Conference on International Agricultural Research for Development Governing the Use and Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversity Institutional and Gender Analysis of Transition in South India

Agrobiodiversity is a common resource, on which our future global food security rest, while simultaneously representing the means of survival for many local farmers at present. Women have been identified as the key-persons regarding knowledge and management skills to use and thereby conserve biological diversity in agriculture. The Indian Government has introduced the “Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act” in 2001 and the “Biodiversity Act” in 2002, setting a formal framework for the management of the global resource biodiversity, which falls under her national privilege. The paper introduces the natural resources at stake and the social and cultural organisation of biodiversity management in Southern India. Since the category gender is central to the question of equitable governance structures, its’ integration into the framework for institutional analysis is made explicit. Understanding the interactions between natural resources and relevant actors requires knowledge on the properties of transaction and the characteristics of actors. The institutional analysis asks for the study of property rights, influencing the access and control of resources and power in decision making processes. The emerging governance structure reveals conflicts and co-operations, missing links and innovations. An analytical framework for the study of rice-farming system in Wayanad, Kerala is proposed. It draws on empirical evidence from Kerala, South India, a hot spot of biological diversity. Results are considered for relevance regarding the theory of co-evolution of social and natural systems. (1) The National Indian Situation in Agrobiodiversity Governance India passed the Biodiversity Act 2002 (BD), in conformity to the CBD to facilitate conservation with economic benefits. The BD envisages a governance structure consisting of the National Biodiversity Authority at national level, a State Biodiversity Board at each state level, and Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC) at the level of each local body of the panchayat raj. The BMCs are required to promote conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and to 1 An earlier version of this paper has been presented at The Tenth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP) ”The Commons in an Age of Global Transition: Challenges, Risks and Opportunities” in Oaxaca, México, 9 – 13 August 2004. The author acknowledges the generous support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Indian National Science Academy for a visit to the M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India. I am indebted to my hosts, especially to Mina Swaminathan, M. S. Swaminathan, Meera Devi, Anil Kumar, M. Velayutham, V.Arivudai Nambi, the staff at the Community Agrobiodiversity Centre (CAbC) in Wayanad and at the MSSRF in Chennai for their contributions and support.