Conservation-induced Displacement: The Anatomy of a Win–Win Solution

Abstract

India’s wildlife conservation strategy relies on creating ‘inviolate’ protected areas (PAs) free from human disturbance, using policing of PAs and physical displacement of human populations as the preferred tools to do so. Conservation-induced displacement causes not just loss of livelihood and dwellings but also increases vulnerability and impoverishment risks of displaced people. By and large, the state’s record of rehabilitating people displaced from PAs has been quite dismal in India. This article examines a rare case of conservation-induced displacement and resettlement where the livelihood outcomes for the displaced people are said to be positive. The relocation of over 400 households from the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka in the late 1990s has been held up as a case where both conservation goals and local people’s livelihoods gained from displacement. The success of Bhadra has inspired a spate of calls by conservationists in India to use village relocation as a ‘win-win’ opportunity to attain simultaneously the goals of wildlife conservation and poverty alleviation for forest-dwelling communities. This article delves into the process and politics of displacement, resettlement and rehabilitation in Bhadra from the point of view of examining this claim and assessing its replicability elsewhere.

Assessing economic impacts of forced land acquisition and displacement: a qualitative rapid research framework

“…There are clear advantages in using the method, since it provides a finite checklist of commonly occurring risks KEYWORDS displacement; impact assessment; India; resettlement requirements. In particular, scholars have attempted to combine the IRR framework with the livelihoods framework (Scoones 1998(Scoones , 2009Bebbington 1999;de Haan & Zoomers 2005), thereby making it more amenable to the specific study of impacts of displacement on the livelihood of the affected people (Cernea 1995;McDowell 2002;Kabra 2013;Rantala et al 2013). From the point of view of DIDR research, linkages with the livelihoods approach make eminent sense, since physical and economic displacement have critical impacts on the access, quantity and quality of resources which project affected people use to make a living.…”

“…A combination of these two frameworks can allow a researcher to list comprehensively the various types of livelihood assets and resources that might be affected by displacement and resettlement across different geographies and contexts. It thereby adds to the predictive and diagnostic powers of the IRR framework by enabling the researcher to relate pre-and post-displacement LRO and to examine how these are mediated by the institutions and processes that govern resettlement (Kabra 2013).…”

“…Similar word pictures were created by the author for all five categories of impoverishment risks. The respondent households were divided into three wealth categories using a wealth ranking exercise, and a comparison of asset status for pre-and post-displacement livelihoods was carried out for each wealth category (Kabra 2006(Kabra , 2009(Kabra , 2013. Detailed documentation of the resettlement perceptions, and can convert qualitative judgments on well-being to quantitative analytical data.…”

“…Detailed documentation of the resettlement perceptions, and can convert qualitative judgments on well-being to quantitative analytical data. (Kabra 2013) The key to this method is to use participatory techniques to design a series of qualitative 'word pictures' depicting the type and quality of the assets/resources in the specific location where the study is being conducted. each word picture is associated with a rank or score on a 100-point scale.…”

Emerging research methods in environmental displacement and forced migration research

“…Some researchers use modeling approaches to explore aspects of displacement in combination with surveys or interviews (Kabra, 2013; Lee et al., 2014). Looking at how people make decisions about moving out of the Khuzestan province in Iran, Khavarian‐Garmsir et al.…”