Of Milestones and Maelstroms: Two Centuries of the Common Property Debate

"The purpose of this paper is to build bridges. It therefore offers an insight into the manner in which the common property debate has crossed boundaries of several disciplines in history, jurisprudence, ethnology and biology in the course of the last century, and how this can nourish the environment discourse. In particular, the research in common property in the post war period has acquired a fairly critical insight into institutions of local governance of natural resources which can offer solutions for both sustained development and for remedying environmental damage where it has occurred. A greater part of this research has remained at the academic level because policy makers seldom see the necessity to consult micro level data. Also unfortunately, the environment discourse has profited little from the researched conclusions of common property studies because the developed economies have been leaders in the conservation movement whose concerns have remained at the global level of resource degradation and which often do not or minimally address situations at the ground level (see section III). \n \n "The intention here is not to de-escalate the environment discourse from contemplating global issues to those which are pertinent in a small area only; but rather to difuse the polarised perceptions to the environment problem of rich a poor countries (Kates, 1994). Ever since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm in 1972 there has been a division in the ranks of the participants in the Environment Discourse. Developed countries argue that environmental degradation is caused by industrial pollution and economic development and therefore the issue is one of regulation; while the less developed countries specially the Indian spokesperson Indira Gandhi argued that poverty was the greatest pollutant which could be solved only by economic development. Both perspectives have much truth in them--in the absence of 'mutual co-ercion' features of economic development and under-development can both cause stress to the natural environment. Solutions to both rest in the realm of public policy no doubt, but one which has more 'public' in the content of the policy. If such were the focus of the Environment Discourse, the differences in perspective would more or less disappear. \n \n "This paper will examine the historical context of the two streams of discourse in three sections. Finally in the last section we touch the central theme of this essay at the ground level in two specific areas of concern from the author's research--the Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh in the Himalayas being the home of the Gaddi shepherds and the territories of the First Nations of British Columbia, Canada and with additional insights from Queensland in Australia."

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