Access to land and the environment

This research project aims at understanding the implications of common forest land privatization on the state of forests resources, on the welfare of households receiving land titles and on the welfare of populations living in nearby areas. The Forest Rights Act (FRA), a law passed in 2006 in India, formally recognizes the rights of Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFD) to claim titles on land that they were occupying for a long enough period of time. We want first to investigate if the forest clearings that increased after the law was passed gave rise to illegitimate claims for land and extended encroachment on forest land. We plan to look at the change of the pressure on forest in area where a title has been granted, where titles have been claimed and rejected as well as in adjacent forests. Secondly, we want to see if households receiving land invest more, once the land has been titled. The natural extension of this research question is to investigate if the FRA could correct some of the historical injustices faced by ST and OTFD. It is also necessary to understand the political economy channels through which claims have been mediated if we want to extensively understand how the privatization of common land can affect inequalities and power relation within rural communities.