Class 12 Political Science Chapter 6 Environment and Natural Resources Important Questions with Answers in English

Q. What are ‘commons’?

Answer: Commons are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community. The chapter’s own examples are a ‘common room’, a ‘community centre’, a park or a river.

Q. Name the four areas the chapter counts among the global commons.

Answer: The earth’s atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space. They are also known by their Latin name, res communis humanitatis.

Q. Which book did the Club of Rome publish, and in which year?

Answer: The Club of Rome, a global think tank, published Limits to Growth in 1972. It dramatised the potential depletion of the Earth’s resources against the backdrop of rapidly growing world population.

Q. What is the other name of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992?

Answer: It is also called the Earth Summit. It was attended by 170 states, thousands of NGOs and many multinational corporations.

Q. What is sustainable development?

Answer: It is the approach to development that combines economic growth with ecological responsibility. The consensus on it was reached at the Rio Summit, though the summit left unresolved the question of how exactly it was to be achieved.

Q. When and where was the Kyoto Protocol agreed to, and what does it do?

Answer: It was agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto in Japan, based on principles set out in UNFCCC. It is an international agreement setting targets for industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Q. Define resource geopolitics.

Answer: In the chapter’s own words, “Resource geopolitics is all about who gets what, when, where and how.”

Q. What do commentators mean by ‘water wars’?

Answer: Some commentators on world politics have used the phrase ‘water wars’ to describe the possibility of violent conflict over freshwater, which the chapter calls a life-sustaining resource.

Q. Which term came into popular vocabulary after the African drought of the 1970s?

Answer: The term ‘environmental refugees’. That drought, one of the biggest catastrophes in Africa in the 1970s, turned the best cropland in five countries into cracked and barren earth, and many had to flee their homelands as agriculture was no longer possible.

Q. To whom is the description ‘indigenous people’ usually applied in India, and what share of the population do they form?

Answer: In India the description is usually applied to the Scheduled Tribes, who constitute nearly eight per cent of the population of the country.

Q. Why does the chapter treat environmental problems as political questions rather than as natural phenomena for geography?

Answer: For two reasons. First, if the various governments take steps to check environmental degradation, these issues will have political consequences, and most of them are such that no single government can address them fully; they therefore have to become part of ‘world politics’. Second, and more deeply, they raise the questions: who causes environmental degradation, who pays the price, who is responsible for taking corrective action, and who gets to use how much of the natural resources of the Earth. All of these raise the issue of who wields how much power, and are therefore deeply political questions.

Q. What did the Brundtland Report warn, and when was it published?

Answer: The Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, was published in 1987, five years before the Rio Earth Summit. It warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term, especially in view of the demands of the South for further industrial development.

Q. How did the environmental agendas of the global North and the global South differ at the Rio Summit?

Answer: What was obvious at the Rio Summit was that the rich and developed countries of the First World, generally referred to as the ‘global North’, were pursuing a different environmental agenda than the poor and developing countries of the Third World, called the ‘global South’. The Northern states were concerned with ozone depletion and global warming. The Southern states were anxious to address the relationship between economic development and environmental management.

Q. Why is it difficult to achieve consensus on common environmental agendas?

Answer: A major problem underlying all ecological issues relates to the difficulty of achieving consensus on common environmental agendas on the basis of vague scientific evidence and time frames. In that sense the discovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic in the mid-1980s revealed the opportunity as well as the dangers inherent in tackling global environmental problems.

Q. Why were China, India and other developing countries exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol?

Answer: The parties to the UNFCCC agreed that the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries, and it was also acknowledged that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low. China, India and other developing countries were therefore exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. India’s own statement of the same point is that its contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases during the industrialisation period, which is believed to be causing today’s global warming and climate change, was not significant.

Q. What is the typical disagreement between an upper riparian and a lower riparian state?

Answer: A typical disagreement is a downstream, or lower riparian, state’s objection to pollution, excessive irrigation, or the construction of dams by an upstream, or upper riparian, state, which might decrease or degrade the quality of water available to the downstream state. The chapter adds that states have used force to protect or seize freshwater resources.

Q. Why is the loss of land the most obvious threat to the survival of indigenous people?

Answer: Because the loss of land also means the loss of an economic resource base. The worldviews of indigenous societies, irrespective of their geographical location, are strikingly similar with respect to land and the variety of life systems supported by it, and the chapter puts the point as a question: “Can political autonomy be enjoyed without its attachment to the means of physical survival?”

Q. What is common property, and what norm underlies it?

Answer: Common property represents common property for the group. The underlying norm is that members of the group have both rights and duties with respect to the nature, levels of use, and the maintenance of a given resource. Through mutual understanding and centuries of practice, many village communities in India, for example, have defined members’ rights and responsibilities.

Q. What were the outcomes of the Rio Summit?

Answer: 1. The conventions. The Rio Summit produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity and forestry.
2. Agenda 21. It recommended a list of development practices called ‘Agenda 21’.
3. Sustainable development. There was a consensus on combining economic growth with ecological responsibility, the approach to development commonly known as ‘sustainable development’.
4. What it did not settle. It left unresolved considerable differences and difficulties. The problem was how exactly sustainable development was to be achieved, and some critics have pointed out that Agenda 21 was biased in favour of economic growth rather than ensuring ecological conservation.
5. The principle it accepted. The argument of the developing countries was accepted in the Rio Declaration at the Earth Summit in 1992 and is called the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’.

Q. Describe Antarctica as part of the global commons, with the figures the chapter gives.

Answer: 1. Its size and share. The Antarctic continental region extends over 14 million square kilometres and comprises 26 per cent of the world’s wilderness area, representing 90 per cent of all terrestrial ice and 70 per cent of planetary fresh water. It also extends to a further 36 million square kilometres of ocean.
2. Its life. It has a limited terrestrial life and a highly productive marine ecosystem, comprising a few plants such as microscopic algae, fungi and lichen, marine mammals, fish and hordes of birds adapted to harsh conditions, as well as the krill, which is central to the marine food chain and upon which other animals are dependent.
3. Why it matters to science. The Antarctic plays an important role in maintaining climatic equilibrium, and deep ice cores provide an important source of information about greenhouse gas concentrations and atmospheric temperatures of hundreds and thousands of years ago.
4. The two claims. Some countries like the UK, Argentina, Chile, Norway, France, Australia and New Zealand have made legal claims to sovereign rights over Antarctic territory. Most other states have taken the opposite view, that the Antarctic is a part of the global commons and not subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of any state.
5. What has been done anyway. These differences have not prevented the adoption of innovative and potentially far-reaching rules for the protection of the Antarctic environment and its ecosystem. The Antarctic and the Arctic polar regions are subjected to special regional rules of environmental protection. Since 1959, activities in the area have been limited to scientific research, fishing and tourism, and even these limited activities have not prevented parts of the region from being degraded by waste as a result of oil spills.

Q. What is meant by ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’?

Answer: 1. The disagreement it settles. The developed countries of the North want to discuss the environmental issue as it stands now and want everyone to be equally responsible for ecological conservation. The developing countries of the South feel that much of the ecological degradation in the world is the product of industrial development undertaken by the developed countries, so if they have caused more degradation they must also take more responsibility for undoing the damage now.
2. The South’s second argument. The developing countries are in the process of industrialisation and they must not be subjected to the same restrictions which apply to the developed countries. The special needs of the developing countries must therefore be taken into account in the development, application, and interpretation of rules of international environmental law.
3. Where it was accepted. This argument was accepted in the Rio Declaration at the Earth Summit in 1992 and is called the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’.
4. The Rio Declaration’s own words. “States shall cooperate in the spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem. In view of the different contributions of global environmental degradation, states have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technological and financial resources they command.”
5. In the UNFCCC. The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change also provides that the parties should act to protect the climate system “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” China, India and other developing countries were, on this ground, exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol.

Q. Describe India’s stand on environmental issues.

Answer: 1. Kyoto. India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002. India, China and other developing countries were exempt from its requirements because their contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases during the industrialisation period was not significant.
2. The argument at the G-8. At the G-8 meeting in June 2005, India pointed out that the per capita emission rates of the developing countries are a tiny fraction of those in the developed world. Following the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, India is of the view that the major responsibility of curbing emission rests with the developed countries, which have accumulated emissions over a long period of time.
3. Historical responsibility. India’s international negotiating position relies heavily on principles of historical responsibility, as enshrined in UNFCCC, and emphasises that ‘economic and social development are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country parties’.
4. The objection to binding commitments. India is wary of recent discussions within UNFCCC about introducing binding commitments on rapidly industrialising countries such as Brazil, China and India. India feels this contravenes the very spirit of UNFCCC. Nor does it seem fair to impose restrictions on India when the country’s rise in per capita carbon emissions by 2030 is likely to still represent less than half the world average of 3.8 tonnes in 2000; Indian emissions are predicted to rise only from 0.9 tonnes per capita in 2000 to 1.6 tonnes per capita in 2030.
5. What India is already doing. India’s National Auto-fuel Policy mandates cleaner fuels for vehicles; the Energy Conservation Act, passed in 2001, outlines initiatives to improve energy efficiency; the Electricity Act of 2003 encourages the use of renewable energy; natural gas is being imported and clean coal technologies adopted; the government is keen to launch a National Mission on Biodiesel using about 11 million hectares of land by 2011-2012; India ratified the Paris Climate Agreement on 2 October 2016; and India has one of the largest renewable energy programmes in the world.
6. What India asks of others. A review of the implementation of the Earth Summit agreements was undertaken by India in 1997, and one of its key conclusions was that there had been no meaningful progress with respect to transfer of new and additional financial resources and environmentally-sound technology on concessional terms to developing nations. India finds it necessary that developed countries take immediate measures to provide developing countries with financial resources and clean technologies. India is also of the view that the SAARC countries should adopt a common position on major global environment issues, so that the region’s voice carries greater weight.

Q. What distinguishes the forest movements of the South from those of the North?

Answer: 1. The basic difference. What distinguishes them is that the forests of the South are still peopled, whilst the forests of the North are more or less devoid of human habitat or, at least, are perceived as thus.
2. What follows in the North. This explains to some extent the prevailing notion of wilderness in the North as a ‘wild place’ where people do not live. In this perspective, humans are not seen as part of nature; ‘environment’ is perceived as ‘somewhere out there’, as something that should be protected from humans through the creation of parks and reserves.
3. What follows in the South. Most environmental issues in the South are based on the assumption that people live in the forests.
4. Where each view is found. Wilderness-oriented perspectives have been predominant in Australia, Scandinavia, North America and New Zealand, where there are still large tracts of relatively ‘underdeveloped wilderness’, unlike in most European countries.
5. Wilderness campaigns in the South too. In the Philippines, green organisations fight to protect eagles and other birds of prey from extinction; in India, a battle goes on to protect the alarmingly low number of Bengal tigers; in Africa, a long campaign has been waged against the ivory trade and the savage slaughter of elephants; and some of the most famous wilderness struggles have been fought in the forests of Brazil and Indonesia. Many of these wilderness issues have been renamed biodiversity issues in recent times, as the concept of wilderness has been proved difficult to sell in the South, and many of the campaigns have been initiated and funded by NGOs such as the Worldwide Wildlife Fund (WWF), in association with local people.

Q. What methods did the industrialised countries of the North adopt during the Cold War to ensure a steady flow of resources, and what worries them now?

Answer: 1. The methods it lists. Throughout the Cold War the industrialised countries of the North adopted a number of methods to ensure a steady flow of resources. These included the deployment of military forces near exploitation sites and along sea-lanes of communication, the stockpiling of strategic resources, efforts to prop up friendly governments in producing countries, as well as support to multinational companies and favourable international agreements.
2. What they feared. Traditional Western strategic thinking remained concerned with access to supplies, which might be threatened by the Soviet Union. A particular concern was Western control of oil in the Gulf and strategic minerals in Southern and Central Africa.
3. After the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the security of supply continues to worry government and business decisions with regard to several minerals, in particular radioactive materials. However, oil continues to be the most important resource in global strategy.
4. The older root of the same thinking. Western geopolitical thinking about resources has been dominated by the relationship of trade, war and power, at the core of which were overseas resources and maritime navigation. Since sea power itself rested on access to timber, naval timber supply became a key priority for major European powers from the 17th century onwards, and the critical importance of ensuring uninterrupted supply of strategic resources, in particular oil, was well established both during the First World War and the Second World War.

Q. What is meant by the global commons? How are they exploited and polluted?

Answer: 1. Commons first. ‘Commons’ are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community. This could be a ‘common room’, a ‘community centre’, a park or a river.
2. The global commons. Similarly, there are some areas or regions of the world which are located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state, and therefore require common governance by the international community. These are known as res communis humanitatis or global commons. They include the earth’s atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space.
3. The atmosphere. A steady decline in the total amount of ozone in the Earth’s stratosphere, commonly referred to as the ozone hole, poses a real danger to ecosystems and human health. The discovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic in the mid-1980s revealed the opportunity as well as the dangers inherent in tackling global environmental problems.
4. Antarctica. Since 1959, activities in the area have been limited to scientific research, fishing and tourism, yet even these limited activities have not prevented parts of the region from being degraded by waste as a result of oil spills.
5. The ocean floor and coastal waters. Although the open sea is relatively clean, the coastal waters are becoming increasingly polluted largely due to land-based activities, and if unchecked, intensive human settlement of coastal zones across the globe will lead to further deterioration in the quality of the marine environment. The chapter’s own photo example of what such degradation costs people is the Aral Sea, where toxic waters have totally destroyed the fishing industry, the shipping industry and all related activities have collapsed, and rising concentrations of salt in the soil have caused low crop yields.
6. Outer space, and the reason behind all of it. The history of outer space as a global commons shows that the management of these areas is thoroughly influenced by North-South inequalities. As with the earth’s atmosphere and the ocean floor, the crucial issue here is technology and industrial development, because the benefits of exploitative activities in outer space are far from being equal either for the present or future generations. Cooperation over the global commons is not easy, though there have been path-breaking agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol; the major problem underlying all ecological issues is the difficulty of achieving consensus on common environmental agendas on the basis of vague scientific evidence and time frames.

Q. Why have issues related to global environmental protection become the priority concern of states since the 1990s?

Answer: 1. The scale of the damage. Throughout the world, cultivable area is barely expanding any more, and a substantial portion of existing agricultural land is losing fertility. Grasslands have been overgrazed and fisheries over-harvested. Water bodies have suffered extensive depletion and pollution, severely restricting food production.
2. The human cost. According to the Human Development Report 2016 of the United Nations Development Programme, 663 million people in developing countries have no access to safe water and 2.4 billion have no access to sanitation, resulting in the death of more than three million children every year.
3. Forests, biodiversity, ozone and the coasts. Natural forests, which help stabilise the climate, moderate water supplies and harbour a majority of the planet’s biodiversity on land, are being cut down and people are being displaced. The loss of biodiversity continues due to the destruction of habitat in areas which are rich in species. A steady decline in the total amount of ozone in the Earth’s stratosphere poses a real danger to ecosystems and human health. Coastal pollution too is increasing globally.
4. Why this is political. Most of these problems are such that no single government can address them fully, so they have to become part of ‘world politics’. They are political in a deeper sense too: who causes environmental degradation, who pays the price, who is responsible for taking corrective action, and who gets to use how much of the natural resources of the Earth. All these raise the issue of who wields how much power.
5. How the concern was built up. Awareness of the environmental consequences of economic growth acquired an increasingly political character from the 1960s onwards. The Club of Rome published Limits to Growth in 1972, and international agencies including UNEP began holding international conferences and promoting detailed studies. The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term.
6. The consolidation at Rio. The growing focus on environmental issues within the arena of global politics was firmly consolidated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, attended by 170 states, thousands of NGOs and many multinational corporations. It produced conventions on climate change, biodiversity and forestry, recommended Agenda 21, and reached a consensus on sustainable development. Since then the environment has been a significant issue of global politics, and the negotiations that followed, from UNFCCC to the Kyoto Protocol, have kept it there.

Q. ‘Diversity is an important trait of contemporary environmental movements.’ Explain with the chapter’s own examples.

Answer: 1. Where they come from. Some of the most significant responses to environmental degradation have come not from the governments but from groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working in different parts of the world. Some of them work at the international level, but most of them work at the local level. These movements are amongst the most vibrant, diverse, and powerful social movements across the globe today, and it is within social movements that new forms of political action are born or reinvented.
2. The forest movements. The forest movements of the South, in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, continental Africa and India, are faced with enormous pressures. Forest clearing in the Third World continues at an alarming rate, despite three decades of environmental activism, and the destruction of the world’s last remaining grand forests has actually increased in the last decade.
3. The movements against the minerals industry. The minerals industry is one of the most powerful forms of industry on the planet, and a large number of economies of the South are now being re-opened to MNCs through the liberalisation of the global economy. The industry’s extraction of earth, its use of chemicals, its pollution of waterways and land, its clearance of native vegetation and its displacement of communities, amongst other factors, continue to invite criticism and resistance. One good example is that of the Philippines, where a vast network of groups and organisations campaigned against the Western Mining Corporation (WMC), an Australia-based multinational company. Much opposition to the company in its own country, Australia, is based on anti-nuclear sentiments and advocacy for the basic rights of Australian indigenous peoples. A photograph in the chapter shows an entire community protesting against a proposed open-cast coal mine project in Phulbari town, in the North-West district of Dinajpur, Bangladesh, in 2006.
4. The movements against mega-dams. In every country where a mega-dam is being built, one is likely to find an environmental movement opposing it. Increasingly, anti-dam movements are pro-river movements for more sustainable and equitable management of river systems and valleys. The early 1980s saw the first anti-dam movement launched in the North, namely, the campaign to save the Franklin River and its surrounding forests in Australia, which was a wilderness and forest campaign as well as an anti-dam campaign. At present there has been a spurt in mega-dam building in the South, from Turkey to Thailand to South Africa, from Indonesia to China.
5. India’s own place in this. India has had some of the leading anti-dam, pro-river movements, and Narmada Bachao Andolan is one of the best known of these movements. It is significant to note that, in anti-dam and other environmental movements in India, the most important shared idea is non-violence.
6. The wilderness campaigns. Wilderness campaigns are not entirely missing in the South either. In the Philippines, green organisations fight to protect eagles and other birds of prey from extinction; in India, a battle goes on to protect the alarmingly low number of Bengal tigers; in Africa, a long campaign has been waged against the ivory trade and the savage slaughter of elephants. Many of these campaigns have been initiated and funded by NGOs such as the Worldwide Wildlife Fund (WWF), in association with local people.

Q. Discuss resource geopolitics with reference to oil and water.

Answer: 1. What resource geopolitics is. “Resource geopolitics is all about who gets what, when, where and how.” Resources have provided some of the key means and motives of global European power expansion and have also been the focus of inter-state rivalry.
2. The older pattern. Western geopolitical thinking about resources has been dominated by the relationship of trade, war and power, at the core of which were overseas resources and maritime navigation. Since sea power itself rested on access to timber, naval timber supply became a key priority for major European powers from the 17th century onwards. The critical importance of ensuring uninterrupted supply of strategic resources, in particular oil, was well established both during the First World War and the Second World War.
3. The Cold War and after. Throughout the Cold War the industrialised countries of the North deployed military forces near exploitation sites and along sea-lanes of communication, stockpiled strategic resources, propped up friendly governments in producing countries, and supported multinational companies and favourable international agreements. A particular concern was Western control of oil in the Gulf and strategic minerals in Southern and Central Africa. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the security of supply continues to worry governments with regard to several minerals, in particular radioactive materials, but oil continues to be the most important resource in global strategy.
4. Oil. The global economy relied on oil for much of the 20th century as a portable and indispensable fuel. The immense wealth associated with oil generates political struggles to control it, and the history of petroleum is also the history of war and struggle, nowhere more obviously than in West Asia and Central Asia. West Asia, specifically the Gulf region, accounts for about 30 per cent of global oil production but has about 64 per cent of the planet’s known reserves, and is therefore the only region able to satisfy any substantial rise in oil demand. Saudi Arabia has a quarter of the world’s total reserves and is the single largest producer; Iraq’s known reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia’s, and since substantial portions of Iraqi territory are yet to be fully explored, there is a fair chance that actual reserves might be far larger. The United States, West Europe, Japan, and increasingly India and China, which consume this petroleum, are located at a considerable distance from the region.
5. Water. Water is another crucial resource that is relevant to global politics. Regional variations and the increasing scarcity of freshwater in some parts of the world point to the possibility of disagreements over shared water resources as a leading source of conflicts in the 21st century, and some commentators have referred to ‘water wars’ to describe the possibility of violent conflict over this life-sustaining resource. A typical disagreement is a downstream, or lower riparian, state’s objection to pollution, excessive irrigation, or the construction of dams by an upstream, or upper riparian, state, which might decrease or degrade the quality of water available to the downstream state.
6. The examples of violence. States have used force to protect or seize freshwater resources. Examples of violence include those between Israel, Syria, and Jordan in the 1950s and 1960s over attempts by each side to divert water from the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers, and more recent threats between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq over the construction of dams on the Euphrates River. A number of studies show that countries which share rivers are involved in military conflicts with each other.

Q. Who are the indigenous peoples? Describe their concerns and their situation in India.

Answer: 1. The definition. The UN defines indigenous populations as comprising the descendants of peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world and overcame them. Indigenous people today live more in conformity with their particular social, economic, and cultural customs and traditions than the institutions of the country of which they now form a part.
2. How many and where. There are approximately 30 crore indigenous peoples spread throughout the world including India. The chapter’s own counts are 20 lakh indigenous people of the Cordillera region of the Philippines, 10 lakh Mapuche people of Chile, six lakh tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, 35 lakh North American natives, 50,000 Kuna living east of Panama Canal and 10 lakh Small Peoples of the Soviet North. Indigenous people occupy areas in Central and South America, Africa, India, where they are known as Tribals, and Southeast Asia. Many of the present day island states in the Oceania region, including Australia and New Zealand, were inhabited by the Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian people over the course of thousands of years.
3. What they ask for. The indigenous voices in world politics call for the admission of indigenous people to the world community as equals. They appeal to governments to come to terms with the continuing existence of indigenous nations as enduring communities with an identity of their own. ‘Since times immemorial’ is the phrase used by indigenous people all over the world to refer to their continued occupancy of the lands from which they originate.
4. Why land is the central question. The worldviews of indigenous societies, irrespective of their geographical location, are strikingly similar with respect to land and the variety of life systems supported by it. The loss of land, which also means the loss of an economic resource base, is the most obvious threat to the survival of indigenous people. The chapter puts the point as a question: “Can political autonomy be enjoyed without its attachment to the means of physical survival?”
5. In India. The description ‘indigenous people’ is usually applied to the Scheduled Tribes, who constitute nearly eight per cent of the population of the country. With the exception of small communities of hunters and gatherers, most indigenous populations in India depend for their subsistence primarily on the cultivation of land. For centuries, if not millennia, they had free access to as much land as they could cultivate. It was only after the establishment of the British colonial rule that areas which had previously been inhabited by the Scheduled Tribe communities were subjected to outside forces. Although they enjoy a constitutional protection in political representation, they have not got much of the benefits of development in the country; in fact they have paid a huge cost for development, since they are the single largest group among the people displaced by various developmental projects since independence.
6. Their international voice. Issues related to the rights of the indigenous communities have been neglected in domestic and international politics for very long. During the 1970s, growing international contacts among indigenous leaders from around the world aroused a sense of common concern and shared experiences. The World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975, and became subsequently the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN. Many of the movements against globalisation, discussed in Chapter 7, have focussed on the rights of the indigenous people.

Q. Explain common property resources, and describe the sacred groves of India as a common property regime.

Answer: 1. What common property is. Common property represents common property for the group. The underlying norm is that members of the group have both rights and duties with respect to the nature, levels of use, and the maintenance of a given resource. Through mutual understanding and centuries of practice, many village communities in India have defined members’ rights and responsibilities.
2. Why it is shrinking. A combination of factors, including privatisation, agricultural intensification, population growth and ecosystem degradation, have caused common property to dwindle in size, quality, and availability to the poor in much of the world.
3. Sacred groves as the example. The institutional arrangement for the actual management of the sacred groves on state-owned forest land appropriately fits the description of a common property regime. Along the forest belt of South India, sacred groves have been traditionally managed by village communities.
4. What a sacred grove is. Protecting nature for religious reasons is an ancient practice in many traditional societies, and sacred groves in India are parcels of uncut forest vegetation in the name of certain deities or natural or ancestral spirits. As a model of community-based resource management, groves have lately gained attention in conservation literature. They can be seen as a system that informally forces traditional communities to harvest natural resources in an ecologically sustained fashion, and some researchers believe that sacred groves hold the potential for preserving not only biodiversity and ecological functions, but also cultural diversity. Their size ranges from clumps of a few trees to several hundred acres.
5. Why they have lasted. Traditionally, sacred groves have been valued for their embodied spiritual and cultural attributes. Hindus commonly worshipped natural objects, including trees and groves, and many temples have originated from sacred groves. Deep religious reverence for nature, rather than resource scarcity, seems to be the basis for the long-standing commitment to preserving these forests.
6. The pressures on them today. In recent years, expansion and human settlement have slowly encroached on sacred forests, and in many places the institutional identity of these traditional forests is fading with the advent of new national forest policies. A real problem in managing sacred groves arises when legal ownership and operational control are held by different entities; the two entities in question, the state and the community, vary in their policy norms and underlying motives for using the sacred grove.