Our work Projects Upscaling Community Tenure Rights in India (Phase II)

Upscaling Community Tenure Rights in India (Phase II)

Tenure security in India has evolved and advanced appreciably since the inception of the Tenure Facility’s India Project Phase II– “Upscaling Community Forest Resource (CFR) Rights and governance in India”. The latent transformative potential of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) has found a ray of hope in its fruition through the outcomes of Phase II. It now aims to look beyond the temporary systems of sustenance and community development, creating a reformed outlook and approach towards rights over land and forest resources as enshrined in the FRA, as the basis for rebuilding and strengthening indigenous communities with significantly enhanced livelihoods forming new structures of community-controlled forest governance.

Completed

From: 01/04/2021

To: 31/12/2022

Budget: $1,113,200

Proponents: Indian School of Business (ISB)

Associates: Vasundhara
Society for Rural, Urban, and Tribal Initiative (SRUTI)

Stakeholders: Tribal/Indigenous Peoples and Other Traditional Forest Dependent Communities and approximately 2 million forest dependent people.

The second phase of the proposed project will accentuate the outcomes of Phase 1 by aiming at collaborative interventions with governments, businesses, and civil society organisations to significantly enhance the rate and scale of community rights recognition, thus creating sustainable livelihood opportunities of secured tenure. This will not only ensure the expansion of collective tenure security in India but also significantly contribute towards meeting India’s global “commitments/goals” for sustainable development.

The realisation of this Act concerning collective tenure will only be achieved if a synergistic approach towards linking multiple actors associated with the process of creating a socially, economically and ecologically equitable ecosystem for tribal/indigenous and other traditional forest-dwelling communities in the country is achieved. Phase 2 will aim to be exemplary in global knowledge-sharing specifically demonstrating the need for adopting collective tenure as a tool to achieve sustainability.

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"The pandemic, though a disruptor of disastrous scale and proportion, has also opened up opportunities, and (strengthened) the discourse of tenure security as the basis for sustainable lives and livelihoods."

Project Overview

Goal

To substantially expand community tenure over forests across large contiguous areas in India, to enable sustainable forest governance, strengthen community institutions, and increase livelihood security.

Objectives

Upscale secure community tenure through a partnership with community-led initiatives and community-based organisations and state and local administration in selected states of India.
Address knowledge and capacity gaps in facilitation of community forest rights through capacity building, knowledge sharing, documentation, communication, and outreach.
Support community-led forest governance through the development and deployment of a technology stack to map, assess, measure, monitor and manage resources.
Build partnerships across government, civil society, and the private sector to support forest-based livelihoods and strengthen the business case for community forest rights.

Actions

Nurture, upskill, and build capacities amongst existing partner networks.
Develop and deepen new partnerships – government and civil society, grass roots organizations.
Specific result-oriented resource involvement of state and federal governments for rights recognition.
Develop and deploy technology stack.

Expected results

Convert at least 3,000 CFR claims submitted in phase 1 to secure titles, and file 3,000 new claims converting at least 1,200 of these to secure title. These claims will cover at least 1.5 million hectares of forest land, and impact about 2 million forest dependent people

Expected impact

Phase II will attempt to build on India’s phase 1 achievements while placing them in a changing political-economic, administrative and policy context. It will weave in multiple stakeholders for creating a well-crafted pathway to support the effective implementation of community forests rights in some of the remotest locations in India inhabited by Adivasis and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers. Progression from Phase I to Phase II will be marked by both continuity and change, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shifted focus to growing rural/agrarian distress.

Ashwini Chhatre
Associate Professor of Public Policy
Indian School of Business
ashwini_chhatre@isb.edu

Y.Giri Rao
Executive Director
Vasundhara
ygirirao@vasundharaorissa.org

Shweta Tripathi
Director
Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiative (SRUTI)
shweta.tripathi@sruti.org.in