GEOG20011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: South West Tasmania, Niyamgiri, Indigenous Protected Area
16 May 2018
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Department
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Professor
LECTURE 9: INEQUALITY AND STRUGGLES OVER LAND
• Think about inequalities between the State and local people
• Anti-state narrative: state and/or large corporations are responsible for exploiting the
environment and marginalising local people, their env knowledge & practices
o Monolithic state – everyone and no one responsible
o Power can mediate priorities
• Land struggle: most seen in poorer countries, and previously colonised countries
• Struggles between state and local people over land for development opportunities
• Emergence of post-colonial environmental narratives
o All powerful state, set on plundering resources
o Marginalised local people
UNPACKING STATE V LOCAL DICHOTOMY
• Local people have agency
• The ‘local’ is differentiated – diff priorities, assumptions and worldviews
• Local level action may further entrench inequalities
• What is nature – whose nature are we managing and how might the reproduce inequalities
• The ‘State; is not homogenous – diff mechanisms to protect both people and the environment
INDIA
• History of protest and action
• India: highest amount of environmental conflict over land in the world
• Links to displacement – due to development of infrastructure and mining
• Most coal fields within forest and tribal areas
o Tribes: Indigenous definition within India
• Defined in different ways: represented as either HR issue, env issue or tribal issue
Niyamgiri Struggle
• Tribal group in poor state
• Mining company started in hills of the Niyamgiri – aluminium
• Mining in dense forest, at the top of the hill: need mine, refinery and conveyor belt
• First build refinery and conveyor belt, and no mine – convinced it will be allowed so they build the infrastructure
• Promise to resettle tribal people, water sources destroyed – after given state approval
• Long series of struggles, government declines approval, appealed to supreme court, back to 13 village councils – first time
referendum vote had been taken on an environmental issue
• All village councils voted no
Unpacking the Narrative (Local v State Dichotomy)
• Local people work collectively to:
o Maintain control – direct action
o Create new international structures
▪ 1st time referendum used for env issue
▪ New legal avenue to democracy
▪ Role of int NGO’s, media, investors
o The State itself is divided
• But continuing police violence and harassment, several arrests
TASMANIA – FRANKLIN DAM
• Fight against large-scale development project – 3 proposed dams
• 1978 proposed hydroelectric dam, South West Tasmania
• Part of electoral politics
• Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983) – court case
• UNSECO WHA, used to protect the area, got the dam stopped
• Indigenous people – joint management, controlling the cultural landscape
• Struggle between local people v state/corporation over dam
• Led to conservation measures that further alienated Indigenous people, knowledges and practices = changes in land
management
• Recent reconnection of people to land through joint-management
Does it fit narrative of local people fighting large corporation and/or pernicious state?
Lecture Outline
• Unpacking the narratives of
local people v large
corporation/state over
access to and control over
environmental resources
• In India, Tasmania and NT
Document Summary
Lecture 9: inequality and struggles over land: anti-state narrative: state and/or large corporations are responsible for exploiting the. Think about inequalities between the state and local people environment and marginalising local people, their env knowledge & practices: monolithic state everyone and no one responsible, power can mediate priorities. Land struggle: most seen in poorer countries, and previously colonised countries. Struggles between state and local people over land for development opportunities. Emergence of post-colonial environmental narratives: all powerful state, set on plundering resources, marginalised local people. Lecture outline: unpacking the narratives of local people v large corporation/state over access to and control over environmental resources. The (cid:858)lo(cid:272)al(cid:859) is differe(cid:374)tiated diff priorities, assumptions and worldviews. Unpacking state v local dichotomy: what is nature whose nature are we managing and how might the reproduce inequalities. The (cid:858)state; is (cid:374)ot ho(cid:373)oge(cid:374)ous diff mechanisms to protect both people and the environment. India: history of protest and action, most coal fields within forest and tribal areas.
