'Commoning the Commons' – Rehabilitating Community Lands in India

- Agricultural double crop area increased significantly by 65% in the years from 1996 to 2006.
- Increase in Rabi cropped area by about 85 ha (despite 2001-04 being drought years)
- Increase in the irrigated area has led to net returns of Rs 10,000/- per ha from soya bean; Rs 23,500/- per ha from wheat and Rs 20,300/- per ha from grams.

- Crafted institutions based on principles of universal membership and an equal access of women and poor in the decision making processes.
- Secured tenure over 675 ha of common land
- Recognized local institutional diversity and built on indigenous systems towards collective search for appropriate solutions
- Formulated rules to ensure that the needs of the poorest households are addressed.
- Reduced drinking water stress in livestock due to improved availability of water in wells and water harvesting structures.

Remote sensing imagery supported with ground truthing through focused group discussions and periodic data collection on key bio-physical indicators such as biomass, biodiversity, water levels, etc. indicate significant improvements in the soil health, groundwater levels, biomass productivity and biodiversity.
- Wastelands have reduced by 56% over a period of ten years; open forest increased from 4 ha to 248 ha; riverine dense forest increased from 22 ha to 183 ha.
- Standing biomass on common lands increased from an average of 6.64t/ha to 15.64 t/ha.
- Palatable biomass improved from 0.95 t/ha to 5.37 t/ha.

- Directly engaging with communities, assisting them secure rights of use and ownership over common pool resources, and establishing robust institutional arrangements for its governance.
- Commons Initiative': Building strategic collaborations, bringing practitioners and their networks, decision makers and scholars, for a long term campaign on the issue of Commons.
- Continued engagement with government (at local, state and national levels) and influencing policy and programmatic action towards Commons.
- Plans to launch the Drylands Portal/Knowledge Platform to address the gap in accessing information, provide more teeth to local institutions and energize local visions of development, and assist decision making on programmes of natural resource management.

- Lack of clear tenure over common lands, institutional erosion and competing land uses resulting in the decline and degradation of common lands.
- Neglect of the importance of the grazing based production systems and Commons in the dominant policy discourse.
- Sectoral approach and neglect of the farms-forest-water Commons interface.

- Work on Commons must adopt a realistic perspective of the differentiation and discrimination within village communities such that the initiatives are  inclusive and provide spaces for the poor and marginalized in the benefit-sharing and decision making processes.
- Robust institutions which recognise traditional institutional arrangements  and adhere to the broad principles of management of common pool resources are more likely to survive and be sensitive to the needs of poor households and livestock keepers.
- There is a need to have broader understanding of space and time in which management of common pool resources should be placed.
- Secure tenure and rights of access and use play an important role in motivating communities for management of Commons.
- Strong focus on endemic species provides the livestock keepers a share in the growth from increased biomass availability.
- Regulated and rotational grazing is an important mechanism for regenerating Commons.
- Information of local thresholds of biomass and water usage, choice of species and agricultural practices which reduce resource demands and institutional platforms to engage different stakeholders are important to further strengthen the sustainability of such transformations. 

Valuation of indirect environmental benefits

Commons, secure tenure, collective action, grazing based production system, drought mitigation