“Communities of Circumstance: Support, Conservation, and the Power of Collective Action”

Communities of Circumstance (COC) – Communities of circumstances provide vital emotional support, practical advice, and a sense of belonging during challenging or uncertain times. Knowing you’re not alone facing a difficult situation can be transformative.

However, these communities can sometimes reinforce limiting identities or worldviews based on the circumstance. The process of transition, for opting out of the community once the shared circumstance shifts, can also be tricky.

In 1798, in a small village called Vedanthangal near Chennai, British soldiers shot some storks in the local wetland. The villagers stormed the collector’s office and made him issue a ‘koul’ or ‘order’ that no one was to harm the nesting birds. Many of these local efforts at conservation, regeneration and/or management have continued for generations but many others are emerging in newer situations and circumstances. The reasons for their existence, continuance and emergence are varied: countering depletion of life-sustaining resources, maintaining watersheds, seeking ecological benefits, conservation of wildlife and biodiversity and or religious/cultural sentiments.

COC for forest ecosystems:

• The Gond tribal community in Mendha (Lekha) village of Gadchiroli District, Maharashtra, initiated protection and de facto control over 1800 hectares of forest over two decades ago.

• Jardhargaon village in Uttarakhand has regenerated and protected 600-700 hectares of forest, and revived several hundred varieties of agricultural crops.

• Van panchayats15 like Makku in Uttarakhand are protecting tens of thousands of hectares of high-altitude pasture lands and forests.

• Villagers in Shankar Ghola in Assam are protecting forests that contain the highly threatened golden langur.

• Community forestry initiatives in several thousand villages of Orissa have regenerated or protected forests. Elephants are reportedly being sighted here now.

• Areas have been conserved as forest and wildlife reserves in Nagaland by various tribes in dozens of villages, including a people’s sanctuary for the endangered Blyth’s tragopan in Khonoma village.

• In Tokpa Kabui village of Churachandpur district in Manipur, 600 hectares of regenerated village forest has been preserved in the Loktak Lake catchment by the Ronmei tribe.

• With help from the NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), several dozen villages in Alwar district have restored the water regime, regenerated forests and, in one case (Bhaonta-Kolyala), declared a Lok Abhyaranya (people’s wildlife sanctuary).

COC for wetland, coastal and marine habitats:

• Uttar Pradesh is a locus of traditional wetlands conservation. In Amakhera village of Aligarh district, the traditional wetland, used for irrigation and fishing, hosts a large number of migratory birds, for whom the villagers are always vigil. Patna Lake in Etah District is home to up to 100,000 water birds in favourable seasons. The lake, which has been declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1991, has been protected for centuries as a sacred pond. Sareli village in Kheri District supports a nesting population of over 1000 openbill storks, considered to be the harbingers of a good monsoon.

• There are Communities who have protected heronries (e.g., Sareli in UP, Nellapatu in Andhra Pradesh and Chittarangudi in Tamil Nadu). In Kokkare Bellur of Karnataka, villagers offer protection against hunting, sometimes even foregoing their tamarind yield so that nesting birds are not disturbed. In Tamil Nadu, the Chittarangudi tank attracts storks, ibises, herons, egrets, cormorants and other migratory birds. Villagers do not allow any hunting or stealing of bird eggs. They do not burst crackers during Diwali, and avoid commercial fishing. Local communities are protecting similar tanks throughout the coastal and wetland regions of India.

• Fisherfolk in Mangalajodi, and adjoining villages of the Chilika lagoon, Orissa, are protecting the large population of waterfowl (once extensively hunted).

• A number of coastal communities are protecting critical coastal wildlife habitats such as mangroves (in Orissa) and sea turtle nesting beaches (in Orissa, Goa and Kerala).

COC for protection of individual species:

• Protection of endangered sea turtle eggs, hatchlings and nesting sites by fisherfolk communities has augmented at Kolavipaalam in Kerala; Galgibag and Morjim in Goa; along with Rushikulya and Gokharkuda in Orissa. In the year 2006, and 2008, over 100,000 Olive Ridley turtles are reported to have nested at Rushikulya.

• Youth clubs from the villages around Loktak Lake (Manipur) have formed the Sangai Protection Forum to conserve the greatly endangered brow-antlered deer, which is endemic to this wetland by pro-actively managing & conserving the Keibul Lamjao National Park, which forms the core of the lake.

• The Buddhist Morpa community in Sangti Valley in Arunachal Pradesh have co-existed with the endangered black-necked cranes for generations, worshipping them as a harbinger of better rice yields.

• The locals of the Khichan village in Rajasthan, provides refuge and food to a wintering population of up to 10,000 demoiselle cranes, ungrudgingly spending lakhs of rupees annually to feed them grains.

• The inhabitants of the Buguda village in Ganjam District, Orissa, have been protecting blackbuck for centuries. Buguda was recently awarded the Chief Minister’s Award for wildlife conservation.

COC for Sacred sites:

• Sacred forests known as ‘orans’ in the desert regions of Rajasthan are typically managed by the gram sabhas (village assemblies), where there are impositions in the grazing by livestock. Orans are important components in the recharge of aquifers in the desert, where every single drop of water is precious. In most orans, particularly in western Rajasthan, the dominant tree, khejari, is worshipped for its immense value, as the tree enriches soil nitrogen, and during drought and famine, and most importantly, its bark is mixed with flour for consumption.

• Mendha (Lekha) in Maharashtra, where the movement towards tribal self-rule and forest conservation was a result of a larger struggle against a hydro-electric project; and, natural resource and traditional seed conservation in Jardhargaon gave rise to the famous Chipko movement in the hills of Garhwal in Uttarakhand.
• In the Himalayan State of Uttarakhand, the villagers have been legally empowered to remain in charge of surrounding or adjoining forests for over seven decades. The local van panchayats (forest councils) were entrusted with the management of forests. With the burgeoning populations, reducing resources, and monoculture plantations in the surrounding regions, van panchayats were increasingly finding it difficult to sustainably manage the forests. Consequently, many van panchayats decided to revive the tradition of sacred groves and declared the forests under their management sacred for a specified period of time to allow for their regeneration. After five (in some cases ten) years, the results are extremely encouraging, e.g., in the Dharamghar region of Uttarakhand.

COC for conflict resolution:

Inter-community or inter-village conflicts are mostly resolved at inter-village/community institutions, whether it is traditional or novo in stature.

• In Kailadevi in Rajasthan, such conflicts are resolved by Barah Gaon ki panchayat (executive committee of 12 villages). This is a traditional conflict resolution body where elders from 12 villages make decisions together. The offending village has to host this meeting and bear all costs. Once a decision is taken, the respective panchayats ensure that individual villagers adhere to it.

• The Mendha (Lekha) village in Maharashtra is eventually a part of the cluster of 32 villages that have been traditionally meeting to resolve such conflicts.

• In Nagaland, all tribes have their own traditional area councils called the ‘tribal hoho’. In recent times, new area councils such as Chakesang People’s Organisation (for the Chakesang tribe), Angami People’s Organisation (for the Angami tribe) have taken over the role of community custodian in monitoring tribal affairs, including district-level conservation activities and conflict resolution.

• In Orissa, such conflicts are resolved by district-level community forest management (CFM) federations, such as Ranpur federation that consists of 180 villages.

COC for Disaster Management:

In the Risk Analysis and Hazard Mapping, it is the community that identifies various hazards on the basis of previous experiences related to earthquakes, cyclones, chemical explosions, fire and any other accidents.

Facilitators, also collect information about the type disasters, date of occurrence, a frequency of occurrence and destruction caused. Based on the previous experiences of disasters, The community would identify groups of people who are most vulnerable, such as the elders, disabled persons, pregnant women, widows and small children, families living in fragile dwellings, slums and low-lying areas. In a few cases, cattle and livestock, weak structures, standing crops and livelihood assets should also have to be listed down.

The community also identifies vulnerable locations within their specific area such as, explosive factories, go-downs, accident-prone areas, and other vulnerable locations. The community should locate and mark all the vulnerable and hazard-prone areas on the community base map. The next step lies in the preparation of resource inventory and resource mapping. While identifying resources available. The inventory of resonance would include:

• Open spaces: Parks, sports complexes for temporary shelters, helicopter landing and safe routes;

• Medical Facilities: Number of hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, medicos, equipment’s and trained manpower for medical assistance in the area and in the neighbourhood;

• Communication facilities: Radios, televisions, telephone exchange, mobiles, public telephone booths;

• Transportation facilities: Buses, two & three wheelers, cars, trucks, and permanent roads etc;

• Water Facilities: Water storage tanks, overhead tanks, bore wells, hand pump, community water posts, government or private tankers, sources of bottled water and tube wells etc;

• Temporary Shelters: Schools colleges, community halls etc;

• Power stations, substation, generators, torches and invertors etc. for electricity supply;

• Public toilets, Community bathrooms, solid waste disposal sites and cremation sites etc;

• Search and Rescue Operation facilities: Fair price shops, kerosene depots, CNG depots, cooking gas depot etc. for food and supply purpose; JCB, Crane, Cutters, Bulldozers, RCC Cutters, Ropes, lamps, and ladder etc for emergency rescue operations.

To be continued……………

Writer Suvro Sanyal

Mavericknews30 has launched a series of articles on community building, sharing insights and success stories. Stay tuned for the next article as we explore how to create stronger, more connected communities!

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