Abstract

Can political representation by indigenous communities – whom many see as stewards of forests – enhance forest cover and biodiversity conservation? Or would indigenous political control over forests catalyse greater extraction for revenue gains? Does the level of representation matter? This talk will address these under-researched questions, drawing on India’s uniquely multi-layered enactments which granted Scheduled Tribes political representation, and hence control over local forests, in constituencies reserved for them in state assemblies and village councils. Taking Chhattisgarh state as an example, the presentation will use geospatial technologies for assessing forest cover and decennial census data to compare the state’s 20,000-odd villages across reserved and unreserved categories, over 2001-2019, differentiating between Assembly Constituency (AC) reservations and PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas) reservations. This study (co-authored with Shamindra Roy and Shiva Sharma) is the first one globally to examine the conservation effect of indigenous political representation at multiple levels, over two decades, and will have relevance for other countries with large forest areas and indigenous populations.

For further information and a link to register for a Zoom link, see below: https://www.conservation.cam.ac.uk/events/joint-cri-ceenrg-crsd-seminar-prof-bina-agarwal