ABSTRACT
As the universalized triumph of green grabbing is now shaping much of land relations in many parts of the Global South, this chapter examines the cultural logic and emerging limits of conversation of common property forestry in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. In particular, it examines an Indigenous movement of CHT led by Taungya, a nongovernmental organization, and its conservation projects to protect common property forests (VCFs) in order to consolidate Indigenous peoples’ claims over VFCs in CHT. The chapter challenges the dominant, essentialized narratives of VCFs, pointing to their multiple origins, spatiality and ethnic dimensions. It will demonstrate that the movement for protection and conservation of VCFs has been motivated by a number of different overlapping political and development agendas than those of state- or business-led land grabbing or “green grabbing” agendas. The chapter argues that VCFs exist as political forests but represent new “new frontiers” of land control where sovereignties and authorities of the recent past and their hegemonies have been or are currently being challenged by new enclosures, territorializations, and property regimes. In turn, the conservation of VCFs runs the risk of not only bringing new conflicts into rural Indigenous communities but also marginalizing and excluding Indigenous communities by themselves.
