Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment

The Himalayan mountains have been going through a series of ecological and social transformations. In systems where communities depend on natural resources, externalities in government policies and development interventions can have unexpected consequences for people-environment relationships. Our study investigates agro-pastoralism changes across a decade in the Upper Spiti Landscape in Himachal Pradesh, India. It evaluates these changes in the framework of ecological and social perturbations with respect to human-dog relationships. We compared livestock population trends across a temporal scale using interviews and secondary data. Our results indicate a decline in livestock population across the years from 2003 to 2013, specifically a reduction in small-bodied livestock due to dogs. The study highlights the changing agriculture-livestock nexus with increasing demands for manure from outside. Dogs in the landscape have emerged as disrupters influencing the intricately linked production systems. The research reiterates the need for concerted efforts by multiple agencies for dog population management.

Agrobiodiversity is a multi-dimensional concept underlying all sustained agricultural productivity. Agrobiodiversity plays especially important roles in complex multifunctional landscapes that blend smallholder production with remnant forests and semi-natural vegetation. We define agrobiodiversity broadly to include five levels of diversity that influence agricultural production: intraspecies genetic variation, diversity of species and varieties in the farmer’s field, range of other species used in and around the farm, overall biodiversity of the landscape where the farm is situated, and large-scale agroecological zones or landforms. With specific reference to farming systems in hyperdiverse India, we highlight the essential roles played by agrobiodiversity in food security maintenance and examine key drivers of current agrobiodiversity loss. Innovative research and policy frameworks supporting agrobiodiversity conservation are urgently needed. We outline policies and initiatives needed to accelerate efforts to restore agrobiodiversity, and conclude by offering five actionable recommendations for rethinking agricultural research and development systems in India and the Global South. These shift the focus onto the essential networks of ecological relationships that support smallholder production. Especially in complex multifunctional landscapes, agrobiodiversity cannot be considered in isolation from wild biodiversity.

Wildlife conservation is typically achieved by excluding, evacuating or alienating the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). This fortress conservation approach has led to uprooting, ongoing distress and despondency among many IPLCs worldwide. However, in the expansive and deep forests of the Western Ghats, India, the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary (BRTWS) offers a prime conservation exemplar where tribal (Adivasi) people, the Soligas, have been living with wild animals, especially tigers, leopards, elephants and managing forest resources for millennia. We provide an integrated ecological, socio-cultural and policy analysis of Soligas living in the Biligiri landscape, applying Ostrom’s socio-ecological framework. We highlight the need to understand and recognise the importance of Adivasi people’s connections, knowledge and skills in forest management. Comparing traditional and contemporary conservation approaches, we identify the need for collective action and collaboration between State authorities and Soliga communities to effectively manage forest resources, including emerging threats (e.g. pernicious weeds, pests, wildfires). Involving tribal people with the knowledge and skills to manage their natural systems can offer a win–win situation for supporting people’s well-being and for governments to reduce management costs and protect wildlife in Protected Areas. The BRTWS example demonstrates the cost-effective practical advantages of a collaborative, community-based conservation approach for meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ensuring the delivery of ecosystem services for local communities and wider society.

Fortress conservation models, such as Protected Areas (PAs), are often critically examined as frontiers of land control driven by state or external actors, leading to dispossession and marginalisation of local communities. However, such analyses tend to reduce land control to its coercive outcomes, overlooking the processes and social relations through which it operates and produces differentiated impacts. This study addresses this gap by analysing how multiple sources of land control—including conservation practices, politically mediated development and welfare interventions, and local agrarian power relations—interact to shape marginalisation. Using qualitative methods—semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and oral histories—this research examines land control dynamics in the Amrabad Tiger Reserve, Telangana, India, a Protected Area embedded within a regional agrarian economy. The study employs an expansive concept of land control that incorporates historically rooted and shaped agrarian class and caste relations alongside conservation practices. The findings show that these interactions reproduce interconnected relations of oppression among caste, class, and land control. The historically discriminated against and oppressed groups amongst the generally considered marginalised communities—Dalit Madigas and Adivasi Chenchus—emerge as the most marginalised, even in spaces that previously enabled partial escape from such conjugated oppression. By demonstrating how PA-based conservation reshapes class differentiation, the study argues that marginalisation under protection is contextual, historically contingent, and differentiated, contributing to debates on equitable conservation and the agrarian political economy of conservation enclosures.