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Natural Resource-based
Interactions
Organizational Interaction
NGOs and IPOs
CDP 532: Unit 1 (e)
NGOs
• Emergence after 1945, became prominent on various issues including
environment after 1990s (so is in Nepal)
– Environment as a major theme of NGO world (along with human rights)
• Understanding of NGOs and their roles and understanding of
environment (very diverse)
– NGOs, civil society, not-for profit organization, social movements, non-state
actors
• Limitation of state to address env issues (local and global)  rise of
ENGOs,
– but in Nepal both came at the same time
• Growth of NGOs on Environmental issue:
– NGOs as major actor during rise of liberalization as development partner /
service provider
– New political contexts: justice, social movement, rights, advocacy, activism,
inclusion, participatory development
– Global environmental discourses since Stockholm convention (importantly
after the Rio convention): Agenda 21 accepted and broadened the role
– Environment: neutral theme but not always and not for all
NGOs
• What do NGOs do?
– NGOs have served as agents of change and forces for the public good for the
protection of human and environmental welfare.
– NGOs' activities range from picketing, protests, and demonstrations to education,
research, or diplomatic work to achieve their goals.
– NGO collaboration, lobbying, and public awareness-building methods include the
effective use of media and scientific research
– NGOs are powerful players in the international policy arena and leverage their
access to policy makers to good effect. (act as epistemic communities in the
international relation)
– Some NGOs are developing partnerships with governments and corporations /
industries (Corporate social responsibilities)
• Critiques
– Because of their funding, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not the people
they work with (Trojan horse of western countries, neo-colonialism)
– INGOs have gone beyond partnering with local agencies, intervening local
matters
– Ignored local contexts, (focused on only one issue as if it occurs in the isolation
e.g. biodiversity conservation)
– Not independent and carrying many hidden agenda of their donors (political,
religious, economic etc.)
NGOs in international relations
(related to environment)
Epistemic communities
• An epistemic community in international relations is a network of professionals
with recognized knowledge and skill in a particular issue-area. Epistemic
communities influence policy by providing knowledge to policy makers. The
communities influence through communicative action; diffusing ideas
nationally, transnationally, and internationally. Epistemic communities usually
aid in issues concerning a technical nature. Epistemic communities are also a
source of policy innovation.
• Epistemic communities came to be because of the rapid professionalization of
government agencies. Another reason why epistemic communities came to be
is that decision makers began turning to experts to help them understand
issues because there were more issues and all were more complicated.
• There are a myriad of examples of the impact that epistemic communities have
had on public policy. Epistemic communities brought attention to
chlorofluorocarbons and their polluting consequences. This realization led to
the creation of environmental international agencies in a majority of the world’s
governments. Epistemic communities also have brought attention to the habitat
fragmentation and decline of biodiversity on the planet. This has led to reform
throughout the world creating conservation agencies and policies.
For detail: Haas, Peter M. 1992. “Epistemic Communities and International Policy
Coordination.” International Organization. 46(1):1-35.
NGOs in natural resource
interaction (civil society)
Understanding about civil society (just for simplicity)
– Liberal (normative, good society), critical (public sphere) and
analytical (associational life)
– Pro-environment and pro-livelihood
– Pro-advocacy (activism), pro-service delivery (project
implementation), pro-knowledge generation (research publication)
– Membership based and non-membership based: serving own
constituency / members or external constituencies
– How they get funds / resources: domestic / member contribution
or foreign aid
– Their position over environmental interaction is dependent on how
they have conceptualized development: Development alternatives
or alternative to development
– All these categories may not always be distinct and now there are
more mixed forms
NGOs
ENGOs
• Source of power, interest and legitimacy of NGOs in environmental
interaction (against State and business groups)
– No authority over coercive power like state and no control over capitals
like business group
– NGOs: moral authority of organizations / members, claim over
knowledge, capitalizing the new avenues of politics (media), connection /
network outside global level (donors) and inside at the grassroots level
• How do they influence:
– By influencing environmental policies and practices of states, businesses
and multilateral institutions
– Through direct link with grassroots activism and indigenous people
– Through well-publicised campaigns (through media), designed to raise
public awareness on environmental issues
– Through activities at global environment and development conferences
(global-local network)
– Through their unique organizational size, structures, knowledge / skills,
purpose, ideology, cultural origin, legal status
NGOs
ENGOs and state
• Collaboration, oppression and confrontation
• “environmental movement” against government / market
• Any examples of environmental initiative / movement: indigenous
people’s movement, anti-dam movement, pro-conservation
movement, anti-pollution campaigns
• State establishes partnership with NGOs in any environmental and
development issues
• Therefore state-NGO relation is mixed
– Legitimacy of NGOs through state
– Credibility and power of NGOs
• New politics of the environment: various types of NGOs, various
levels of state agencies and other indigenous social movement,
claiming the natural resources by indigenous groups
NGOs in Nepal
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Big database of SWC, more than 30,200 last year, July 2010 (since 1977)
All registered, grouped by sector-wise (almost 10 sectors) and region / districtwise
Environment and natural resource management is a major sector of NGOs’
concern particularly after 1990
Trend of NGOs and ENGOs in Nepal
in the last more than 30 years
16035000
3500
1400
Total NGOs (Year-wise)
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30000
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Total ENGOs (cum)
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Total NGOs (cumulative)
1000
ENGOs. (Year-wise)
10000
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20 5000
200
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500
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
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2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
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0
19
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Year (as of July 15 of each year)
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Year (as of July 15 of each year)
Two examples of NGOs in Natural
Resource Interaction in Nepal
• Non-membership based, that is serving
external constituency (Care Nepal’s
SAGUN): Professional service
• Membership-based, that is serving own
members (FECOFUN, Federation of
Community Forestry Users’ Groups of
Nepal): Civic engagement
SAGUN of Care Nepal:
“Framework for Poverty Eradication and Social Justice”
• Area of work: 2 eco-regions, hill and plains, including the park area (spread
over the country)
• Collaboration with other organizations and government agencies
• Funding: Out of USD 9.8 M, 7.8M from USAID, and rest is raised locally
• Target: human conditions health, income, nutrition); governance (looking at
the changes in the political, legal, policy, regulatory scenarios, market
relations that is upholding inequality and conflict); and social position
(targeting discrimination, exclusion, privilege that cause inequality and
conflict)
• Components:
– From 2002-06: Forestry and buffer zone, irrigation, hydropower and policy
advocacy
– From 2006-08: Livelihood improvement, biodiversity conservation and policy
advocacy
• Objectives: NRM through democratic means, good governance in local
institutions, equitable distributions of benefits and costs.
• Specific objectives: improve internal governance and technical capacity in
CFUGs, promote inclusion and conservation
…contd…
Claimed contributions
• Governance gains: Gains in capacity of user groups to do
own governance of their groups and their tecchnical skills to
mobilize resources for purpose of NRM and benefitting from
these resources
• Institutionalization of participatory well-being ranking
• Public hearing and public auditing
• Literacy (particularly of dalits)
• Conflict mitigation and prevention: by making UGs pro-poor,
by improving relationship between rich and poor and
government and citizens, by collaborating with other NGOs
and CBOs for peace-building, and by addressing the
corruption (misuse of funds)
• Policy advocacy at the macro-level (for policies related to
forestry, irrigation, dalit)
FECOFUN
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Network of more than 13,000 community based forestry user groups
(CFUGs) or forest management groups of Nepal: One of the largest civil
society organizations in Nepal since 1995 to protect user’s right in the forest
Any CFUGs established under Forest Act 1993 can be an general member
and grass-root level user groups based on forestry resources can be
elementary member
Local, District and National level assemblies, councils and committee
formed by election, tenure 4 years
Funding: Member contribution and external (domestic and foreign) support
Work: Organizational development, policy advocacy and conservation and
livelihoods including climate change
Current projects:
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Global alliance of community forestry
Conflict transformation in natural resource
REDD / climate change related activities and users’ right protection
Sustainable forest management with community participation
Civic engagement through FECOFUN
• Emergence in mid-1990s
– Growing trend of CF and number of CFUGs
– Liberal political environment (flourishing civil society / NGOs)
– Participatory development / NRM practices
• Established by donors and government: Network of user groups for
sharing of learning about institutional development
• After formally established in 1995, it was transformed into vibrant civil
society organization until political change in 2006: activisms and
resistance against several government’s decisions (discursive, political
protests, networking and advocacy, litigation process)
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Attempts for amendment of forestry laws in 1998 and 2000
40 percent taxing of forest products’ sale by CFUGs in 2003
Collaborative forestry (instead of community forestry) in Tarai region
Declaration of protected areas in 2009-10
• Currently, after 2006: Implementing many donor supported project,
busy in discursive / deliberative process: forest management beyond
the state-centric method
– Membership-based civil society  professional NGO ???
Interaction of Indigenous
people (IP) and their
organizations (IPOs)
IP (outside and inside Nepal)
Various names:
– Indigenous people, native people, first people, first nations, autochthonous
people, aborigines, tribal people, Janajati (Indigenous nationalities)
• Defining:
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Historic continuity
Distinctiveness
Marginalization / non-domination
Self Identity / self-ascription
Self governance
• Rise of international indigenism (through UN, ILO and other human
right instruments): resource use / management and knowledge
– Response to de-localizing impact of modernity (Appadurai, Giddens)
– Development of identity politics
• ‘Indigenous slot’ is highly emphasized globally and in Nepal
– But also critiqued!
– Whether it would resolve marginalization, inequality, poverty and conflict?
Indigenous people and Natural
resource
• Sovereign state: Control of all resources inside the territory since its
emergence (e.g. forest nationalization in 1950s)
• State = ruling elite (control over resources), modernization  private
property regime (end of collective governance)
• Emergence of marginalized groups, having less access and
ownership over the resources (forest and land): Mainly ‘indigenous’
people and dalits
• Marginalization of indigenous people and Dalits from natural
resources continued with:
– Strengthening of state’s control through the various legal mechanisms
– Emergence of government bureaucracy and ‘scientific management’
– Further marginalization culturally and politically
• Now emergence of identity politics
– Main target natural resources (e.g. in state restructuring process)
• Specific examples: recent controversy over Arun III and other hydro-project,
controversy of CCA in Sagarmatha region, collection of tax by certain groups
in the name of ILO169
Interaction of IPOs
• Indigenous organization (IO) and environmental interaction of
indigenous people (IP)
• IP more dependent on natural resources, therefore impact of their
enclosure and degradation is massive
• IP are not fully incorporated in the current global and national
political and economic system, therefore their livelihoods usually
threatened
• Indigenous practices as templates for sustainability (from
romanticization to serious consideration)
• Their profound env knowledge: A way to adapt in the local
environmental condition…but now threatened
• Resource enclosure and degradation led to loss of their control over
resources, ultimately leading to disintegration of indigenous
management system, as a result, sometimes they are forced to
adopt other livelihood options
Indigenous people’s interaction:
Conflict?
• Conflict on sovereignty claims over resources (state or
indigenous people)
• Claim of indigenous people over natural resources (ILO
169)
• Increasing significance of indigenous/local people in
politico-ecological relations/interaction (e.g. TEK,
CBNRM)
• Complex interaction of identity and institutional
development at various levels with benefits from /
scarcity of natural resources
Example: Tharus excluded from land and their recent
uprising
IP’s environmental claims in
Nepal
Indigenous organizations on environmental issues in Nepal
• What types of environment related issues are raised by IO in Nepal?
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Very recent phenomena and still unclear / unheard
Access to / control over genetic resources and protection of TEK
ILO 169
Climate change and indigenous voices
Control over indigenous land areas and recognition of indigenous
practices
– State restructuring and federalis
• Problems with indigenous organizations and their environmental
claims
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Sovereignty: State or IP?
Who are indigenous people? (in Nepal: Adivasi Janajati, like Tharus)
Changing society in political, cultural and economic fronts
Crisis of global environmental change
A Nepali example of
Controversy between government agency and IPO
(Stevens 2009)
• In May 2008, a group of Sherpa people announced a community
conserved area in their ‘homeland’ (Khumbu region) as IPCCA
inside the Sagarmatha National Park (SNP)
• Soon a controversy arisen as informed in the media: government
(DNPWC) can not allow establishment of another PA inside a PA
(SNP) which falls in their jurisdiction. The activity was portrayed as
illegal / foreign project. Government declined to recognize the
KCCA.
• Sherpa communities felt ‘misunderstood, alienated, intimidated and
angered’ by DNPWC.
• The case presents an excellent example of conflict between ‘state’
and ‘IP’ with respect to natural resources.
• Do you think, we are yet to see more such controversies and
conflicts in the future?
• Another example of controversy / conflict is related to
understanding and implementation of ILO169
IP interaction in natural resources ILO 169
• ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples 1989 No 169:
Obligatory legal mechanism to protect rights of indigenous people
• Government is responsible for implementing its provisions
• Ensures consultation with IP and their participation in making decisions
pertaining to them
• Article 1: flexible definition of IP (important to South Asia): Selfascription: collective right of any indigenous people or community to
decide who is and who is not a member of that group
• Article 1-12: fundamental rights, participation and consultation of IP in all
policies and programs affecting them
• Article 13-19 deals with land issue: land inhabiting by both indigenous
and non-indigenous people should be treated equally. IP can be
separated from their land if there are no any option left to authorities,
only as a last resort, but with specific procedure, full consent, access to
benefits from project and only by ensuring that they are not marginalized
further. (No veto to IP to block removal)
• Articles 20-32: employment, training, social protection, education and
cross-border communication between IP
• Article 33: deals with administration
ILO 169 in Nepal:
Resolving or initiating conflict?
• Issues related to Nepal (ILO 169 for conflict or for peace?)
• Points of dispute
– Who is IP?
– Sovereignty claims: state or IP
– Indigenous rights vs. fundamental human rights / individual rights
•
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When, five years ago, I was sent to Fiji as Special Representative of the Director-General of the ILO to help resolve
the insurrection and constitutional crisis in that country, I encountered a number of indigenous leaders who had
stated publicly that the Convention (which Fiji had ratified) gave ethnic Fijians the right to deny the East Indian
population access to land, to public services and to participation in government on the basis of traditional indigenous
customs and practices in respect of such matters. I had to explain to these leaders that they were mistaken in their
interpretation of the purpose and provisions of the Convention. Article 8(2) of the Convention is quite clear in this
regard: “These peoples shall have the right to retain their own customs and institutions, where these are not
incompatible with fundamental rights defined by the national legal system and with internationally recognized human
rights. (Ian Chambers, Former ILO Director, speaking in a program on “ILO Convention 169 and Peace Building in
Nepal”, organized by NEFIN and ILO, December 2005)
Interpretation of history
ILO 169: political document or development document?
Recent land grab, environmental cost, lack of other options
Address by state restructuring and constitution making: Optimist or pessimist?
Specific examples of resource conflict in Nepal in the name of / related to ILO
69???