Beyond islands of success? Civil society organizations’ support for scaling-out the implementation of the Forest Rights Act at community level

Abstract 

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, (2006) (known as FRA) has been lauded as an opportunity to correct for historical injustices through recognizing the rights of forest-dwelling people. The provisions for Community Forest Resource rights (CFR) within the FRA are in line with a vast academic literature empirically showing that community governed forests can often better support conservation goals than state managed land.  Over ten years on, progress in implementing CFR provisions in the FRA is still slow across most of the country. Some forest-dwelling communities have been successful in gaining, and benefiting from, CFR under the FRA, but such cases remain ‘islands of success’ strongly supported by civil society organizations. In this talk I analyse how civil society organizations support such successful cases, and more importantly, how they can support the scaling-out of CFR implementation beyond these successful cases into neighbouring communities. I employ an analytical framework which draws from current literature on processes of scaling-out community-level interventions, viewed through a critical institutionalism theoretical lens. I will present my initial analysis of empirical research in East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, where the scaling-out of FRA related knowledge, skills and discourses from a successful CFR village has sparked interest in applying for CFR amongst three neighbouring communities. However, scaling-out effects are limited to the initial application stage, as later stages of the CFR process (including post-CFR stage) remain dominated by broader institutional patterns of interaction between state bureaucracy and communities. 

About the speaker

Clare Barnes is an Interdisciplinary Lecturer in Sustainable Livelihoods in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests are in the field of natural resource governance. Research themes include land rights, policy change, rural livelihoods, forest governance and the roles of civil society organizations. Clare’s PhD, from Utrecht University in The Netherlands, was on community forest governance in India.