Articles by Dr. Shiva

NATURE'S COMMONS, PEOPLE'S RIGHTS AND
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

by Dr. Vandana Shiva

Agriculture as productive activity is directly based on land, water and biodiversity. Seed, soil and water are both natural capital and the means of production in agriculture. And these resources are renewal and regenerative if managed sustainably. Sustainable use of land, water and biodiversity - both plant and animal - is intimately linked to their stewardship and care. Hence agricultural technology can either enhance or deplete soil fertility, water resources and biodiversity. And with enhancement or erosion of natural capital is linked the improvement or decline in agricultural productivity and food security. Sustainable agriculture technologies are vital to conserve the natural resource base and ensure sustainability of food security.

Not only is the state of natural resources shaped and influenced by agricultural technologies, it is shaped by how natural resources are owned. Ownership influences utilization patterns, and utilization patterns influence the state and health of resources. Soil, water and biodiversity can be utilized and managed sustainably only if they are owned as common heritage, common property or commons.

Nature, Rights and Property

Water and biodiversity have until recently been commons. Land too was utilized individually but owned collectively. Rules had rights to a share in the produce of the land, not rights to ownership of the land. "Sabhi Bhoomi Gopal ki" captures this status of land as commons. The issue of commons/common property/public good is also related to distinct principles of the role of the State - one the principle of trusteeship and the other the principle of "eminent domain". In the public trust doctrine the state holds the resources in trust for the people and the community who are sovereign. In the "eminent domain" doctrine the state is the super sovereign and absolute owner of resources which assigns rights to people, communities, and corporations.

Globalization and Trade Liberalization policies have led to privatization of water and biodiversity and concentration of land ownership, reversing six decades of land reform, and introducing a new form of corporate zamindari through instruments like special Economic zones.

In the case of land, the government has used the rights it has assigned to itself under the eminent domain principle to hand over large tracts of fertile farmland to corporations. The conflicts that have ensured have forced the government to change the Land Acquisition Act - the instrument used to appropriate the land of the peasantry. However, these amendments are superficial and inadequate. (See KB Saxena section on land)

Not only is agricultural land which sustains the livelihoods of millions of peasants - landless, small and marginal - being appropriated for transfer to corporate ownership, common lands are also being transferred.

Village commons well categorized as "wastelands" under the British revenue system since the colonial powers could not collect revenues from them. Today, these so called wastelands are being transferred to industry.

On 7th of May 2007, The Government of Rajasthan passed rules under its powers conferred by Section 261 of the Land Revenue Act of 1956 to create a new law called "The Rajasthan Land Revenue (Allotment of wasteland for biofuel plantation and biofuel based industrial and processing unit) Rules, 2007".

The Rules allow 1000 ha - 5000 ha of village common lands (called "wastelands" in the colonial revenue category) to be transferred for 20 years from the village community to biofuel industry. The land allocation is for biofuel plantations, especially Jatropha, and biofuel based industry and processing units.

Small allocations are also made for Self help groups and gram panchayats, but they must sell their produce to the biofuel industry in the zone at the price fixed by the Biofuel Authority.

Two major shifts have thus taken place through the new Rules for Biofuels. Firstly, village commons of which the local community is the custodian have been appropriated by the state and transferred to corporations. This is an illegitimate transfer of community rights to private property rights, without consent of the community. In effect, it is an "enclosure of the commons".

The second shift that has taken place is a shift in land use and biological productivity of land. Village commons, as postures, as wood lots, as sacred growers grow biodiversity, which serves the rural economy, especially the landless, for needs of fuel, fodder, medicine and food. Jatropha plantations provide no fuel, no fodder, no food, for the village community. Village commons now provide raw material for the fuel for the cars of the urban rich. This is a shift from equity to inequity from sustainability to non-sustainability.

The Rajasthan Biofuel Law also requires irrigation. In addition to privatising commonlands the jatropha plantations are also privatizing water. The law makes it compulsory to use sprinkler irrigation. In a desert state this is a recipe for diverting scarce water resources from drinking water needs and agriculture to the cultivation of Jatropha plantations. It is also a recipe for mining ground water. Tree and grass species that grow in the village commons in Rajasthan are adapted to low water availability. Their replacement with irrigated Jatropha plantations is not just leading to the enclosure of the village common lands; it is also leading to the enclosure and privatization of the village water commons.

In the case of water and biodiversity, corporations seeking privatization of the common resources are using international institutions such as the world Bank and the World Trade Organization to create new kinds of private property. This is a new kind of enclosure of the commons. "Private is derived from "private", which means "to deprive"… When natural resources which should be held in common are privatized, common people are deprived of

1. their sources of sustenance
2. their means of livelihoods
3. their collective wealth.

The language increasingly being used for this privatization and enclosures of the commons is "asset reform". However, the life support and livelihood base of the poor is not an "asset" to be bought and sold and traded. Referring to vital living resources as "assets" is in fact the beginning of commodification and privatization of natural resources necessary for survival.

In the case of biodiversity, the enclosures of the biological commons is taking place through patents. Patents on life are at the heart of Art. 27.3 (b) of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of W.T.O. A problem associated with patents on life is biopiracy - the pirating and patenting of indigenous knowledge and biodiversity. Examples are patents on neem, basmati, wheat, haldi. Since a patent is an exclusive right to use, produce, sell the patented product or process, patents on biodiversity and seeds in effect prevent the use and access to seeds as a commons.

Common access to seed is also destroyed by passing laws which make it illegal for farmers to manage seeds as a commons, by making the State all powerful in approving and licensing varieties and forcing farmers to seek state approval through "compulsory" registration laws. The pretext is quality control, but the reality is the destruction of high quality reliable open pollinated varieties bred and developed by farmers. The criteria used for licensing and the costs of licensing, deny farmers rights to their own traditional seeds, forcing them into dependency on corporate supply each year. The government of India tried to introduce such a law in the form of the Seed Act, 2004. However, we carried out a large scale "Bija Satyagraha" (Seed Satyagraha) declaring that saving and sharing seeds was a duty, not a crime, and we would continue to save and share our seeds and biodiversity.

Privatizing biodiversity and seeds in effect wipes out farmers' rights to seed replaces it with corporate monopoly rights.

Privatization of water is taking place in many ways. In the case of the River Sheonath in Chattisgarh, the River itself was privatized and people could no longer have access to it for irrigation, drinking water, bathing, washing or their cattle. In other places, water privatization is linked to investments. If a company invests in an irrigation dam, it can in effect privatize the water and sell it to farmers. Farmers rights to water disappear and corporate rights are instituted. The $200 billion River Linking Project will also inevitably lead to water privatization because it will be dependent on private investment and World Bank loans. The World Bank's water sector reform projects are also rewriting rights to water.

Through its loan World Bank is redefining. Water Acts and rewriting water policies and legislation. This is outsourcing of legislation and law. Such outsourcing undo Indian Constitution and Indian democracy because it robs Indian people of water rights and water laws through democratic process and democratic institution of Panchayati Raj, State legislation and Parliament.

World Bank seems to know that water is a politically sensitive issue. Hence most reports prepared for World Bank call for a dispassionate 'depoliticisation' of the issue. For instance, the Delhi Water and Waste Water Reform Bill, 2004, drafted by PWC, urge the government to set up an independent 'Delhi Water and Waste Water Regulatory Commission' to regulate a privatized water market in the capital. According to the Bill's clauses, the Commission will be a three-member panel where at least two members shall be from outside government with at least 15 years in private industry or academic and research institutions. The Bill disallows membership to parliamentarians and legislator or anyone who holds any post in a political party. It is as if World Bank is acknowledging that often democratic processes seem to result in policy decision that are in the public interest.

Similarly, Madhya Pradesh Water Restructuring Loan by World Bank intends to bring new legislation to achieve it sinister objectives. World Bank loan lays down that the draft new legislation will have to be ready by 31st of December 2005. This is terrible blow to our democratic structure. It is the prerogative of the State Assembly and Parliament to decide when and how and which law will be passed, yet the World bank attempts to dictate this.

Urban water privatization projects also directly impact farmers' rights to water. Five farmers of Tonk district - Shri Prakash Modi, Smt Gujar, Shri Madan Lal Jat, Shri Kesshan Lal Chaudhary and Shri Ram Narayan Choudhary - were killed in a police firing when they protested the diversion of their river Banas to Ajmer and Jaipur under a privatization project. The farmers were left with no irrigation water, even their wells went dry because of the stopping of flow of the river. The contract given to Suez - Degrement to build the Sonia Vihar Plant based on diversion of Ganga water to Delhi has deprived farmers of irrigation water.

Non-sustainable agriculture

Privatization of vital living resources such as biodiversity, soil and water does not merely deprive the common people, especially the poor, of vital needs to sustenance and livelihoods. It also imposed non-sustainable patterns on food production and agriculture.

Caring for the soil over generations is built into a culture of land held in trust, the earth as a mother that nourishes humanity. Good farming builds the soil, it builds humus. And humus is the bed rock of soil fertility. When land is transformed into a commodity, soil disappears - in the imagination, and in reality. An ad. Of EMAAR - MDG a Dubai based construction and real estate company on "Making a New India" has an ad that says "Where there is land, thee will be houses - malls - golf clubs". What is forgotten is that where there is land is soil, there are crops, there are villages, and there are farmers. In reality too soil gives way to concrete, villages give way to concrete jungles, communities give way to corporations and consumers.

Even in agriculture, a permanent agriculture is based on the permanence of rights. The commodification of land goes hand in hand with the chemicalisation of agriculture.

Living soil with millions of microorganisms that crate soil fertility is replaced with external inputs like synthetic fertilizers which kill soil organisms and over time destroy the processes by which soil fertility is built.

Internal input agriculture works with the produce of the land to create soil fertility. Organic matter is recycled to composted, leguminous crops fix nitrogen. Soil fertility does not need external inputs.

The other external input in agriculture is purchased seed. As seed becomes corporate property, corporations create non-renewable seeds so that farmers are forced to buy seed every year. Debt is a major reason for the epidemic of farmers' suicides. And agricultural debt is primarily caused by purchase of external inputs such as chemicals and corporate seeds. Agrichemicals pollute the land and our bodies, corporate non-renewable seeds destroy biodiversity and farmers freedoms. While the links between the growing problem of farmers suicides and growing dependence of farmers on costly purchased external inputs such as seeds and chemicals are clear, the government's only solution to farmers suicides is more consumer credit for more purchase of external inputs.

Farmers need to be liberated from this bondage on external inputs. Agriculture needs biodiversity, soil and water - not GMOs, pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
For every input corporations want to sell there is an internal input provided by farmers and the land. And the evidence is now clear. Low external input ecological agriculture costs less and produces more.

The only reason corporations push external inputs is profit - and as farmers get into debt and loose their land, land too becomes a corporate monopoly.

Non-sustainability and corporate monopoly feed on each other just as sustainability and the commons provide each other with positive feed back.

The future of farming and farmers rests on the shared care for the vital resources of the earth - the soil, the biodiversity the water - that make agriculture possible. Privatization of the earth's resources is a recipe for famine and desertification, for hunger and farmers suicides.