Two approaches to resource problems

The world is beset with resource based problems. Modern market-based development has been an extremely resource-intensive process. It could be argued that the extreme resource intensive development process of the west, has resulted in both the extreme plunder of third world peoples, called colonialism, and the plunder of natural resource, leading to several disasters, including what’s now called climate change. A lot of the world’s poor rely on forms of livelihood that are directly dependant on natural resources such as soil, water, marine fisheries, forests, etc. With modern development, it is always these communities that lose out first. These communities have the largest stake, have the most to lose as these resources come under more stress. There is no doubt that its high time we change our resource usage systems, our resource management systems, to meet the needs of equity and sustainability, ie, changes are needed in our livelihood practices. 

There are two streams of thought here. Lets call them the livelihoods perspective, and the political perspective.

The former says that resource problems can be solved by bringing about changes in livelihood practices, like say, chemical farming to organic farming, water-intensive crops to less-water crops, changes in irrigation methods, bottom trawling to traditional fishing nets, etc. But in order to bring about this change in practices, there needs to be an enabling ecosystem, a support structure, a market ecosystem that enables people to adopt these new practices. Just like how with Green Revolution, one had changes in rural banking, core sector focus, seeds, fertilizers, changes in agri-input service delivery, agri-extension services, govt-mandated crop purchases, and a whole host of services in the core GR regions. Such a basket of end-to-end services were needed to bring about a switch from traditional farming to GR chemical farming. So lets make things clear, GR was not a single variable, technological intervention alone… it was an end-to-end basket of interventions.

Similarly, for sustainable farming, a lot of NGOs operate on this approach with a number of support interventions like Watershed development for water augmentation, SHGs for credit support, farmer groups and lead farmers for extension services, producer companies for organic input and marketing support, etc. The push for Participatory Guarantee, along with third party Organic Certification and the water focussed NREGA works for instance, are some of the ideas that have arisen from this approach. In a nutshell, this approach says that people need to be guided through various incentives and steered towards sustainability. The support ecosystem itself would be a regulator that ensures bad practices aren’t done. “Incentivise, enable” is the buzzword.

The criticism of this approach is that the process of change it advocates is also rooted within the same market paradigm that caused the initial problem in the first place. The process that this puts forward is at best a stop gap, till the next problem. It doesn’t change any of the fundamentals.  

  

The other approach is the political one – one that lays stress on public pressure. If a certain practice is seen as harmful, this approach would not want to incentivise and enable the practitioner to change, but mobilise the community and ensure public pressure is used to stop such harmful practices. Let’s take an example, say the anti-liquor movement in many states. The movement doesn’t need to propose any alternative, it seeks a pure and simple ban on liquor shops. And its success has come from the public support it has garnered. The TN govt has definitely closed down so many shops. There is now a social pressure against liquor sale. Another example would be Chipko movement, that used public pressure to curb state-supported deforestation in the hills. India’s history has shown that the state alone being the regulator against specific practices has rarely worked. Non-state, community-driven, informal regulations work much better in many instances we have witnessed. The amount of public support enjoyed would dictate the effectiveness of regulation. These work through public will. And this is generated through politics – the art of persuasion, and gathering support towards a certain cause. In fact, this approach is impossible without mobilisation and agitational politics. “Mobilise, Regulate, Ban” are the buzzwords here.

Especially when it comes to resource management of finite yet essential resources like water – which we can broadly call ‘commons’, some sort of regulations on usage practices are a must.

But changes using people’s power have seldom ever lasted goes the pessimistic argument. Well, that’s because of the disproportionate power the state has, in our largely undemocratic and crony-capitalistic state. Crony-corporates control and exercise so much more power over the legislative, executive and judicial branches than the people as such. In a more democratic polity, mobilisation and public pressure once generated, would bring about sufficient change in state policy and implementation. But, in our democracy, powers that be always find a way back. But sustained people’s power is the only way to mend this! This approach does challenge the present status quo.  

A criticism of this is that it is clear on what is to be opposed, but does not point to a solution, or a realistic way forward. It builds public pressure, but without a constructive way forward, it falls flat when faced with other realities

Two real life instances where these 2 approaches play out are

   1. Water depletion:

A livelihood approach would be to incentivise less water-crops, water-effective agricultural practices, getting necessary support structures on the ground that farmers can use, and make appropriate policy changes in markets supporting water-efficient technologies in industry, etc.

A political approach would be raising a campaign against borewells (predicted by a few in Maharashtra), tankers of the water-mafia, or stop diverting dam water so someplace, or the more popular campaign against water sucking industries like in Plachimada and various others.   

   2. Marine fisheries depletion:

The understanding is that trawling and ring-siene nets in the near shore seas has deeply impacted fish stock in the seas, making fishing less and less viable. The livelihood approach would make one imagine alternatives to trawling to gradually weed out trawlers. Many problematic schemes are also launched by the govt like deep-sea fishing, tuna longliners, etc to encourage and enable people to adopt such alternatives.
A political approach would be to actually press for the ban on trawling and ring-siene, like what has happened in Sri Lanka. TN in its 1983 marine fisheries act, actually laid down several rules and regulations against trawling, including ban on trawling within 3 miles. But as said, the state has been unwilling to implement such bans properly.  

In a nutshell, the livelihoods approach could be said to emphasize ‘the carrot’ and the political approach emphasizes ‘the stick’. However, one must add that just like any other classification, we must refrain from seeing these as polarities. In the real world, all interventions will have combinations from both, but just that the proportions would be different. In a society that views agitations as unrealistic and without a grip on the livelihood realities of the communities, and NGOs and policy thinktanks as not being political enough – it is essential to understand the importance of the two approaches and not refrain from adopting both, as the situation demands.