Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 29, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 94-101
Land Use Policy

Determinants of successful environmental regimes in the context of the coastal wetlands of Goa

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.05.008Get rights and content

Abstract

While community based resource management was practiced for centuries by many traditional societies of the world, these resources are continuously being eroded in the recent years. This paper uses a case study of the Khazans, the coastal wetlands of Goa, in order to study determinants of successful environmental regimes. Khazans are the low-lying coastal lands that have been reclaimed from marshy mangroves by the construction of embankments and sluice gates. Traditionally, khazans were managed by the organized groups of self-regulating tribal peasant communities called the gaunkari, who were renamed as the communidades, during the Portuguese regime in Goa. In 1961, with the merger of Goa and the Indian Union, as a measure of the agrarian reform, legislations were enacted and the responsibility for management of the khazans came to be statutorily imposed upon the tenants’ associations. This gradually weakened the control of the gaunkars, particularly as the state control over the functioning of the communidades increased. This paper describes the evolution of the land resource management system over a period of about two thousand years and also comments on the reasons for the success of traditional community based land resource management systems.

Introduction

Environmental regimes, such as the land use policies, are and need to be dynamic. In order to be effective, they need to be responsive to the changes in socio-ecological systems. The changes in socio-ecological systems often generate pressures on the environmental regimes. Ineffective and insensitive environmental regimes can in-turn cause significant stress to the ecological systems. Young (2010) points out that our knowledge of the institutional dynamics of environmental and resource regimes, is yet underdeveloped. Further, much research has been focused on the community-based resource management systems (CBRMS) over the last several years. There are current studies of both successes and failures of efforts of local resource users to manage their own common-pool resource locally. Much can be learned from a historical study, where local users were able to manage a complex commons successfully at an earlier era, but the change over time has reduced the structure of incentives, so that they are no longer able to manage them effectively. This paper uses a case study of the khazan lands in Goa (14°53′57″ to 15°47′59″ N and 73°40′54″ to 74°20′11″ E) to examine the determinants of successful environmental regimes, which remains the primary objective of the paper.

Khazan lands are managed ecosystems that have been reclaimed from the tidal low-lying lands by an intricate system of dykes, sluice gates and canals, and put to multiple productive uses such as agriculture, aquaculture and salt panning. Traditional khazan technology protects agricultural fields and villages from salinity intrusion, inundation and floods. A detailed description of the khazan ecosystem has been presented by Sonak et al. (2005). Khazan dykes are made of the mud from fields. Outer walls or protective dykes are very thick to sustain pressure of the riverine water flow. A trench (chanoy) is made in between the two walls of the protective dyke and is then filled with clay from the fields, which serves as a cementing substance. The dyke is covered with a layer of clay and mud from the fields, called as tharcupto. Protective dykes are then interrupted by installation of sluice gates, which connect an inner reservoir to the estuary. Sluice gates regulate the water fluxes allowing sufficient water into the fields, but preventing inundation of the khazan lands. Sluice gate shutters close automatically during the high tide allowing thus only a part of water inside. During the low tide, they open to let the water flow out. These shutters can be manually manipulated to get the required quantity of water inside the fields. A typical khazan has a channel connecting with the estuary and inner channels, draining the agricultural fields. The zone immediately upstream the sluice gate, has a depression (‘poiem’) with a depth lower than the low water level, thus acting as a reservoir not only for water, but also for the eggs and larvae of the estuarine aquatic fauna. During high tides, the fish swim to the less saline water to spawn. The juvenile fish grow in these estuarine waters, which are rich in nutrients due to the organic biomass supplied by agricultural fields. The adult fish that migrates back to the more saline waters in order to be recruited to the adult stock is then caught at the sluice gate. This practice ensures high yield while protecting the fish and shrimp. Crops grown in the khazan fields currently are mainly the salt tolerant varieties of rice. The dykes prevent saline water from coming onto the lands, the sluice gates regulate the flow of saline water, and the canals help in the drainage and circulation of water. Presently Khazan lands are in a degraded state for a number of reasons. A detailed description of the factors responsible for degradation of the khazan ecosystem has been presented by Sonak et al. (2006).

This paper presents the historical evolution of the khazan management systems, in order to examine the factors responsible for successful management of the khazan ecosystem during the earlier period. The paper draws on the existing literature on Goa, specifically for the evolution of the gaunkari and communidade sections (Kosambi, 1962, Gomes Pereira, 1981, Shirodkar, 1988, Shirodkar, 1993, Newman, 2001, Sinha, 2002, Dias, 2004). Interviews were conducted with some key informants, to get insights into the working of these CBRMS. Several focus group discussions and three workshops were held in order to understand the functioning of the khazan ecosystem and to gather knowledge about its maintenance and evolution of its management system. Using this case study, the central goal of the paper is to investigate into the functioning of the CBRMS, list out and comment on several factors that facilitate efficient management of the land resources and finally report on determinants of successful environmental regimes.

Section snippets

Historical evolution of the khazan management systems in Goa

This section presents the evolution of the khazan management system, over a period of more than 2000 years with reference to the colonial rule in Goa.

Changes observed in the management system

A number of changes have been observed in the khazan management systems during different historical periods. These are as follows.

Discussion

It is often pointed out that the tragedy of commons results not from an inherent failure associated with a common pool resource, but from the institutional failure to control access to the resources and to make and enforce internal decisions for collective long-term use (Berkes and Folke, 2000, Curran and Agardy, 2002). This paper presents a case study of khazan ecosystem of Goa and describes the evolution of resource management systems over time. Khazans were traditionally managed by CBRMS

Concluding remarks

In sum, traditional property rights systems played a highly significant role in ecological sustainability of khazans. Erosion of ecological responsibility follows changes in the property rights system from collective use of resources to the individual tenure. Interventions and control by state, on locally based resource management systems, created a loss of protective border around the ecosystems. This paper identifies following factors as determinants of successful environmental regimes and

Acknowledgements

This paper is a part of the projects titled ‘Interactions between the environment, society, and technology’ (Contract no. ICA4-CT-2001-10046) and ‘Role of institutions in global environmental change’ (APN 2005-02-CMY) financially supported by the European Commission and the Asia Pacific Network through International START Secretariat, respectively. Financial support for the research by the two funding agencies is gratefully acknowledged. We gratefully acknowledge Prof. Elinor Ostrom, who spared

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