The mismeasure of nature: the political ecology of economic valuation of Tiger Reserves in India

Abstract

The Indian state has conserved tigers by establishing reserves that are governed as a form of fortress conservation. Residence and local uses in these tiger reserves are often criminalized. It is in this context that we critique recent neoliberal attempts to estimate the economic value of ecosystem services from tiger reserves. Proponents of valuation argue that it will not only provide a justification for the reserves, but also recognize the importance of ecosystem services for human well-being. We use a political ecology approach to argue that economic valuation is never a benign tool, but is situated in wider institutional contexts that favor certain actors over others. In India, protected areas are being valued even as people living within them are being evicted and their use of the forest restricted. We draw from fieldwork in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Hills of Karnataka and conversations with Soligas. We ask how nature is made legible and who benefits from such legibility? We suggest that economic valuation can hide complex human-nature relationships and undermine different ways of knowing and 'valuing' landscapes.Key Words: tiger reserves, Karnataka, economic valuation

Tiger conservation, biopolitics and the future of Indian environmentalism

“…Neoliberal environmentalities too focus on changing people's behaviour but through market-driven incentives. The history of conservation illustrates the multiplicity of environmentalities-sovereign forms keeping people out, disciplinary ones aimed at providing 'alternate' livelihoods to people and neoliberal environmentalities providing incentives to involve people in conservation efforts (Menon & Rai, 2019).…”

“…Tourism is another marketable commodity with potentially high value. While tourism could provide benefits for local people, there is not much empirical evidence that it generates such benefits (Menon & Rai, 2019). Doubts have also been raised as to whether neoliberal conservation has actually generated significant profits overall (Dempsey & Suarez, 2016).…”

“…Fortress conservation keeps people out and justifies doing so by supposedly providing alternate livelihoods. Temporally, wildlife conservation policy has moved from a largely state‐centric vision of wildlife conservation to a more disciplinary approach of alternate livelihood creation to a more market driven approach, aimed at creating both the right incentives for rural households to buy into conservation and spectacularizing (Igoe, 2010) wildlife conservation as exotic places that humans can visit (Menon & Rai, 2019). Whatever form governing wildlife takes, it is premised on ‘the truth’ that wildlife as a whole or particular species have an intrinsic and instrumental importance that justifies fortress conservation in its multiple forms.…”

“…The World Bank programme of ecodevelopment, aimed at providing alternate livelihoods to forest dependent communities and weaning them away from dependence on forest produce, had as its priority, the reduction of human pressure on tiger reserves and the creation of new non‐forest dependent subjects (Karlsson, 1999). On the other hand, the recent exercise of valuing tiger reserves by the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) was undertaken to estimate the total economic value of tiger reserves (Menon & Rai, 2019), consequently making a case for these reserves in monetary terms. These neoliberal environmentalities keep fortress conservation as well as the assumptions of conflictive care intact, namely that tigers need to be apart from humans.…”

“…The first author has also undertaken extensive field‐based research on the political ecology of forested landscapes in the lower Nilgiris, known as Gudalur, where Mudumalai Tiger Reserve is located (Menon, 2020; Menon & Karthik, 2019; Taghioff & Menon, 2010). He has also engaged in some research in the Biligiri Rangan Temple Hills (BRT Hills), another designated tiger reserve, along with Nitin Rai, on local Adivasi understandings of fortress conservation and its impact on local land use and livelihoods (Menon & Rai, 2019). Collectively, the authors share an interest in the politics of conservation and its implications for both the human and non‐human.…”