Lessons from Madhupur National Park, Bangladesh

Environmental Management DOI 10.1007/s00267-014-0325-8

Informal Institutional Responses to Government Interventions: Lessons from Madhupur National Park, Bangladesh H. M. Tuihedur Rahman • Swapan Kumar Sarker Gordon M. Hickey • M. Mohasinul Haque • Niamjit Das

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Received: 2 December 2013 / Accepted: 25 June 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Madhupur National Park is renowned for severe resource ownership conflicts between ethnic communities and government authorities in Bangladesh. In this study, we applied the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to identify: (i) past and present informal institutional structures within the ethnic Garo community for land resource management; (ii) the origin of the land ownership dispute; (iii) interaction mechanisms between formal and informal institutions; and (iv) change in land management authority and informal governance structures. We identify that the informal institutions of the traditional community have undergone radical change due to

government interventions with implications for the regulation of land use, informal institutional functions, and joint-decision-making. Importantly, the government’s persistent denial of the role of existing informal institutions is widening the gap between government and community actors, and driving land ownership conflicts in a cyclic way with associated natural resource degradation. Keywords Sustainable natural resource management Land rights Forest conservation Social capital Garo people

Introduction H. M. T. Rahman G. M. Hickey Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, McGill University, 21,111 Lakeshore Road, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue H9X 3V9, Canada e-mail: [email protected] G. M. Hickey e-mail: [email protected] S. K. Sarker Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine, College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK S. K. Sarker (&) N. Das Department of Forestry and Environmental Science, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet 3114, Bangladesh e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] N. Das e-mail: [email protected] M. Mohasinul Haque Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

Like many other post-colonial countries, conflicts over forest land management are evident in Bangladesh and are mostly observed in the national parks. At the time of writing, Bangladesh had 17 national parks covering a forest area of 45,745.33 ha (Forest Department (FD) 2012). Most of these areas are home to ethnic communities who have cultural, linguistic, and religious identities that are distinct from the majority Bengali population (Biswas and Choudhury 2007). Madhupur National Park (MNP) is the second largest national park in Bangladesh and a Category V Protected Area (International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN) with the objective ‘to protect and sustain important landscapes/seascapes and the associated nature conservation and other values created by interactions with humans through traditional management practices’ (IUCN 2011). The park is inhabited by Bengali, ethnic Koch, and Garo communities. These communities are inextricably associated with MNP for their subsistence livelihoods, collecting fuel wood, timber, and non-timber forest products from forest ecosystems, while also using non-forested lands for

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grazing and agriculture. As a result, the Forest Department (FD) struggles to protect the forest resources from anthropogenic pressures through the enforcement of formal forest laws (Chowdhury and Ahmed 2008). One of the most complex and problematic issues facing MNP management is land resource ownership. Historically, this land was inhabited by the ethnic Garo community and they still claim themselves as the rightful owners of the land. These claims have not been acknowledged by the government, and as a result, the community has continued to rely on informal institutions to govern land resources which are at odds with the formal institutional processes (Stavenhagen 2007). This situation has led to significant and ongoing conflict between resident communities and government agencies over land resource sharing. While these conflicts have a long history, tensions escalated significantly when the government forcibly evicted the resident community from the territory of MNP in 1962 (Drong 2009, pp 173–182). More recently, in 2003, forest guards and police opened gunfire at a demonstration rally organized by local people in MNP, resulting in the death of a young Garo community member and injuries to several others (Gain 2007). The significance of this conflict to conservation management objectives, and the failure of government to effectively and sustainably address the situation, makes MNP an excellent case study of a situation where government intervention has led the local community to manifest adaptive responses to maintain control over their land resource use. This paper assesses the nature of these adaptive responses from an institutional perspective so that the effect of government interventions on the community’s informal institutional hierarchy can be better understood. Our objective was to demarcate the inter-connectivity and conflicting interactions that exist between government formal and local informal institutions with a view to informing sustainable development initiatives in the region. We also sought to identify the key drivers of this enduring community-government resource conflict, how informal institutions have adapted through time and the implications of this for how formal institutions might more constructively approach the issues to improve conservation and development outcomes. In what follows, we present a brief literature review of formal and informal institutions and their role in natural resource management, followed by a detailed description of our case study and research methods. We then present our detailed results and discuss their implications for policy, practice, and research.

Literature Review Formal and informal institutional communications are necessary for sustainable natural resource management

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(Agrawal 2001). Ostrom (1986) defined institutions as the rules governing decision-making behavior. In addition, the fundamental functional role of an institution is to reduce the transaction costs in economic activities (Heltberg 2002; Sandberg 2007). Formal institutions include the codified laws that are developed by organizations such as government, municipalities, cooperatives, and firms, which, if followed by their members, become rules (Hodgson 2006). In contrast, North (1991) suggested that informal institutions include social codes of conduct and socially acceptable behaviors that are transmitted through generations, often involving cooperation, collaborative learning, and self-organization. Such institutions are generally observed in natural resource-dependent communities who self-govern common-pool resources (Becker and Ostrom 1995; Agrawal 2001; Rahman et al. 2012). In natural resource management, informal institutions are often not considered to be legitimate resource management regimes by formal government institutions (Ostrom 1990). On the other hand, minority or ethnic communities often maintain their own informal institutions (also known as customary institutions) that are embedded in their culture (North 1991). In such situations, operational duality occurs between formal and informal governance regimes, driven by an absence of inter-institutional recognition and reciprocity (Sokile et al. 2003). As a result, no mediating agent is able to bridge the gap between the institutions resulting in a lack of common interest in sustainable resource management. This ‘inter-institutional pitfall’ generates operational gaps between the institutions, also referred to as ‘structural holes’ in management literature (Walker et al. 1997). Such structural holes inhibit information exchange between institutions, undermining the potential for cooperation. As a result, the execution of government policy faces immense resistance from informal institutions, while the collective choices of community members’ are not acknowledged by the formal institutions. Despite a number of contemporary empirical studies indicating that strict government control is not always the solution to resource management dilemmas (Becker and Ostrom 1995), it remains a common feature in many postcolonial countries (Moore 1993; Prasad and Kant 2003; Sarker et al. 2011), often driving local resource conflicts. Niroula and Thapa (2005) noted that among different resource ownership conflicts, land rights-related conflict is particularly crucial for development. For example, in most post-colonial countries, forest resources were taken under government control (Akama et al. 1996), either in the form of protected areas (PAs) or reserved forest, without settling land allocation disputes between the government and forest-dependent communities (Lu 2001; Rastogi et al. 2012). Such conflicts can open the way for ‘extralegal’ claims (for details see de Soto 2001) by the local community over the


resources and potentially drive resource over exploitation (Iftekhar and Hoque 2005).

Methodology Study Area MNP (24300 to 24500 North Latitude and 90 to 90100 East Longitude) was established in 1962. However, it was officially notified in the national government gazette in 1982 under the definition provided by the National Wildlife (preservation) Order 1973. Importantly, there was no legal definition of a national park in Bangladesh’s previous legislation. The park (8,436 ha) contains portions of the largest tropical moist deciduous forest in central Bangladesh, namely Bhawal-Madhupur Sal (Shorea robusta) Forest (FD 2012). The land of MNP has been classified into ‘low land’ (primarily cultivated with paddy fields) and ‘high land’ (primarily forest cover). To a lesser extent, land is also used for community households and horticulture. The existing communities within MNP have a high degree of direct dependency on the landscape for agriculture, grazing, fuel wood, and minor forest product extraction. The ethnic Koch, Garo, and inland Bengali communities comprise the population of MNP. Garo is the largest ethnic community and has a stronger economic and social history in the area than the other groups, with long-established culture, traditions, and social structures. In contrast, Bengalis are the newest inhabits of the park, entering the area in the 20th century, with the majority arriving after the war of liberation in 1971 (Farooque 1997). Methods The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (developed by Ostrom et al. 1994) is a multidisciplinary tool to analyze public policy and governance over resource use in formal and informal institutional contexts (Imperial 1999). The IAD framework works by identifying an ‘action situation’ which is created by the physical attributes of the resource base, the attributes of the community and/or actors and the rules-in-use. The action situation defines the interaction among different formal actors (e.g., government officials and formal organizations) and informal actors (e.g., local resource user community, community leaders, and informal organizations). The framework allows researchers to evaluate the interactions among actors based on evaluation criteria. These interactions form the basis of rules for decision-making (Ostrom 1986). Since its development, the IAD framework has undergone a number of modifications to ensure compatible use in different resource management research contexts

(for example see Rudd 2004; Rahman et al. 2012; Rastogi et al. 2014). The modification conducted by Fischer et al. (2007) was especially designed for monitoring and evaluating land resource governance by adapting the framework into two segments: (i) situation analysis and (ii) analysis of change. The first segment of this modified framework was developed to diagnose the situation at a given time by identifying the actions which shape resource use. During our research design, the identification of a certain period for the situation analysis was important because the analysis of institutional change is governed by temporal variation. To avoid this complexity, the informal institutional situation before 1962 was selected. This is the year that MNP was declared a national park (despite formal Gazette notification in 1982, see study area) and strict government control of both forest land and resources began.1 To explore the informal institutional settings prior to 1962, historical data were obtained from published books, research articles, and seminar proceedings. Further, four experts (non-academic experts including journalists and cultural activists) on Garo history and culture, three academics and 10 Garo elders (more than 60-years old) were interviewed individually to obtain empirical evidence on the informal institutional settings. Each interview took between 20 and 35 min to complete. Experts were asked questions related to the history of Garo society, while the community elders explained the historical evolution of the MNP land ownership conflict, beginning in 1962. Later in our study, a random sample of participants from the Garo community was individually asked to draw the past and present institutional hierarchies on a blank page of paper, where they plotted different actors and their role in the informal land resource administration. They also explained socially allotted power and the responsibilities of different actors in the hierarchy. The second segment of the framework was developed to identify institutional change. Here, roundtable discussions and key informant interviews were conducted in Pirgacha, Chunia, and Vhutia villages, selected purposively based primarily on their location adjacent to the Dokhola Forest Range Office, where all dialog between government and the local community actors take place. Each of these villages is predominantly comprised of Garo people, and is located nearest to the core area of the park where resource use conflict is most prevalent. A roundtable discussion was conducted with 14 local Garo community leaders to better 1

Although the State’s takeover of forest resources began following the Indian Forest Act 1927, this act did not abolish the land resource rights of the Zamindars (traditional landlords), allowing the Garo community’s informal institutional hierarchy to remain intact. The Zamindary system was formally abolished under the Bengal Tenancy and Acquisition Act 1950 and in 1962 strict government control of MNP began.

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understand their actions against formal government policy and interventions concerning park management. Each of these local leaders had been involved in previous dialog with formal government actors at various times and all were active in the local community. The roundtable discussion was held in a local restaurant and lasted for 2 h. During this exercise, it became important for us to manage the potential for confirmation bias, as participants were quick to confirm each other’s statements. To reduce this potential bias, we subsequently conducted key informant interviews with a broad sample of Garo community members to triangulate the findings. Using semi-structured questionnaires, we interviewed Garo school teachers, community organization members, village leaders, and religious leaders. These interviews supported further exploration of Garo customary land ownership and transfer processes, conflict mitigation mechanisms, public responses to institutional change, and customary institutional hierarchies. Each interview took between 20 and 30 min with a view to corroborating or discounting previously obtained information on institutional change. Importantly, all interviews with local community members and leaders were conducted in the Garo language, requiring the assistance of two Garo interpreters who were equally expert in Bengali (interviewees’ mother tongue). Forest Department officials who had direct involvement in policy implementation were interviewed using structured and semi-structured questionnaires. The interview with the divisional forest officer (DFO) focused on (i) the information required for policy formulation; (ii) policy implementation procedures; (iii) public demand concerning land management in the park; (iv) their experience with the existing conflicts over land rights; (v) government decisions about community management; and (vi) the outcomes of different negotiation and dialog with community leaders in different ruling regimes. The DFO was also asked to summarize different government interventions designed to manage the land rights disputes since MNP was established. The assistant conservators of forest, range officers, beat officers, and forest guards were then interviewed to obtain their perspectives on policy implementation processes, community response, and the scenarios of conflict in MNP. They were also asked to draw the focal points of the conflict and the role of Garo community leaders. We have expressed and analyzed this case study (Yin 2003) using the comparative method (Robson 2002, pp. 455–473). The main analytical benefit of this method is that it is able to generate an abstract pattern of comparison between two or more cases despite spatial and temporal variations (Lijphart 1971; Boeije 2002). In the first phase of the research, we identify the past informal institutional structures, institutional actors and their interactions (before

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Table 1 List of respondents Method

Respondents

Level

No. of respondents

Key informant interview

Religious leader, school teacher, coordinator of PDCa,, local leader, elderly people

Local

70

Roundtable discussion

Local leaders

Local

14

Semistructured interview

Divisional forest officer, assistant conservator of forest, ranger, beat officerb, forest guards, historical expert, academics, religious leader, local elites

Regional and national

35

a

Peace and Discipline Committee of local church

b

Beat is the smallest unit of FD administration

1962) and then explore and contrast the same variables with the contemporary (post 1962) setting, allowing an analysis of change. We also analyze changes in the formal institutional structures, since 1962 and assess their influence on the informal institutional settings (Table 1).

Results and Discussion Situation Analysis A situation analysis is the first step of the modified IAD framework (Fischer et al. 2007). For our study, the situation analysis involves understanding the institutions that existed before 1962. Land Ownership Under Past Informal Institutions (Before 1962) During the British colonial regime (1757–1947), the Garo community was brought under a formal ruling system for the first time, although the land rights regime remained unclear (Alam et al. 2008). Based on available historical documents, land ownership patterns in the Garo community during this time can be classified into two types: (i) common land property and (ii) private land property (Khaleque 1986). The common land property regime was based on traditional ownership patterns, whereas private property rights evolved during the colonial period, driven mainly by Christian religious preaching (Nawaz 1985). During the British period, all common land property were distributed among landlords (locally known as Zamindars) for the convenience of revenue collection. Madhupur forest was allotted to the Kings of Natore and they declared the


forest as Debittor (sacrifice to God) forest which allowed Garo people to live in the forest paying a yearly rent or tax (Rashid and Satter 2006). The Zamindar would allot permanent or partial land ownership to each clan leader (locally known as Nokma) on behalf of his clan (locally known as Akhing) and was bound to allot land for every family on a yearly basis for cultivation (Nawaz 1985). This yearly land allotment helped the informal institutional hierarchy to impose control over local land access rights, thereby managing free riders. However, a private property regime was also developing during this time and Christian missionaries played an important role in entitling land rights. People who converted to Christianity were rewarded with permanent land ownership instead of common ownership. This phenomenon influenced a number of Garo people toward religious transformation. At that time, private land ownership appeared more beneficial because some Garo people had been introduced to the wet rice cultivation system which was financially more beneficial than the traditional shifting (Jhum) cultivation. Moreover, cross-cultural communication with Christian missionaries and the mainland Bengali community influenced some Garo to lead more independent rather than communal lifestyles. As a consequence, a number of permanent private land owners appeared in Garo society. In 1947, after the independence of Pakistan (when Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan), the Zamindary system was abolished under the Bengal Tenancy and Acquisition Act 1950. In 1955, the forest came under the control of the FD and was declared ‘Reserve Forest’ (Gain 2007). In 1962, a large portion of this forest was declared national park resulting in the government appropriation of Garo communal land for conservation purposes, which ultimately threatened the long-enduring communal land management institutions. Analysis of Past Land Management Institutions (Before 1962) One important attribute of institutional analysis is the exploration of the actors (Fischer et al. 2007). Here, actors are those who have the ability to generate information (on resources, opportunities of cooperation, individual preferences, etc.) and also have the ability to prefer ascertain decision from several alternatives based on the information they have available on other actors (Ostrom et al. 1994, pp. 29–33). Following these features of actors, we can identify both formal and informal actors in the institutional setting before 1962. Formal Actors Central government: Before 1962, two central governmental regimes, including the British colonial regime and

the Pakistani government, appeared successively. During the British colonial rule (particularly between 1861 and 1947), Christian missionaries were actively involved in religious transformation under the auspice of the then British government, offering private land rights only for Garo people who converted to Christianity (Cham 2006). Simultaneously, the British government also entitled land to forest-dependent communities during the land registration period in 1914–1918 (Rashid and Satter 2006). Although this registration provided formal recognition of land rights to ethnic communities, it resulted in dualism (private versus communal) in land ownership patterns. The Indian Forest Act 1927, which has been the basis of forest and forest land management for the successive ruling regimes, including Pakistan and contemporary Bangladesh, was also formulated by the British government. These interventions, however, did not pay close attention to the choices of other actors, a common characteristic of authoritative governance (Prasad and Kant 2003). Importantly, the central government regime shifted in 1947 after the independence of Pakistan. Without giving up its predecessor’s authoritative governance system, this new regime made a significant formal institutional change by abolishing the Zamindary system which was an important component of British colonial rule. Zamindars: During the British colonial period, land was allotted to Zamindars who could re-allot the land among tenants and collect tax on behalf of the British government. Operationally, they were the mediators between government and the resource-using communities. Government decisions were interpreted at the field-level by the Zamindars. Inter alia, in the Madhupur tract, Zamindars created two major interventions. At first, they encouraged private ownership patterns to manage more taxpayers efficiently following the colonial government’s direction. Second, anticipating the abolition of the Zamindary system in 1950, they allotted large amounts of land to a number of individuals in the Garo community which resulted in a flurry of unregistered private land owners (Farooque 1997). Informal Actors Village leaders (VLs): The VLs had the authority to receive land title and pay taxes to Zamindars. They then distributed land among community individuals and these individuals were bound to follow the rules and regulations imposed by the VLs. VLs also had the authority to resolve land right disputes within the community (Cham 2006). Community individuals: A matriarchal system served to preserve land rights in the Garo community. Here, property rights were assigned to women, while males had the main responsibility for land right management and conflict mitigation (Marak 2006, pp. 85–92). During this period, land

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distribution under the common land ownership pattern was based on the number of family members rather than social status (e.g., leadership position, religious position). In this way, the economic homogeneity of the Garo community was maintained. Even after the provision of private land rights by the British government, the matriarchal system continued and retained land distribution supremacy which the Garo people still follow. Power Distribution in Past Institutional Structures: The Characteristics of Rule The colonial government had the power to devise constitutional choice rules which allowed them to decide who would be the users of land resources and who would make the operational rules. Since then, the formal institution has imposed control over the informal or customary Garo institutions. Thus, the colonial government established itself as the legal owner and the supreme authority of land management. However, as previously mentioned, for the facilitation of operational activity they established a new actor ‘Zamindars’ and endowed them with the power of devising operational rules. Beyond revenue collection, Zamindars were empowered to: (i) develop local land distribution rules; (ii) mitigate land disputes at the community level; and (iii) enforce laws. When considering the differences between the formal and informal institutional hierarchies, Zamindars (formal) could directly assign individual land ownership to mainland (Bengali) tenants, while VLs (informal) could only provide communal land rights to the ethnic communities. VLs did not have autocratic power over the land management system, instead they possessed symbolic power. Indeed, the VL’s role was predominantly regulated by the collective choice of the ethnic communities. In other words, VLs were the representative of the collective choice rule (rules that were developed by community members).In association with other elderly persons in the village, the VLs would hold the authority to judge land disputes among community members who were bound to obey the verdict. Importantly, the collective choice rules (Ostrom et al. 1994, p. 46) had almost no influence over the constitutional choice and operational rules since the colonial rulers considered the resource users to be tenants, not the permanent owners of the land. Origin of the Land Ownership Dispute: Objective of Change Historically, MNP was managed under an informal land resource management institution, where equitable land distribution and utilization were the core agendas. This system was implemented by the VLs before the British

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colonial rulers (Khaleque 1986). Other similar studies (Becker and Ostrom 1995) have described such a management regime as proficient enough to regulate resource over exploitation. During this time, the conversion of forest land to agriculture was minimal with wet rice cultivated only on low marshy lands (Khaleque 1986). However, during the last few years of the Zamindary system, forest destruction amplified due to large-scale land conversion for agriculture, mostly driven by a desire for quick revenue collection (Islam 2007). As previously described, after the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the Zamindary system was formally abolished with significant consequences for the informal institutional system operating in MNP. A radical change in land ownership patterns occurred after the enactment of a National Forest Policy in 1955 by the Pakistani government. This policy declared government as the owner of all forest areas and empowered the FD to manage all forest lands and resources. The Madhupur Tract was declared as ‘Reserved Forest’ under the Forest Act 1927 (Section 4) in 1955 followed by 8,436 ha of this Reserved Forest being declared as MNP in 1962 (Farooque 1997). At this time, the resident community was forcibly evicted from the territory of MNP (Drong 2009, pp. 173–182), resulting in intense and ongoing land rightsrelated conflict between the government and the Garo community. Importantly, the Forest Act 1927 had no provision for the establishment of national parks. To fill this legal gap, MNP was formally notified in the government gazette in 1982 after the enactment of the Wildlife (preservation) (Amendment) Act 1973 (Subsection 3 of Section 23) (FD 2012). Analysis of Present (2011) Institutions In this section, the actors in the present (2011) land management system are identified with their respective activities. Following the IAD Framework, interaction among the different actors and the rules-in use for resource management are explained to build a platform for comparing past and present institutions. Formal Actors Central government/policy level: This is the apex level of the formal institutional hierarchy responsible for policy formulation and strategic planning in national park development. However, it does not recognize the land rights of Garo people. The Bangladesh government has formulated two national forest policies since independence in 1971 (Forest Policy 1979; Forest Policy 1994). However, neither of these policies addressed the land dispute in MNP. Moreover, the central government continues to introduce different development interventions in the park area (e.g.,


park boundary demarcation and boundary wall construction, tourism facility development) without prior consultation with the local people. Division forest office (DFO): The DFO represents the mid-level of the formal institutional hierarchy. Policy-level decisions are passed on to the local forest office or range office for implementation via the DFO. It also negotiates between the FD and local community representatives and monitors the performance of the RO. Range office (RO): The RO is the lowest level of formal institutional hierarchy and is the legal local manager of forest resources. It has the authority to evict any illegal land owner and has responsibility for checking any illegal conversion of forest land to agricultural land. The RO has little or no participation in decision-making processes. It is poorly equipped and lacks subordinate manpower. For example, each forest guard has to drive 562.4 ha/day of forest land in MNP. Hence, they are incapable of effectively controlling illegal land encroachments either by the local community or non-local opportunists. Informal Actors Local community: They are the user of the land resources, primarily for agriculture. However, the government has declared them to be illegal land owners because under the Wildlife (preservation) (Amendment) Act 1974 (Subsection 3 of sec. 23) any kind of forest land conversion to agriculture is strictly prohibited. In the National Forest Policy (1979), a provision was also made to use forest land only for forestry purposes. Therefore, the present land ownership of community individuals within park territory is deemed completely illegal. Village leaders: VLs usually represent the customary legal system and are hereditarily appointed to dictate the tradition. In the past, VLs were both the owners and distributors of all the land property of the clan or village, while at present, they have very limited control over the customary legal system. Their responsibility is now restricted to solving intra-community conflicts over land. They are not able to participate with the government in land dispute negotiation processes. New leaders (NLs): Village leadership is a hereditary position in Garo society for which it is not necessary to have an educational background. Thus, it was observed in the study area that most of the present VLs are old people who do not possess formal education. Consequently, they know little about the formal institutions and have very limited access to formal institutional procedures (see also, Krishna 2011). Consequently, the interests of Garo people are often not demonstrated effectively to the government authority or the formal institution by VLs. To bridge the gap of reciprocal information flow between the community

and formal institutions, voluntary leadership positions have developed. Based on research conducted in India, Krishna (2011) identified the social position, roles, and features of such voluntary leaders, termed Naya Netas-Hindi for NLs. Krishna’s (2011) Naya Netas are similar to the NLs, we observed in terms of their roles and features. These leaders are often more educated than the VLs. In some cases, they are from the families of VLs or others who have a greater appreciation of formal institutions, rules and regulations. After 1962, the Garo people have observed that VLs are not capable of communicating with the formal authorities. As a result, a small number of Garo elites demonstrated against government interventions and the also tried to force the government to settle the land dispute. Since this time, these NLs have established themselves in the informal institution, acting as major mediators on behalf of the community during land dispute settlement dialog with government actors. As a result, they are now more influential than the traditional VLs. They are also significant participants in the land rights distribution system, with land being traded in the presence of NLs who maintain informal documentation of land rights. As a whole, this change in leadership has resulted in greater community participation in the land ownership dispute. Religious organization (Church): The conversion of the Garo community from their original Sangsarek religion to Christianity has been occurring for over a century (Cham 2006, pp. 103–104). As a result, the local church has had a significant influence over how Garo people solve different intra-community problems. For example, the church participates in resolving local land ownership disputes following its own mediation mechanisms. In this case, it totally avoids local customary rules. Here, the NLs or the VLs have no supremacy over the church. Further, the church has well formulated organizational procedures to secure land rights for community members. It provides financial and logistical support through a ‘Peace and Discipline Committee’ (organization established by the church in 2007) to community members accused of violating forest laws by the government. For example, since its establishment, approximately $2,385USD has been spent by the church to assist convicted individuals (Table 2). The procedure of assistance involves the screening of individual cases from community applications. After screening, the selection process is organized by the ‘Peace and Discipline Committee’ with the most important cases then selected by the chief priest. Other organizations: Beyond the religious organization, a number of community organizations (e.g., youth club and cultural group) and non-government organizations (NGOs) (e.g., Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, Action for Social Advancement, Proshika Centre for Human Development) also work in the Garo community.

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Environmental Management Table 2 Actors at different institutional levels Actors

Institutional level Operational situation

Central government/policy level

Divisional forest office

Geographic area Action

Legal situation

De jure: Policy making, financing

De jure: Legal owner, law enforcer

De facto: Formulate law

De facto: Development work

Policy implementation initiator

National and International

Regional

De facto: negotiator Implementer/range office, beat office

Implementer, field level management

Accuser, Protector, Law enforcer

Part of FD

Local

Community

Resource user

Resource use

De facto: Resource owner De jure: Illegal land owner

Village

Church

Protector of community rights

Village leader

Judge according to customary law

New leader

Negotiator, problem solver

Community organizations mostly deal with cultural issues, while the NGOs provide micro-credit, health and education services discretely. These organizations were found to play a negligible role in the natural resource governance structure in MNP. Therefore, we have excluded their role from our analysis. Interaction Among Actors An analysis of the political interactions between informal and formal actors is central to explaining government attitudes toward park-dependent ethnic communities and vice versa (Agrawal and Ostrom 2001). In MNP, the state is considered the legal owner of the park and pays little or no attention to community land ownership claims. Even the central government downplays the role of NLs in managing park land; with our respondents from the central government stating that it contacts them during particular conflict negotiation only. The ‘Madhupur Wall Construction’ under ‘Madhupur National Park Development Project, 1998’ offers a good example in this regard. Under this project, the government initiated a boundary wall construction around the 1,214 hectare core zone of MNP (as an eco-park) although it would restrict community access to crop fields. The wall construction was initiated in 1999 without prior consultation with the local community (Gain 2007). In response, an ‘anti wall construction’ demonstration rally was organized by the local people onJanuary 3, 2003, led by NLs. The forest guards and police opened gunfire on the rally without alleged provocation by the local people (Gain 2007). In the aftermath, onJuly 4, 2003, senior officials of

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Local De facto: Customary law enforcer

Commune Commune

the government, including the Forest and Environment Minister met with the NLs to try and settle down the situation. The meeting closed with a resolution to form a committee including the NLs to work with the FD. However, it was later found that no potential NLs was included in the committee, and consequently the committee was rejected by the local people. Akama et al. (1996) identified that ethnic differences between the government officials and local communities often enhanced management conflicts in African National Parks. Consistent with this finding, the local forest officials in our study expressed confusion about the indigenous identity of Garo people in Bangladesh and they considered them as settlers rather than natives. The higher-level forest officials (DFO) identified Garo people as traditional land encroachers. In stark contrast, the Garo people blamed the forest officials for corruption. In this polarized situation, both the FD and the local community fall into conflict during the implementation of policy-level directions (e.g., the boundary wall construction). Usually, the FD ends up enforcing rules by arresting and filing legal cases against the members of the community through the formal court system. In this case, NLs, a component of the customary institutional system, then try to resolve the problem either by demonstration or by negotiation with higher authorities. On the other hand, the church resolves the same problem by providing logistical, financial, and legal support to the individuals (Fig. 1). Here a clear distinction can be identified between the operational activities of NLs and the church. NLs work in joint-decision- making, while the church deals with an individual’s legal battle. In this


Policy

Conflicting interaction

DFO

Through demonstration and meeting

FI Range office

Community/ individual

Institutional pitfalla

Church

Village leader

Screening body New leader

Beat

Justice and Discipline Committee

II Approval a

Court

Institutional pitfall means no relation among the acting institutions.

Inter institutional interaction Intra institutional interaction

Note: FI: Formal Institution II: Informal Institution

Fig. 1 Present institutional hierarchy and interaction among actors

situation, forest officials recognize the church as a major impediment in controlling land encroachment. Importantly, the forest officials do not involve VLs in any phase of the negotiation process because they do not recognize the customary informal institutions. This government action marginalizes the power of VLs and brings the NLs forward. It is evident from our field study that direct communication between informal and formal institutions does not really exist in MNP which results in a lack of collaborative learning processes and keeps the policy makers in the dark about collective needs. Government also tends to perceive community interventions as right-seeking inventiveness, thereby missing responsible attitudes toward resource management. In contrast, the informal institutions tend to perceive the formal institutional structures as undermining the traditional rights of Garo people. Sokile et al. (2003) observed a similar situation in their study of the Rufizi Basin in Tanzania, observing that resource governance is stalled by a lack of cooperation. We observed a high degree of non-cooperation between the formal and informal institutions which impedes information exchange regarding formal and informal decisions, institutional change,

common choices and understanding of institutional demands. This gap of communication and cooperation can be identified as a ‘structural hole’, reducing the operational efficiency of both the formal and informal institutions. Here, we need to note that the formal and informal institutions in our study area do not exist in a single hierarchy, instead operating as parallel institutions. Recognizing the parallel nature of the institutions and the nature of ongoing conflict, we can identify an ‘inter-institutional pitfall’ (Fig. 1) which impedes joint-decision-making, leading to inefficient institutional networks and low levels of interinstitutional reciprocity and trust (social capital). Characteristics of Rule Rules indicate the actions which are allowed to be performed and which are not. In addition, the violation of rules results in the authorization of sanctions (Ostrom et al. 1994). Rules may come from both formal and informal institutions. However, under an ‘inter-institutional pitfall’ situation, the formal institution does not recognize the informal laws and imposes extreme sanction and invests

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more in empowering law enforcement officials (Ostrom et al. 1994).Consequently, the informal institutions have to change to cope with the formal legal structure. For example, the existing formal laws in MNP outlaw informal institutional involvement in land resource management (Drong 2009). As a consequence, the past informal institutional structure has undergone a radical change resulting in the deterioration of customary control because of its failure to secure community land rights. During our field research, we found a Garo person saying that, ‘‘…….the forest officials have filed 32 cases against me since I protested against them when they came to evict me and my family from our land’’. He added, ‘‘the forest officials urge for the legal document of our land. But I don’t have any such document. I got the land hereditarily and now from where can I get such a document?’’ In such cases, the individual usually seeks support from the church, although the church can only afford one or two cases per individual. When asked what happens if someone does not get the financial support from anyone, another respondent from the Garo community admitted that the individuals are likely to encroach on land illegally under the auspice of NLs and corrupted forest officials and sell the land to new settlers (for details see Iftekhar and Hoque 2005). Thus, an informal land market has emerged under the control of the NLs who gain the public mandate by capitalizing on the land rights issue. Here, NLs are seen to hold ‘symbolic power’2 and influence the way that social preferences are being shaped in the Garo community. Thus instead of Garo individuals’ rational calculation about their optimal amount of resource (land) provision, political processes that are mostly driven by NLs will lead to collective action. As a consequence, NLs decisions are imposed upon the collective choice under the premise of the group being better off (Krishna 2011). For example, when the NLs negotiate with the government to settle a land ownership dispute, they urge for the legalization of all land being held by Garo people, including both Garo customary land owners and the new Garo settlers or recent illegal land appropriators. As the NLs are in the privileged position of being informal land traders, they can facilitate and patronize land appropriation by the new Garo settlers and push for this to be legalized. As a result, the government often disagrees with the NL’s arguments and the land ownership dispute remains. In this situation, the customary land owners are often not able to effectively raise their voice against the NLs because the NLs have the support of a large portion of the community. 2

Symbolic power is the mediation capability which is acknowledged as the legitimate basis of social position. It governs the interindividual social relationship. Symbolic power is not homogenously distributed among community members and this is the prime cause of leadership creation (Ballet et al. 2007).

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Analysis of Change Changes in Authority and Power Structure Under Adaptive Institutionalization We can observe three important informal institutional changes which are highly influenced by the formal institution. These include: (i) displacement of VLs from a higher to a lower position in the institutional hierarchy; (ii) emergence of NLs replacing VLs in the institutional hierarchy; and (iii) strong appearance of religious leadership (church). Contrasting the past and present role of leaders in the land resource management of MNP, we can trace out the qualitative change in power structure (Table 3) which has implications for institutionalization theory. With the elimination of the colonial regime, the authoritative power of the VLs was also ignored with the inception of the Pakistani and subsequent Bangladeshi regimes, resulting in NLs appearing with new approaches. Importantly, VLs were the customary leaders who were selected on the basis of Garo codes and norms, with the authority to control land resource distribution and represent the collective choices of the community. In contrast, there are no specified codes for the selection of NLs and anyone with inherent leadership traits or ability may become a NL (Krishna 2011). Consequently, there are a number of NLs with different perspectives and interests whose diversified perspectives often do not allow them to uphold the collective choice of the community (Krishna 2011). This situation hampers conflict resolution interventions because the government authority is unable to find a negotiator from the Garo community who is collectively accepted. In contrast to the VLs, the NLs control the land trading market rather than controlling the communal land distribution. Since this trading is completely illegal, the NLs have become the patron of the market actors and the authority of the market. Due to the absence of central leadership, the formal institution cannot check the illegal land trading because there is no visible informal market institution with whom the formal institution can negotiate or allocate graduated sanction to the formal law abiders. Therefore, the contemporary informal land management system and the informal land market mechanism have put the NLs in an advantageous position in comparison to VLs. On the other hand, the church (which was also absent in the past informal institution) is working as a civil society organization to protect the Garo people from the legal actions of formal institution because the church considers the Garo people have an inherent right to own land in MNP. This stand of the church has popularized it among the community members and establishes it as an important actor.

Environmental Management Table 3 Change in authority and its impact Actors

Village leader

Role in past informal institutions

Governmental intervention (operators of change)

Role in changed informal institutions

Impact Role in market

Role in institutional hierarchy

Role in joint-decisionmaking

Land owner on behalf of community

Land privatization

Suppressed leadership

Declined from land ownership and tax collection rights

Suppressed by local leaders

Declined from community representation

Active leadership

Informal regulator of land ownership hand over and distribution

Control land management decisions

Intra-community conflict mitigation

Land pricing authority

Community representative during the dialog with government

Land distributor

Mass appropriation of community land under FD

Tax collector Mediator in intracommunity land conflict

New leader

Church

Symbolic power holder Not a component of past informal institutions

Not a component of past informal institutions

Mass appropriation of community land under FD Imposing restriction over forest land access Filing cases against individuals accused of state rule violation

Symbolic power holder

Community welfare

Changes in Informal Governance Structure Since the FD has become actively involved in the land management systems in MNP, tension between the formal and informal land governance systems has been increasing. As a result, the informal governance structure in the region has changed substantially. More specifically, we observed that informal governance structures have been reframed with two new strata (e.g., new leadership and religious leadership) resulting in significant changes to Garo customs and de facto rules. The major purposes of this reshaped governance structure are: (i) intra-community conflict mitigation over land ownership and (ii) retention of individual land from the FD (government). To accommodate these purposes, each stratum responds quite differently. The New Leadership imposes its political supremacy to mitigate intra-community land ownership conflicts, while the church works for community capacity building based on formal legal procedures. Operational activities (e.g.,, land ownership transfer, land pricing, political support, government-community negotiation processes, financial assistance, or legal support) under the current governance structure are executed to varying degrees by both. The church, as an independent organization, provides incentives for land rights retention on the basis of an individual’s financial and political need. Community

Manifestation of public choice to government

Strongly support community interests during dialog with government

members generally seek the assistance of the church when they face any kind of legal action from the FD. In some cases, they also come to the church to solve intra-community land disputes. However, disputes over informal land ownership, ownership transfer and registration, access to park land and private property boundary demarcation are resolved in village meetings. Here, NLs devise new guidelines for land ownership and impose distributional regulations. In the socio-political context of the study area, joint-decisions are made under local leadership in village meetings and usually NLs hold a certain degree of influence over the decisions. In contrast, the church enjoys relative autonomy in its decision-making (Fig. 2).

Conflict Overview in MNP: Lesson Learnt and the Way Forward Since the establishment of MNP, the government has been trying to establish institutional control over land tenure. To do so, it has enacted new laws to justify its actions which have had the effect of destroying trust and reciprocity between the formal and informal institutions. This has resulted in communication failure, disabling the potential for joint-decisions by mutual arbitration and community empowerment. The disenfranchisement of local (often

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Governance Structure

NLs

Regulation of land price and rights.

Provide political support to safeguard community individuals from state coercion and guarantee land trading

Supervise informal registration of land rights transfer

Subsidize individuals for land rights retention.

Promote individual capacity on legal battles for land.

Provide financial and legal supports to secure individuals land rights

Informal land registration. Act as a judge in village meetings.

Introduce new informal rules in community.

Emergence of new leaders with new social norms.

Prime authority to decide on incentives allotment.

Emergence of ‘Peace and Discipline Committee’ inside Church.

Devise new social rules and judgments to mitigate conflict.

Decisions are made in villagers’ meetings headed by LLs.

Arrange village meetings.

Individuals obey church decisions in land dispute.

Assist capacity building of community to face formal legal procedures.

Provide individual consultation on formal rules and regulations.

Market oriented Church

NLs Regulation

Church Priest use personal influence to mitigate intracommunity land conflict.

NLs Joint decision making

Church

Operationa

Organizational

Process

Level of Implementation

Fig. 2 Changes in informal governance structure and their implementation

indigenous) communities has established suspicious attitudes toward government initiatives resulting in an action– reaction mechanism that involves two phases. First, many community individuals believe that ‘the more land use, the more benefit’, while their permanent land rights are missing. Second, the government enforces legal actions to remove illegal land users. The government also devises

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new policies and laws preserving their legal land ownership and avoiding the participation of the community, generally ending in conflict that completes the loop. This case demonstrates that non-cooperation with informal institutions increases the transaction cost of enforcement because the informal institutions may show adaptive responses to every formal institutional


intervention. Consequently, the formal institution becomes unable to perform its fundamental functional role of reducing the transaction cost of law enforcement (see also Heltberg 2002). In addition, this case study provides further insight to Ostrom’s (1990) observation that a community can conserve the natural resource base through self-organization, collective action, and adaptive knowledge. Our results suggest that the present informal institution works in parallel to the formal institution to govern the illegally owned communal and private land and the inherent features of the informal institution (e.g., self-organization, collective action, and adaptive learning) are devoted to protest the formal institutional enforcement. From this case study, we can also observe that the formal institutional structures can restructure the informal institutional hierarchy. Incorporation of new actors (e.g., NLs in this case study) may open spaces for opportunists, identified by de Soto (2001) as the ‘extralegal’ users of resources. We found that the village or customary leadership has a certain degree of accountability to the community members. On the other hand, NLs are voluntary, often self-interested, actors who neither facilitate communication between the formal and informal institutions nor conserve the communal interests. This situation arises from a lack of interinstitutional reciprocity, trust, and communication which we refer to as an inter-institutional pitfall. Recognizing the challenge, what kind of institutional structure might be able to bridge the inter-institutional pitfall and improve communication and exchange? The successful resolution of land ownership disputes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh provides a number of insights of value to our case study. First, the Government of Bangladesh successfully reduced tensions by enacting a formal Chittagong Hill Tract Peace Accord (1997) which recognized the informal institutions of the local ethnic communities and incorporated the informal institutional actors in a new formal institution known as Hill District Council (Roy 2004). This council has been able to bridge structural holes by facilitating information exchange and cooperation. Such an approach may also be useful in the context of our study area, however, significant research, discussion, and stakeholder engagement remain necessary before designing and implementing another institutional structure in MNP.

Conclusion Understanding the complex roles of, and relationships between, formal and informal institutions in the regulation of natural resource use is central to sustainable develop-

ment. In Bangladesh, as is the situation in many countries, informal governance is generally not considered to be a legitimate resource management regime by the government. In the case of MNP, the informal resource management institutions of the indigenous Garo community have undergone radical changes due to a number of formal institutional interventions since the arrival of the British in 1757. Most significantly, the forced eviction of Garo people from the park, beginning in 1962, has initiated an intense and ongoing conflict over land rights. Further, a series of formal interventions designed to centralize forest resource management have delegitimized customary land ownership patterns resulting in new informal institutional hierarchies. More specifically, the displacement of customary VLs from a higher to a lower position in the institutional hierarchy, the emergence of NLs replacing VLs in the hierarchy and the strong appearance of religious leadership (i.e., the church) has significantly changed the regulation of land markets, informal institutional functions, and joint-decision making in the community. The major purposes of this new informal governance structure are intra-community conflict mitigation over land ownership and the retention of individual land from the government. Importantly, the government’s persistent denial of the role of existing informal institutions in natural resource management is widening the gap between government and community actors and driving land ownership conflicts in a cyclic way. It is also leading to resource degradation. The complex, hostile, and vague interactions observed between the formal and informal actors in Madhupur National Park are resulting in an inter-institutional pitfall, with resulting structural holes evident in the land rightsrelated political system, leading to non-functioning and/or inefficient institutional networks and very low levels of inter-institutional reciprocity and trust. Ultimately, sustainable natural resource management and regulation cannot be achieved in Madhupur National Park without directly addressing this pitfall by fostering social capital between and within the formal and informal institutions. This may include developing inclusive approaches to natural resource and PA management, the establishment of cross-cutting ties between government and community actors, and greater government investment in community welfare, including education and infrastructure. Acknowledgments We are grateful to Professor Audun Sandberg for his constructive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We would also like to thank our research participants from the Garo community and government agencies for their consistent help with, and generous contribution to, our study. The valuable comments and suggestions made by the anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.

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