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Paper short abstract:

Audits and indicators are increasingly used in managing human resource use. But audit culture has also come under attack. Who is using audits and who benefits? Our case study comes from the Canadian fisheries and takes into account legal pluralism.

Paper long abstract:

Audits that employ a range of indicators are increasingly the tool of choice for managing a range of human endeavors, including natural resource exploitation. This is true at many different scales of governance (Davis et al. 2012). But audit culture has also increasingly come under attack as failing to live up to the claims of enhancing transparency and accountability (Shore 2008). Who is harnessing the power of indicators and performance audits? Who benefits from these measurements? How is governance impacted by the audit approach? We address these questions in a specific context of legal pluralism generated by multiple levels of regulation affecting fishing enterprises. In developing a "report card" approach to assessing Canadian fisheries, we have explored the failure to incorporate social, governance and cultural indicators in many global examples. There is also institutional resistance to performance indicators that measure governing for environmental sustainability. This case study suggests the need for careful thought on the interactions of legal pluralism and the audit culture.

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Paper short abstract:

The developing states in the Pacific have recognised the value of approaches to marine natural resource governance which respect the legally pluralist nature of the region. This paper explores the hybrid legal frameworks they have developed and the lessons that Australia can learn from the Pacific.

Paper long abstract:

The Pacific region includes a diverse mix of countries, territories and peoples along with their customs, culture and laws. Despite this diversity there are some commonalities which have and continue to influence approaches to marine environmental governance. Two factors are of particular relevance: the persistent presence of Indigenous populations with customary laws which have survived colonisation and post-colonial transformations. Secondly, the reliance placed upon marine resources for food, economic development, socio-cultural and recreational purposes.

There is little doubt that historically Indigenous peoples across the Pacific region have played an important role in the stewardship of inshore marine areas. Although customary laws and traditional governance institutions were undermined during periods of colonial rule, they have endured. While there is significant support for legal approaches which acknowledge and promote Indigenous governance of natural resources, implementation of appropriate laws and policies has proven to be more problematic.

The developing states in the Pacific have increasingly recognised the value of approaches which respect the legally pluralist nature of the region and have developed laws which incorporate elements of customary Indigenous governance within hybrid legal frameworks. Although Australia has a strong track record of co-management of terrestrial protected areas, this has not been matched in relation to marine areas. Therefore there are lessons that Australia, and other similarly placed developed nations, can learn from the Pacific island countries.

This paper explores contemporary Indigenous governance arrangements for marine protected areas and provides insights into appropriate regulatory models which respect the legally pluralist nature of the region.

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Paper short abstract:

Marine conservationists believe that Vezo have no tradition of reef tenure. Cognitive anthropology suggests that they might have a mental representation of tenure albeit unformulated in language. Vezo assert that reefs were made by god and cannot be owned by humans.

Paper long abstract:

"Unlike many areas of the Pacific, where customary management of coral reefs has been practiced by communities for centuries, Madagascar, like its neighbors in the western Indian Ocean, has no tradition of marine tenure " (Harris 2010).

Marine conservationists claim that fishing people of southwest Madagascar lack property rights in coral reefs. Cognitive anthropology suggests that much of what is known by humans is represented infra-linguistically. The mental scheme of common property may be implicit. But the people are explicit about the fact that reefs were made by god and cannot be owned by humans.

Based on the description of conventions of resource access by contiguous fishing villages, this paper aims to show that situated knowledge of species and habitats, and the practices of gleaning octopus and of naming places, are material representations of (count as making) enforceable claims. While the concept of reef lagoon tenure goes without saying, the material semiotics of the fishery is overt and must be elicited linguistically.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts to apply economic principles in studying the dispute resolution among Pattinavar in Nagapattinam District, Tamil Nadu, India.

Paper long abstract:

This paper critically examines the Fairness, Efficiency and Effectiveness in panchyat-based Dispute Resolution among Pattinavar , a fishing community in Nagapattinam District, Tamil Nadu, India. Most of the legal disputes of Pattinavar are settled by panchayat , the village council. These village councils are different from the Pancahyat Raj Institutions of Indian administrative system. A very few cases only go to the state court. Even those cases after some progress in the state court are withdrawn and settled in the panchayat .This paper evaluates the Dispute Resolution among Patinavar using the Fairness, Efficiency and Effectiveness models. Fairness of Pattinavr Panchayat are evaluated on four elements of procedural fairness : respect, voice, neutrality, trust. Efficiency refers to the degree to which operations are done in an economical manner. Efficiency of Pattinavr Panchayat are evaluated on the basis of monetary costs and non-monetary costs. The effectiveness can be measured in a wide variety of ways depending upon the desired goals. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Pattinavr Panchayat in terms of desired goals of human rights, governance, and the rule of law.

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Paper short abstract:

Despite emphasizing in their charters the role of local custom (adat) in natural resource management, recently established conservation districts and subdistricts in Indonesia have undermined this role of customary councils through processes of cooptation and governmentalisation.

Paper long abstract:

One aspect of the trend toward proliferation of new administrative units in Indonesia as part of the regional autonomy initiated in 1999 has been the reversion, especially in the outer islands, of some aspects of resource management back to local customary (adat) councils. More recently, customary management of natural resources has been included in the charters to establish 'conservation districts' in Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Sumatra, as well as 'conservation subdistricts' in Sulawesi. This paper focuses on some of the drivers and consequences of this nascent form of resource governance, concentrating upon the consequences for the operation of customary management of resources at a local level.

After surveying the range of these new conservation-oriented administrative units within Indonesia, this paper focuses upon the formation of Malinau Conservation District in East Kalimantan in relation to Kayan Mentarang National Park and of the Lindu Conservation Subdistrict in Central Sulawesi in relation to Lore Lindu National Park. It highlights changes in the role of adat in the management of the associated national parks and the retrenchment of the sphere of authority of local customary officials in environmental regulation brought about the new conservation district and subdistrict. The paper concludes by discussing how this new regimen of regularization of conservation undermines previous initiatives in co-management of the national park with customary authorities, suggesting that such a governmentalizing strategy may exacerbate conservation conflicts.

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Paper short abstract:

Taking the tribal resistance to Vedanta Alumina Project in the state of Orissa, in the Eastern part of India as a case in point, the paper tries to explore and explain the existence and interaction of multiple legal frameworks with respect to use and access to forest.The paper tries to underscore the adivasi’s worldview of forest, and then counter-poses it the state narratives of forest and environmental conservation.

Paper long abstract:

The rapid economic growth agenda of neo-liberalism has resulted in monopolization of natural resources by the state on the one hand, and narrowing down of the resource base for survival of tribal communities on the other. The response to this new threat to survival has manifested through virulent conflicts over the process of development. In this context, the proposed paper tries to understand the conflicting ideologies of forest use and management from a legal pluralistic perspective. Taking the tribal resistance to Vedanta Alumina Project in the state of Orissa in the Eastern part of India as a case in point, the paper tries to explore and explain the existence and interaction of multiple legal frameworks with respect to use and access to forest. The paper tries to underscore the adivasi's worldview of forest, and then counter-poses it the state narratives of forest and environmental conservation. The paper argues that it is not just a simplistic contradiction between the state laws versus the tribal customary law, rather it explains the coexistence of differential explanations over right to local natural resources, and its implications on the adivasi's right over natural resources on the one hand, and the future of environmental sustainability on the other. In conclusion, the paper highlights the failure of the state to recognise and cope up with the local tribal customary laws, while designing public policies for overall economic development of the state at a macro level as well as micro level policies for tribal development and empowerment.

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Paper short abstract:

My paper explores the socio legal dynamics of water rights in conflictive contexts in Peru. I particularly analyze the transformation of the content of local water rights vis-a-vis the activities of extractive industries that threaten local access to water.

Paper long abstract:

Irrigation as well as ethnographic studies have frequently depicted water rights as a settled bundle of rights closely linked to irrigation. Scarce efforts beyond structuralist and functionalist approaches to water rights have been made to describe how they have changed historically in relation to extractive economic activities that risk local comprehension of the ecological system and use of water sources. Through three case studies, my paper explores the socio-legal dynamics of water rights in conflictive settings in Peru. I analyze how indigenous peoples in the Andes and Amazonia reconstruct the content of water rights when confronting corporate interventions that risk their economic activities and livelihoods. These contents usually encompass not only global environmental references to ecological and hydrological systems, and integrated water management but also delve into reconstructions of Andean and Amazonian "traditional" conceptions of water and ecology.

The case studies here show that in contexts of power asymmetries local indigenous peoples reformulate the content of their water rights to encompass ecological concerns and cultural understandings of water in order to guarantee their access to water and their livelihoods. Global, national and local environmental, cultural and political influences produce these legal assemblages of water rights endeavoring to protect their local livelihoods vis-à-vis extractive industries. Here, I contend that in order to understand the historical socio legal transformation of water rights we have to pay attention to the productive consequences of water struggles in terms of upgrading and 'glocalizing' the content of water rights.

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Paper short abstract:

With intensive economic development in north western Canada Aboriginal forms of governance and customary legal regimes experience internal contradictions as they confront corporate practices of consultation and shifting state polices meant to accommodate corporate economic aims.

Paper long abstract:

Canada relies extensively on a resource economy. Central to development of new Asian markets for raw resources is the export of crude oil and natural gas from the province of Alberta through British Columbia to ports on the Pacific Coast by means of pipelines that run through traditional aboriginal territories. Aboriginal resistance to these developments, simultaneously with decades-old resistance to intense logging of forests and hydro electric development, has brought new discourses of identity and governance resulting in the splintering of community Aboriginal governance on the one hand and state-sponsored growth of central political organizations on the other.

In this paper we trace the implications of these political developments and their underlying discourses of identity and governance by addressing the case of the First Nations of Dakelh (Carrier) political affiliations as they confront shifting state policies and practices with regard to aboriginal title and constitutionally protected rights. We address questions of customary law and governance within small communities who are caught in a conflict between what the Supreme Court of Canada defines as proof of aboriginal title and rights and socio-political practices of corporations and the state as they seek to redefine advocacy organizations as political entities holding governing authority while dismissing traditional governance practices as being unwieldy and lacking authority.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the tensions which arise between customary laws and State laws applying in Melanesia, in the context of governance of natural resources. It puts forwards suggestions for bridging the divide between State and customary approaches.

Paper long abstract:

Many island states in the South Pacific declare the importance of traditional values in their constitutions and most give customary laws a place in the hierarchy of State laws. However, in practice, there are tensions between the two systems particularly in the context of governance of natural resources. The main issues include:

• Where custom conflicts with national or provincial laws it is not always clear which prevails. For example, although customary laws may be theoretically superior, in practice, courts tend to favour common law.

• Where customary laws differ between groups, it is often unclear which law will prevail. In Melanesia, customary laws are not an homogenous body of rules; they differ from place to place.

• There are a number of unresolved issues relating to 'ownership' of resources. For example, in some countries of the region, the status of reefs and foreshore under State law is unclear.

• Resolution of disputes relating to natural resources is also a matter of contention. In some countries decision making has been taken out of the hands of traditional forums and given to the State courts. A large number of factors influence people to go outside the customary system to challenge the customary position in the State courts, particularly where valuable resources are involved.

This paper looks at these issues in the context of Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and puts forwards suggestions for bridging the divide between State and customary approaches to dealing with natural resources.

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Paper short abstract:

For the purpose of this paper, I will analyze the current stakes of environmental governance in southern rural societies, exemplified by case studies of nature conservation projects in southern Sri Lanka.

Paper long abstract:

With a considerable economic growth since the end of the war in 2009, Sri Lankan society faces today major changes and a rapid process of globalization, which affect both urban and rural areas. Within these new development dynamics, the natural environment which contributes to the fame of the island is gradually threatened by the introduction of massive industrialization and economic development. Regarding those changes, it is interesting to question the current public policies of natural resources management in a place where this process of development is particularly high and rapid: the district of Hambantota (Southern Province).

For the purpose of this paper, I will use the concept of environmental governance to examine how in Hambantota, multiple stakeholders negotiate and interact in the management of natural resources in parallel with the need for economic development of this area. For this purpose, I will use concrete examples from a field research conducted between 2011 and 2013 in several protected areas of the district. According to the purpose of the panel, the paper will particularly focus on how the different instances involved in environmental governance in Hambantota district refer to different registers of norms, rules and values and how they are perpetually negotiated locally by the stakeholders.