102
4
However, Menon and Rai (2017, 2019) point out that these valuation studies
assume, following government tiger conservation policy, that forest dwellers will be
moved out as part of the conservation measures. Hence, evicted forest people will
most likely not be among the beneficiaries. Benefits from the forest will mainly be in
terms of pollination and other ecosystem services to farmers close to the reserve as
well as wage labour in forest department activities and tourism enterprises. The
social benefits from tiger conservation will therefore mostly go to non-forest dependent state and private actors, while the forest dwellers who have used the forest sustainably for centuries are evicted without being among the beneficiaries of
conservation. This means that although making visible the hidden economic value
of ecosystems sounds intentionally benign, the practical implication is that it serves
and justifies exclusion and dispossession.
A management aim of the government has been to relocate people from tiger
reserves, but the difficulty in finding available land for relocation as well as resistance
to relocation from forest dwellers has resulted in many people continuing to live
inside the reserves. As customary livelihood practices have been restricted or banned,
forest-based livelihoods have increasingly become difficult.
As discussed in 7 Chap. 2, displacements caused by conservation practices have
been framed in political ecology as a form of accumulation by dispossession following
Harvey’s (2003) development of Marx’s notion of primitive accumulation. According
to Li (2009), it is the places and the resources in these places that are valued and not
the people. The surplus labour created through dispossession may therefore not to be
needed in capitalist production in contrast to Marx’s classic example of the enclosures
of the English commons, where dispossession of commoners created available labour
that could be used in the emerging industrialization in the early nineteenth century.
In many cases, non-capitalist spaces and resources are today opened up for capital
accumulation, while local people tend to be in the way of such investments. Hence,
they will be ‘let die’. This notion is taken from Michel Foucault’s examination of
‘biopolitics’ where sovereign power will either make a population live, through
enhancing their health and well-being, or let them die through abandonment (Li
2009). The abandoned people may be seen as a ‘surplus population’ in the sense that
it is surplus to the requirements of capital accumulation. There is limited or no need
for their labour in the new economic activities created through their dispossession.
This case study of tiger conservation that we describe here is based on an article
by Rai et al. (2019), which examined the consequences of long-term restrictions
imposed by conservation on the livelihoods of forest dwellers in the Biligiri
Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve (BRT) in the Western Ghats in southern India.
The case study demonstrates how the notions of ‘accumulation by dispossession’,
‘letting die’ and ‘surplus population’ may describe the situation of the indigenous
Adivasis in this tiger reserve.
The BRT covers 570 km 2 and contains a diversity of vegetation types such as dry
scrub forests, woodland savanna, evergreen forests and grasslands (. Fig. 4.2). The
area was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1974 and a tiger reserve in 2010.
Chapter 4 · Conservation Discourses Versus Practices
4
However, Menon and Rai (2017, 2019) point out that these valuation studies
assume, following government tiger conservation policy, that forest dwellers will be
moved out as part of the conservation measures. Hence, evicted forest people will
most likely not be among the beneficiaries. Benefits from the forest will mainly be in
terms of pollination and other ecosystem services to farmers close to the reserve as
well as wage labour in forest department activities and tourism enterprises. The
social benefits from tiger conservation will therefore mostly go to non-forest dependent state and private actors, while the forest dwellers who have used the forest sustainably for centuries are evicted without being among the beneficiaries of
conservation. This means that although making visible the hidden economic value
of ecosystems sounds intentionally benign, the practical implication is that it serves
and justifies exclusion and dispossession.
A management aim of the government has been to relocate people from tiger
reserves, but the difficulty in finding available land for relocation as well as resistance
to relocation from forest dwellers has resulted in many people continuing to live
inside the reserves. As customary livelihood practices have been restricted or banned,
forest-based livelihoods have increasingly become difficult.
As discussed in 7 Chap. 2, displacements caused by conservation practices have
been framed in political ecology as a form of accumulation by dispossession following
Harvey’s (2003) development of Marx’s notion of primitive accumulation. According
to Li (2009), it is the places and the resources in these places that are valued and not
the people. The surplus labour created through dispossession may therefore not to be
needed in capitalist production in contrast to Marx’s classic example of the enclosures
of the English commons, where dispossession of commoners created available labour
that could be used in the emerging industrialization in the early nineteenth century.
In many cases, non-capitalist spaces and resources are today opened up for capital
accumulation, while local people tend to be in the way of such investments. Hence,
they will be ‘let die’. This notion is taken from Michel Foucault’s examination of
‘biopolitics’ where sovereign power will either make a population live, through
enhancing their health and well-being, or let them die through abandonment (Li
2009). The abandoned people may be seen as a ‘surplus population’ in the sense that
it is surplus to the requirements of capital accumulation. There is limited or no need
for their labour in the new economic activities created through their dispossession.
This case study of tiger conservation that we describe here is based on an article
by Rai et al. (2019), which examined the consequences of long-term restrictions
imposed by conservation on the livelihoods of forest dwellers in the Biligiri
Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve (BRT) in the Western Ghats in southern India.
The case study demonstrates how the notions of ‘accumulation by dispossession’,
‘letting die’ and ‘surplus population’ may describe the situation of the indigenous
Adivasis in this tiger reserve.
The BRT covers 570 km 2 and contains a diversity of vegetation types such as dry
scrub forests, woodland savanna, evergreen forests and grasslands (. Fig. 4.2). The
area was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1974 and a tiger reserve in 2010.
Chapter 4 · Conservation Discourses Versus Practices