Livelihood (in)justice and forest governance in the Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem

Environmental governance in the Indian Sundarban mangroves has undergone a paradigm shift from colonial resource extraction to contemporary Bengal tiger wildlife conservation and strict harvesting restrictions. However, local forest-dependent dwellers continue to live close to protected tiger reserve areas in small mangrove communities throughout the densely populated and poverty-prone coastal Sundarban region, leading to significant policy challenges at the everyday nexus of conservation regulations and livelihood needs. Using a tripartite analytical framework of distributive, procedural and recognitional environmental justice, this qualitative case study examines forest livelihood-related justice issues emerging for the local mangrove dwellers despite, and because of, the Sundarban's environmental framework and practices. Empirical fieldwork data was collected through observation, forest field visit, group discussions and semi-structured interviews with forest dwellers and other local forest governance actors in two remote mangrove villages in the Indian Sundarban. The empirical analysis illustrates significant marginalization effects surrounding the misrecognition of traditional rights, contested wildlife fencing approaches and territorialization, top-down regulations and tiger-human casualties. Procedural justice concerns are identified surrounding forest access, systemic harassment, intransparent and arbitrary use of authority by state agency officials. Distributional justice concerns include commodified Boat License Certificates (BLCs), captive market effects of local moneylenders and rural elite capture in ostensibly decentralized joint forest management. The findings are then critiqued vis-à-vis the intended policy goals of India's 2006 Forest Rights Act securing local rights, in contrast to which the region's de facto implementation of protected area governance undermines and marginalizes the mangrove dwellers' livelihoods and forest access on the ground.