Politics of Biodiversity, Energy and Livelihoods in India
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UNRULY LANDSCAPES: POLITICS OF BIODIVERSITY, ENERGY AND LIVELIHOODS IN INDIA BY SHIKHA LAKHANPAL DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in GeogrAphy in the GrAduAte College of the University of Illinois At UrbAnA-ChampAign, 2016 UrbAnA, Illinois DoctorAl Committee: AssociAte Professor Trevor Birkenholtz, ChAir AssociAte Professor Ashwini ChhAtre, Director of Research AssociAte Professor BriAn Dill AssistAnt Professor Tariq Ali Abstract Global concerns on climate change mitigation and reduction in emissions are influencing sustainable projects worldwide. The global discourse on sustainability is manifested locally in various forms that re-arrange human-environment relationships. Such ‘green geographies’ are inevitably rooted in territoriality and are operationalized through controlling access to natural resources. The re-working of the spatial arrangements demarcating control over access to natural resources can pose a threat to local livelihoods that depend on nature. For projects located next to areas of conservation concern, it necessitates a political process of prioritization between conservation, development and livelihoods. In this dissertation, I focus on the re-working of these green geographies. I examine cases of local opposition against renewable power projects that are located in or around areas of prime conservation. The case sites are located in the Western Ghats and near the Great Himalayan National Park in India. I argue that these green geographies are inherently dynamic and democracy provides the context within which these landscapes are contested and re-defined. Further, I argue that the introduction of renewable energy projects in pre-territorialized landscapes reorients spatial arrangements, resulting in a re-territorialization of these geographies. Further, I position this re-territorialization as an outcome of intense political ii wrangling that traverses multiple scales and is influenced by the larger politics of environment and development at higher scales. This study contributes to an understanding of how low-carbon geographies are operationalized. iii Acknowledgments To Ashwini Chhatre, who has been a great mentor and has inspired me with his success and patience. He has always challenged me to do my best while encouraging independent thinking. To Brian Dill, Trevor Birkenholtz and Tariq Ali for being supportive committee members and for seeing me through many anxious moments. To my friends and fellow graduate students, especially to Lenore, Srinidhi, Bharat, Pilar, Susmita, Sonal, Apoorv, Utathya, Sambarta, Setu and Purba at UIUC. They provided distraction, wonderful company, ‘healthy’ banter and cheer in otherwise dreary Champaign-Urbana. To Nitya in New York and Monika in Virginia, delightful friends who have seen me through the proverbial light at the end of a very dark tunnel. To Mabel and Aditi in Chapel Hill and Chicago, who have been my ears in joyous as well as anxious moments. To Smriti, Anisha, Ishita, Gargi and Yasmin in New Delhi, Bombay, Chicago and Bangalore, my constant companions and gracious hosts. iv To Akash, whom I met during dissertation fieldwork in Bangalore, for seeing more potential in my research than I ever could. To my parents, Sanjeev and Sunita and brother, Aseem who supported my decision to move to USA and every step along the way. They are more proud than anyone I know to see this work reach completion. This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of local activists and people across my field sites. They welcomed me into their homes where I was treated as an extended family member. From Karnataka to Maharashtra to Himachal, I was touched by their hospitality and the will to open up to a complete stranger. This study is the story of their struggles for land and livelihoods that lend their lives a certain precarity and a testament to their tremendous grit and strength. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2: Context and Cases .................................................................................... 24 Chapter 3: Technology and Scale ............................................................................. 50 Chapter 4: Politics ........................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 5: Land, Livelihoods and Development ................................................ 104 Chapter 6: Conclusion ................................................................................................... 121 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 131 vi Chapter 1 Introduction At a village near Mangalore in the biodiverse rich Western Ghats of Karnataka, India, local activists are resisting the encroachment of a renewable energy project upon their land and livelihoods. The villagers have been successful in stalling a run-of-the- river 24 MW renewable small hydropower project that is proposed to be constructed at the confluence of Kumaradhara and Gundia, two tributaries of the river Nethravati. Even as the villagers oppose the project as it threatens their land and livelihoods, they strategically used the argument of biodiversity in order to gain an upper hand against the project proponents, who argue in favour of the sustainability of the small hydro project. By pitting the global concerns about conservation of biodiversity against the emphasis on renewable energy, the local activists have exposed the inherent contradictions in the manifestation of global discourse on sustainability. In recent times, concerns over protecting the environment have transcended regional and national scales. The environment as a resource or a management issue is seen by scientists and policy makers to have assumed global proportions. Global concerns on reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change are influencing policies across countries that seek to incorporate sustainable development. As a result, the 1 international community, national and regional governments are increasingly emphasizing the ‘greening’ of their respective economies, in accordance with global priorities. These efforts to incorporate sustainability are characterized by producing spatial arrangements that serve to re-define the relationships between people and natural resources. Such spatial arrangements manifest as ‘green geographies’ at the local level. These green geographies, contingent upon the context, are continuously challenged and as a result re-shaped and re-worked. In this dissertation, I focus upon the production and re-working of these green geographies. I do so through analyzing local opposition to renewable energy projects that are located next to prime biodiversity landscapes, spread across three sites in the Western Ghats and the Western Himalayan region of India. I examine the interstices within which cultural and political processes unfold to either oppose or justify renewable energy development in order to pry open the interaction between politics at the local, regional, national and global scales. I propose three arguments. Firstly, I contend that these green geographies are dynamic entities that are produced as a result of politics that interacts across multiple scales. Secondly, I contend that this politics emerges from using democratic processes that allows an exploitation of diverse platforms by actors to stake competing claims and facilitate the re-shaping of these green geographies. Finally, I position the re-territorialization of green geographies as an outcome of the specific politics that takes shape between 2 attempts to resist the control over access to natural resources and the political process of prioritization between conservation, development and livelihoods. There is extensive literature on the production of conservation geographies and territorialization (Li 1999, West 2006 , Zimmerer 2006 ) but most of the studies have not taken into account the central role of democratic processes that shape the re- territorialization of such landscapes. In this study I show how democracy works as an analytical category to result in a re-territorialization of the existing conservation geographies. Further, I argue against a mere top-down imposition of global discourses on sustainability (Adger 1999) and show that they are a result of politics that interacts across multiple scales. A starting point to unravel the nature of green geographies is to examine the global discourse on sustainability that results in these green geographies. At the highest scale the global discourse on sustainability is flexible, vague and aimed at resolving resource, energy and conservation issues (Zimmerer 2006). The crisis of biodiversity, threat to endangered species, deforestation, global warming, climate change mitigation and adaptation inform the global discourse on sustainable development. This lends the concept of sustainable development a certain flexibility at the higher scales which allows for competing claims on territory at the local scale (Adams 2003) . The vague, abstract idea of sustainable development concretizes at the local level in the form of expansion of protected areas, renewable energy projects, climate change 3 adaptation projects, payments for ecosystem services and other projects. This operationalization of the global discourse