ABSTRACT
What happens to common pool resources such as lakes and sacred groves once the process of urbanisation sets in? How does urbanisation affect ecosystem services provided by these resources? During urban development in a neoliberal era, what priorities govern ecosystem services? Who wins and who loses in this battle for the landscape? These questions form the basis of this chapter, which uses the example of lakes in the city of Bengaluru to illustrate its arguments.
As the city of Bengaluru does not have immediate connectivity to a major water source, the early inhabitants of the landscape exploited natural depressions of the land to lay the foundation for a fascinating system of networked lakes and tanks. These water bodies, once managed as common pool resources, provided water to the city. Over time, they became ecologically and culturally significant constituents of the urban landscape. By the end of the 19th century, as Bengaluru began to import water from reservoirs and river channels located outside the city, the dependency on lakes for water reduced. Once integral social-ecological commons, lakes came to be reconceptualised merely as aesthetic or recreational utilities. Within the heart of the city, many former lakes have been converted into built up structures, while others have become polluted and shrunk in size. Many users of lake commons have been alienated from lakes during this process.
In this chapter, we explore the impact of transformations in the ecology and institutional character of lakes as commons, on the communities once dependent upon these resources. We base our study on a set of 20 lakes selected through random stratification through a gradient of lake size, degree of urbanisation and watersheds. Field visits were conducted around each lake, both to identify communities deriving livelihood and subsistence benefits from the lake (such as grazing cattle and irrigation) as well as cultural benefits (such as worship). In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with members of these communities to understand changes in their perceptions of the utility of the resource. We situate these narratives within the larger context of state led programmes of lake restoration and its impacts on ecosystem services derived by these communities.
Our results suggest that traditional users of the commons gradually become distanced from resources in response to changing ecological and socio-political conditions. The nature of dependency and identity of the dependents has transformed over time to reflect those who derive maximum benefit from the resources. This has caused changes in community hierarchy, occupations of the various dependents as well as their cultural relations with the lakes. These perspectives are however, largely ignored by policy framings such as the smart city framework, enclosure of commons or privatisation, which are driven by a reconceptualisation of commons by a relatively privileged set of actors. The exclusion of communities who value urban commons can have serious implications on sustainability of lakes and their ecosystem services, as well as on the vulnerability of marginalised groups in cities.
