Realizing a rights-based approach to resettlement from protected areas: Lessons from Satpura Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh (India)

Abstract

Though the lifeworlds of many Indigenous and Local Communities (ILCs) across the world are deeply intertwined with nature, ‘fortress conservation’ has led to their exclusion from lands in which they have resided for generations with concomitant social and material costs. Enhanced evidence-based understanding on the untenability of ‘fortress conservation’, evolving international law on the rights of the Indigenous peoples and the advocacy of numerous actors in the international arena have led to the ascendency of the rights-based approach (RBA) in global conservation politics with long-standing struggles of ILCs over land and resources reframed as human rights. Though its effective realization on the ground has been stymied by pre-existing power asymmetries and inequal relationship between ILCs vis-à-vis other actors, nevertheless, RBA has gradually gained traction in the legal and policy framework governing conservation including resettlement from protected areas in countries like India. Using an anthropological, interpretative lens, this paper critically analyses the resettlement of Tribal and other traditional forest dwellers from the Satpura Tiger Reserve in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh post the adoption of the NTCA Guidelines of 2011 which are in sync with the broad contours of RBA. The paper concludes that certain factors are crucial to the realization of RBA on the ground namely ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’ (FPIC), recognition and settlement of rights under relevant legal provisions, the assertion of free choices concerning resettlement options, livelihood and financial handholding as well as adequate provisioning for community facilities. However, certain challenges such as power asymmetries on the ground, quasi-egalitarian decision-making, limitations to the exercise of free choice and persistence of the earlier ‘need-based’ governmentality come in the way of realization of RBA in letter and spirit which need to be overcome for reconciling ‘conservation with justice’.