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How do societies negotiate the apparently competing agendas of environmental protection and social justice? Why do some countries perform much better than others on this front?
Democracy in the Woods addresses these question by examining land rights conflicts--and the fate of forest-dependent peasants--in the context of the different forest property regimes in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. These three countries are prominent in the scholarship and policy debates about national forest policies and land conflicts associated with international support for nature conservation. This unique comparative study of national forestland regimes challenges the received wisdom that redistributive policies necessarily undermine the goals of environmental protection. It shows instead that the form that national environmental protection efforts take--either inclusive (as in Mexico) or exclusive (as in Tanzania and, for the most part, in India)--depends on whether dominant political parties are compelled to create structures of political intermediation that channel peasant demands for forest and land rights into the policy process. This book offers three different tests of this theory of political origins of forestland regimes. First, it explains why it took the Indian political elites nearly sixty years to introduce meaningful reforms of the colonial-era forestland regimes. Second, it successfully explains the rather counterintuitive local outcomes of the programs for formalization of land rights in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. Third, it provides a coherent explanation of why each of these three countries proposes a significantly different distribution of the benefits of forest-based climate change mitigation programs being developed under the auspices of the United Nations.
In its political analysis of the control over and the use of nature, this book opens up new avenues for reflecting on how legacies of the past and international interventions interject into domestic political processes to produce specific configurations of environmental protection and social justice. Democracy in the Woods offers a theoretically rigorous argument about why and in what specific ways politics determine the prospects of a socially just and environmentally secure world.
List of contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1. The Politics and Political Economy of Forestland Regimes
- SECTION I: The Origins and Divergences of National Forestland Regimes
- 2. Colonialism and the Transformation of Hinterlands
- 3. Politics of "Development" and National Forestland Regimes
- 4. Political Mediation of Land Conflicts in the Hinterlands
- SECTION II: Politics of Institutional Change
- 5. Politics of Institutional Change in India's Forestland Regimes
- 6. Politics of Institutional Change in Tanzania and Mexico
- SECTION III: Policy Differences and Key Lessons
- 7. Public Accountability in Policy- making: Forest- Based Climate Change Mitigation in India, Tanzania, and Mexico
- 8. Conclusion: Toward Social Justice and Enduring Nature Conservation
- Appendix I: Number of People Affected by Forestland Conflicts
- Appendix II: A Sample of Specific Events Related to Forestland Conflicts
- Appendix III: Major Socioeconomic and Political Indicators in Case Study Countries
- Appendix IV: Inequality- Adjusted Human Development Index for Selected Regions
- Appendix V: Statistical Analysis of Forestland Claims in Gujarat, India
- References
- Index
About the author
Prakash Kashwan is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut.
Summary
Democracy in the Woods examines the trajectories of forest and land rights in India, Tanzania, and Mexico to explain how societies negotiate the tensions between environmental protection and social justice. It shows that the social consequences of environmental protection depend, almost entirely, on political intermediation of competing claims to environmental resources.
Additional text
Democracy in the Woods provides a refreshing look at the comparative politics of forest conservation, state formation, and social justice. [It] is a timely and engaging analysis of the factors affecting resource conservation, social mobilization, and environmental justice."
- Journal of Politics
