5. Traditional Knowledge, Institutions and Human Sociality in Sustainable Use and Conservation of Biodiversity of the Sundarbans of Bangladesh

The chapter considers the case of the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, the largest mangrove ecosystem of the world and a hotspot of biodiversity resources, to explore the underlying causes behind the continuous and unabated losses of its biodiversity resources and to seek viable means (policy) or measures (action) through which the process of degradation can be halted, the conservation process can be revitalised, and the sustainability of the resources can be ensured. It accordingly maps and finds out the key stakeholders and the agents dependent on the Sundarbans biodiversity resources and presents an alternative analysis to the sustainability of natural resources management integrating traditional knowledge (TK) systems to the socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) and draws on actions as regard to sustainable management of natural resources by means of harmonious human–nature nexus. Such an alternative analysis developed here can be used in other countries that are facing the same type of problems in biodiversity loss.

It is well documented that biodiversity resources have been declining at an alarming rate across different regions of the world posing threat to the future of humanity as well as to the other species (Higgins et al. 2013). Means and measures drawn on different school of thoughts are yet to find out the solutions of sustainable natural resource management which would lead to sustainable conservation process, secured livelihood options for the stakeholders and balanced ecosystem. Selfish resource exploitation, in fact, threatens societies as well as livelihoods contributing to a serious imbalance of the ecosystem (Battersby 2017). The situation is even worse in developing countries where the continuous pressures have already caused the extinction of numerous biodiversity resources. Bangladesh is no exception in this case. The Sundarbans of Bangladesh, known as the lung of the country, can now be identified as an important case of ecologically vulnerable area in terms of degradation of biodiversity resources. Several studies conducted on the Sundarbans have concluded that the resources of the Sundarbans have been declining gradually (e.g. Iftekhar and Islam 2004; Gopal and Chauhan 2006; Giri et al. 2007, 2014; Rahman et al. 2010; Rahman and Asaduzzaman 2010; Uddin et al. 2013; Islam 2014; Aziz and Paul 2015; Sarker et al. 2016). These studies have identified the external causes of forest degradation (e.g. conversion to other land use, over-harvesting, pollution, coastal erosion and climate change) or quantified the reduction in forest coverage area. Those studies, however, have not been able to provide solid theoretical foundation to analyse these problems and hardly propose an alternative suitable conservation and sustainability framework. Against this backdrop, this chapter critically explores the major theoretical underpinnings of neoclassical economics, institutional economics and political ecology to analyse the major drivers, including property rights instability, fragile institutions, lax regulatory regimes, unequal power sharing arrangements and political settlement. By employing such analyses of the state-of-the-art, the research exhibits that the exclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in the conservation and management process has contributed to the losses of biological diversity of the Sundarbans. The chapter argues that the IPLCs have been practising several unique production methods based upon their TK which can significantly contribute to the sustainable management and conservation of natural resources through symbiotic human–nature relationships. It reveals, as a whole, that the well-being of SEPLS essentially depends on human sociality constructed by norms, values and other formal and informal institutions.

The next section presents a brief profile of the Sundarbans by identifying this mangrove ecosystem as a perfect case of SEPLS. The third section provides a conceptual framework that helps identify the major drivers of biodiversity resource degradation of the Sundarbans as well as examine the alternative means and measures for the conservation and sustainable utilisation of those resources. In the analyses parts of sections four and five, the empirical evidences have been discussed by juxtaposing the existing policy and institutional set up into the developed conceptual framework to reveal the major drivers of resource degradation and show alternative options which can be applied as viable means to manage the resources in a sustainable way. The penultimate section discusses the current resilience capacity of the Sundarbans based on the major findings of the study. The final section ends with concluding remarks.

This chapter uses three elements, here, in the form of structure, benefits and changes (Ichikawa, 2013) to present the Sundarbans as a perfect case of SEPLS.

Means and measures employed for the natural resource management are primarily drawn from market centric theoretical underpinning as a part of the intellective project of neo-liberalism. This school of thought suggests that the biodiversity resources degrade primarily because of the non-existence of market and negative externality (Sadmo 2015; Perrings et al. 1992). It argues that valuation techniques can provide useful insights to support policy initiatives by quantifying the economic value of the resources and to devise exchange rule associated with the protection of biological resources (Costanza et al. 1997; Pearce 2001; Bräuer 2003; Kumar 2005; Barbier 2007; McAfee and Shapiro 2010; Hahn et al. 2015). This understanding has been complemented by the institutional economists as establishing a formal property rights regime can efficiently manage the natural resources where the absence of property rights results in resources degradation (Ostrom 2000; Vatn 2009, 2010; Ituarte-Lima et al. 2014).

A section of the political economy analyses, on the contrary, contend that the existence of overlapping property rights regime contributes to the conflicting resources management and degradation. It sheds light on the political elements in resources management regime and highlights the hierarchical relationship that exists in society. It argues that institutional arrangements (property rights) are vulnerable to some political economic factors stemming from accumulation by different agents in presence of non-cooperative solution. It further stresses upon the roles of the formal political institutions and emphasises on the narratives about the changes of the ecosystem services (Robbins 2012).

Such literature provides a lens to describe the bio-environmental relationship in the presence of distribution of power to production activities and its link to ecological analysis (Greenberg and Park 1994). It emphasises on the claim that the degradation of natural resources is not only about the non-existence of market but also about unequal power sharing by the stakeholders over the management of resources (Fig. 5.4). Existence of vertical relations in society and upward enforcement of rules enable the powerful group to capture resources with impunity (Adhikari and Goldey 2010). The process prioritises the rule of individuals over the rule of law which ultimately results in institutional fragility, enlarging rent dissipation, rent seeking and seize of property rights.

Market centric analysis does not recognise that if particular species of ecosystem of a special kind are being traded for monetary gain, they might not be replaced. It, however, fails to offer a sustainable solution regarding the distinct characteristics of interdependent relationship among humans, biodiversity resources and ecosystems services. Exchange based on economic valuation is found to be faulty (Kosoy and Corbera 2010; Gomez-Baggetthun and Ruiz-Perez 2011; Muradian et al. 2013; Turnhout et al. 2013; Neuteleers and Engelen 2015). It reduces biodiversity into a number of quantifiable parts, subjecting to the utilitarian usage and reducing social–natural relations to market transactions (Turnhout et al. 2013). Such measures provide a narrow conception of ecosystem services and are potentially detrimental to the conservation of resources. Alongside, the political ecology does not provide any measures but a broad understanding of the contributing elements of the degradation of natural resources.

Human beings are part of the ecology not merely the exclusive agents who extract resources. The long-standing embeddedness of the human beings into the ecology and the roles they play into the system remains unexplored and sometimes has been identified as external to the system. Being a part of this system, human beings have been maintaining an interwoven, intimate and reciprocal nexus with the nature. This nexus can be explored from ‘human sociality’ perspective. Human sociality refers to the human beings, as a collective organisation, and is part of the larger ecosystem, which possess distinct knowledge and practices that systematically and sustainably contributes to the conservation and regeneration of the resources along with maintaining provision of ecosystem services. It stresses upon that societies in harmony with nature contribute to the biodiversity conservation through revitalisation and supporting SEPLS where informal institution plays a crucial role. Informal institutions which include norms, values and traditional knowledge not only contribute to the SEPLS but also conserve and regenerate the resources for making a more resilient ecological system and society.

A sustainability conservation framework constructed in this chapter exhibits that inter-institutional pitfall stemming from exclusion of informal institutions and community ownership causes degradation of the natural resources, contrary to the market-centric perspectives. It argues that the earlier practices of fencing off pieces of nature as a means to ‘mitigate’ anthropogenic intervention have been proved costly, unsustainable, and dubious in terms of socioeconomic and conservation processes (Liu et al. 2012). This alternative framework has taken the political economy premise to identify the causes of degradation with emphasising on the complementary relations between human beings and nature in ensuring the sustainable utilisation and distribution of the resources. It claims that conservation requires acknowledging a diversity of values, knowledge and framings of SEPLS which build the cooperation and incentivise conservation for long-term sustainable use of those resources (Fig. 5.5).

This framework argues that in the presence of neo-liberal means and measures, the exchange process constitutes a patron–client relationship. In this process, the IPLCs become the external agents to the ecological milieu, and it brings institutional fragility because of unequal power sharing between political elites and IPLCs. Such exchange relationship culminates into primitive accumulation of the resources and unsustainable extraction of resources (where, harvest is greater than the yield due to maximum realisation of the resources rent). Alternatively, the sustainable conservation framework based upon human sociality suggests that allocation of resources regime to the IPLCs is sustainable. IPLCs together with their traditional knowledge and practices constitute a socio-ecological production network. IPLCs contribute to sustain this production network because of its symbiotic nature to the stock of resources. This incentivises IPLCs to invent knowledge to conserve the resources and to practice the knowledge for ensuring a sustainable value chain. Thus, altogether the IPLCs and their TK practices make the biodiversity resources more resilient (where yield is greater than harvesting) and sustainable.

It is necessary to define the nature of property rights of a particular type of resources in order to identify the drivers of degradation of those resources through the lens of political economy. The reason is that fragile institutional arrangement (e.g. instable property rights) is at the root of resource degradation which results from the influence of many political economic factors. A brief overview has been provided here firstly on the current structure of property rights of the Sundarbans. The major drivers of resource degradation have been identified thereafter.

The IPLCs sensibly believe that the forest provides their livelihoods, and it must be protected from all sorts of misuse and abuse for the present and future generations. They, therefore, follow some rules according to which they harvest the resources with utmost care and love for the nature (Fig. 5.10).

As a Contracting Party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Bangladesh is committed to implementing conservation and sustainable management of its biological diversity. The findings based upon empirical analysis, however, reveal that the most important biodiversity hotspot of this country, the Sundarbans, is under the threat of continuous degradation. In this process, the lives and livelihood conditions of the IPLCs are also being adversely impacted. Moreover, traditional knowledge-based livelihood strategies of the IPLCs are found to be effective in maintaining sustainable utilisation and conservation of this forest ecosystem. Yet, their knowledge has been neglected often under the formal institutional management system. Under the considerations of such major findings, this section firstly assesses the resilience capacity of the Sundarbans as a SEPLS based on some of the notable resilience indicators⁵ considering two scenarios: (a) resilience capacity under current management process and (b) change in resilience capacity under the alternative conservation framework (developed in Sect. 5.3). A multiple evidence-based approach for the assessment of the resilience capacity has been followed. The findings of the assessment have, then, been summarised in Table 5.6 through triangulation of conceptual framework (developed through critical analysis of available secondary literature on natural resource management), primary data collected from the IPLCs through numerous consultations and authors’ own interpretations on the former. In this regard, a significant amount of primary data has been collected through participatory approaches (Focus Group Discussions—FGD, unstructured interview, Participatory Rural Appraisal—PRA tools like social mapping, impact assessment by the respondents, etc.) particularly drawing on from knowledge, views and understandings of IPLCs who are the members of the three cooperatives that the Unnayan Onneshan had helped set up—Harinagar Bonojibi Bohumukhi Unnayan Samity, Koyra Bonojibi Bohumukhi Unnayan Samity and Munda Adivasi Bonojibi Bohumukhi Unnayan Samity in the adjacent regions of the Sundarbans (Fig. 5.12).

Secondly, the section also illustrates how the alternative measures as suggested by this study for ensuring sustainability of biodiversity of the Sundarbans can help achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets⁶ envisioned by CBD.

A comparative analysis shows that human sociality-based alternative framework contributes significantly to the conservation of the Sundarbans biodiversity by making more resilient ecological system and society. This conservation practice directly impacts on 12 resilient indicators indicating a positive relationship (Table 5.6). It signifies that this framework is more ecologically responsive regarding the context of a SEPLS. For instance, under the current management approach, the ecosystem is hardly protected, and the regeneration capacity is hampered because of failure of checking anthropogenic pressures. On the contrary, the alternative framework tries to ensure the protection of the ecosystem at a higher level and revitalise the regeneration capacity at the fullest (indicator 1, 2, 3). This is possible as the alternative one puts high emphasis on the importance of the traditional knowledge system, whereas the current regime does not fully recognise the traditional knowledge (indicator 5, 6). In terms of the governance and equity indicators, the community-based governance is only envisioned in the policy paper, but in practice such governance system is undermined by agencies of the government. The alternative suggestions, on the other hand—the participation of the community in resource management—build a social capital that contributes to the cooperation, social equity and efficient governance (indicator 7, 8, 9, 10). Both the management frameworks (current and alternative) recognise that the livelihoods of the local people are based on biodiversity resources of the Sundarbans (indicator 12). The alternative framework, however, emphasises that this biodiversity-based livelihood pattern should be maintained in a sustainable way that conserves the biodiversity resources (indicator 4) as well as provides alternative livelihoods under the changed circumstances by diversifying their income sources (indicator 11).

The alternative conservation framework, accordingly, helps achieve some of the important targets under ‘Aichi Biodiversity Targets’ as is illustrated in Table 5.7. Firstly, it helps to contribute to the Target no. 10 by reducing pressures on vulnerable (here, mangrove) ecosystem. Secondly, it promotes restoration and enhanced resilience of that ecosystem and thus helps achieve Target no. 15. Finally, and most importantly, it contributes to achieve Target no. 18 by respecting the TK system practised by the local and indigenous communities (Table 5.7).

There is a significant number of anthropogenic pressures that cause the degradation of biodiversity resources of the Sundarbans. These anthropogenic pressures have mainly intensified with the advent of neo-liberalism as the sole strategy of accumulation of wealth, with profits being considered more important through commercialisation of forest products, neglecting intrinsic ecological value of biological resources. These commercial enterprises, formal and informal, are found to be highly organised in their extractions of resources, and most often being politically patronised and administratively supported. The chapter, thereafter, has scrutinised the livelihood strategies of the IPLCs, the resource-dependent communities of the Sundarbans, and the results show that their livelihood strategies (both traditional practices and innovative tools) are largely effective and beneficial for the protection and maintenance of natural mangrove ecosystem. The assessment of the Sundarbans on the basis of the resilience indicators of SEPLS also shows that the current resilience capacity can be improved by mainstreaming the traditional knowledge base and participation of the indigenous people into the resource management framework.

The lessons from this study can be applied with necessary modifications to improve policy decisions and management interventions of such type of SEPLS in different countries of the world. There is no denying of the necessity to revise laws, regulations, and policies relating to the use of resources and to secure the rights of the IPLCs.