Communities, Networks and Conservation

Conservation of coastal and marine biodiversity and resources face the challenge of being inclusive without compromising local livelihoods and community rights, yet keeping with principles of social & environmental justice, while negotiating with economic development. The Coastal and Marine Programme focuses on the development of approaches to marine conservation that are participatory, appropriate and which promote the sustainable use of marine resources. Hence, many innovative methods are emerging: community-based management of natural resources; co-management, multi-stakeholder platforms, interdisciplinary approaches, adult environmental education, knowledge networking, collective action, scaling for replication etc. To achieve these, social science research, community engagement and extension are critical ingredients. This sub-programme aims to understand, document and engage with the social, economic and cultural relations of the fishing communities’ with the natural coastal resource base, livelihoods and coastal development.

Marine fisheries have always been part of the market system as it was never entirely subsistence based. In the Indian context, it has been the entire occupation of a single caste geographically located in a single village, unlike agrarian multi-caste structures. The single caste demography meant considerable autonomy and self governance and hence, the communities are highly organized and internally controlled. There is also very little anthropological and ethnographic research and documentation on fishing castes and communities in India and the roles and functioning in these fishing community institutions are very poorly understood. It is now quite clear that the fishing communities and their traditional governance institutions (especially in Nagapattinam) have shown remarkable social and socio-ecological resilience during the tsunami and subsequent rehabilitation. As these community institutions bind the community into collective fora down the coast, they are critical for any engagement, participation and representation from the community on environmental issue.

Encouraging and working towards community dialogue (internal within as well as external with other agencies)  and focusing on community spaces and community institutions in planning and decision making is critical in resource management, local governance and sustainable local development planning.  The outreach programme is designed to demystify scientific, legal and social science research on various issues for the media and communities to encourage dialogue, debate and clearer articulation.

This sub-programme works towards intervention in the following themes

• Community Institutions and governance within fishing communities -This component aims to analyse the various community institutions, their roles and functions to provide insight into how they can be strengthened to participate in resource management, local governance and local development planning.
• Community Perceptions - This component on fisher community aims to document perspectives and perceptions of the community on resources, conflicts, state fisheries policies, coastal management policies and development on the coast.
• Outreach and Extension- This component aims at strengthening open access platforms where dialogue, collective learning on research and other pressing issues can be shared in communities and in the media.

 

The desired outcome of the above components and the sub programme is that community resilience in socio-ecological systems can be strengthened to handle changes so as to ensure an inclusive, efficient development planning, and natural resource and coastal management.

Projects 
Community Perceptions of Resources, Policy and Development, Post-Tsunami Interventions and Community Institutions

Coastal Conservation Networks