Conflicting Interests and Intelligible Utilisation of Common Property Resources: A Study of a Tropical Wetland in South India

Abstract

Economic planning implies planned exploitation, utilisation, conservation and development of the living and non-living components of world’s environmental assets like plants, animals and people as well as land, water and air to achieve certain short-term as well as long-term objectives. The economic planning in India has not given adequate concern to environment management, especially of the common property resources. In traditional rural societies, the poor have often been found to depend upon common property resources which are in turn accessible to the whole community to which no individual has exclusive property rights. Though land, water and forest were treated as resources held in common and are owned by government, the local communities play the most critical role in the protection and use of these resources. The present paper deals with the various property issues and eco-friendly suggestions for the conservation of a distinctive wetland. It also points into how sound environmental management is significant for the optimal allocation of finite resources for different possible uses especially from a developing country’s context.

Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.

(Declaration of Principles, The Rio Summit of 1992).