonisation – of community resources by external actors through economic means, such as buying out former agricultural fields from desperate and poverty stricken local people who needed money to attend to their immediate needs. This enticement was as a result of the then booming global aquaculture market that presented profit opportunities for corporates and economic growth boost for the government through buying high value species such as shrimp at lower prices and in greater quantities. In this case, it was at the expense of poor communities’ access to their fisheries and the Chilika Lagoon ecosystem.
In Chilika Lagoon, shifts in regulations governing the area affected access to it for small-scale fishers who are based in this region. Provisions for coastal regulation zones (CRZ) were formally introduced in India in 1991. In 2011, a controversial notification on these zones allowed for the leasing of the Chilika water landscapes to private individuals and companies. India’s government and big aquaculture industry corporations formed a joint venture to bolster shrimp exporting from the Chilika Lagoon. It promoted the annihilation of small-scale fishers from community waters they had always used and were their main source of sustainability.
After much collective action and court cases by fishing co-operatives in the lagoon, joined by women groups and other community organising, there was a ban on aquaculture supported by a ruling by India’s Upper court, which prevented the illegal encroachment by mafia corporations on the Chilika Lagoon and restored communities’ livelihoods and access to the waters.
Chilika South: Mapping the commons as resistance to encroachment
Government regulation as a weapon to annihilate small-scale communities eemed to be a common phenomenon in the Chilika context. In the southern part of the Chilika Lagoon is the Purdnabhadha community, which lives in a community-managed tortoise conservation area that was previously used for aquaculture. This fishing community has a history of fighting industry and government attempts at encroaching on their land using official policy that tries to invisibilise community landscapes and their commons in official mapping processes, leaving them vulnerable to external invasion and dispossession.
The action came after the 2011 CRZ policy, which prohibited any industrialisation on certain coastal lands and designated them as no-development zones. Authorities cited ecological issues that development in any form in these landscapes could put the environment and biodiversity at risk. This is because some of the landscapes were inhabited by certain marine species important to the ecosystem and also were prone to climate change impacts such as flooding. The government then undertook a process of mapping landscapes as no-development zones and included the lagoon and other places.
However, in these official maps the government failed to acknowledge the existence of communal areas in this part of the Chilika Lagoon by not including them in the maps. This left the community vulnerable to industry land grabbing and dispossession as their land was not marked or protected by legislation. In retaliation to this and to protect their commons, community members adopted a collective approach to protecting their common resources from grabbing by mapping their surroundings and common pool resources such as temples, fishing grounds, schools, herding grounds and other elements of nature. The map was created on the premise of protecting community rights and securing their place for future generations. The community has successfully defended and kept access to their land for years as a result of their collective action and innovation.
During this trip, I saw the importance of culture and cultural ethics that communities in Chilika Lagoon used to establish conservation areas in communal lands. The Mangalajodi conservation area along the lagoon serves as a model for a thriving community and conservation coexistence. Communities were involved in creating the area situated on their former traditional hunting lands. Cultural considerations, such as visiting temples that signified respect for the heritage and identity of the community, were central to the success of the process. Currently, this sees community members working collaboratively as active agents in the conservation efforts in the bird conservancy as well as small-scale fishers using some of the conservation space as grounds to dock their fishing boats and paths to enter the permitted areas of the Chilika Lagoon. These are important aspects that are the cornerstone of thriving social and environmental relations.
The V2V experience was an important shift and pivot in my career as a young researcher. This was the first experience where I had to actively work with young scholars from across cultural and racial backgrounds. Although there was much difference in our backgrounds culturally and politically, what united us was our passion for social justice, blue justice, our interests in paradigm shifting blue economy discourse, and activism. Most of all, it showed that collective knowledge on forms of resistance for small-scale communities throughout the world can be used to achieve similar goals.
The experience exposed me to new and deeper understanding around the literature and discourse on processes of commoning and decommonisation and how this process impacts on social and ecological contexts in which we work in the politicisation of nature. This experience displayed live examples of the balance between theory and practise through tough long days out in the sun doing fieldwork and engaging with communities, and longer days in the study and dining halls picking each other’s brains on important concepts and connecting them to our individual contexts. While navigating the discomfort of conducting fieldwork in an environment where I needed to ask a question, have it translated and still present myself as respectful and relatable, the experience showed me that social research goes beyond cultural, geographical and linguistic barriers and that social research remains a vital tool for solidarity and movement building. It reignited a passion within me to want to learn more, to be more conscious of my actions, and remember that this scholarship is bigger than me.
