Property Rights and Climate Change

Land use under changing environmental conditions

Fennie van Straalen, Thomas Hartmann, John Sheehan, Fennie van Straalen, Thomas Hartmann, John Sheehan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315520070
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho medioambiental

Property Rights and Climate Change explores the multifarious relationships between different types of climate-driven environmental changes and property rights. This original contribution to the literature examines such climate changes through the lens of property rights, rather than through the lens of land use planning. The inherent assumption pursued is that the different types of environmental changes, with their particular effects and impact on land use, share common issues regarding the relation between the social construction of land via property rights and the dynamics of a changing environment.

Making these common issues explicit and discussing the different approaches to them is the central objective of this book. Through examining a variety of cases from the Arctic to the Australian coast, the contributors take a transdisciplinary look at the winners and losers of climate change, discuss approaches to dealing with changing environmental conditions, and stimulate pathways for further research. This book is essential reading for lawyers, planners, property rights experts and environmentalists.

Part I
Impacts in changing contexts

1
Climate change-induced property re-evaluation in agrarian contexts

Sony Pellissery and Praveena Sridhar

Introduction

In recent years, climate change and its impacts have emerged as one of the key global issues and have invited attention from diverse sections of the society, ranging from global leaders to small farmers. Climate change is reshaping human civilization. Its effects are being felt across all spheres of human life, from our economies, our cities, our communities to our food system. Climate change can also trigger unheard-of chains of events. It may lead to better policies for improved land use, better regulation of environmental policies for land-based resource use, resettlement and for the conscious protection of natural resources. Land will be pivotal to the systematic planning at different levels that will include changes in rights for access to land, efficient utilization of common land, agricultural transformation, such as change in cropping zones, and increased competition for limited land and water resources. This chapter attempts to show what kind of losses and gains affect property due to the climate change phenomenon.

This chapter is organized into five sections. After an overview of the Indian agrarian economy and land use systems in different geo-climatic regions, the chapter analyses how property re-evaluation takes place due to three factors. The first factor discussed is the direct impact due to climate change events such as floods and droughts. The second factor discussed is property re-evaluation due to mitigation measures. The third factor discussed is property re-evaluation due to adaptation strategies. Though these three factors critically affect the property re-evaluation, there is an element of human agency that can play critical role here, that is, the role of planning. In the fourth section, we show how flawed planning makes the commons fragile and how cities become non-resilient, leading to reduced liveability. After discussing each of these factors, the chapter deals with some of the emerging patterns of property use in the context of the climate change challenge.

Land use patterns in India

“Most poverty is concentrated in rural areas, especially amongst small farmers and landless families” (FAO-IFAD-WFP 2002). In the Global South, particularly in India, land has been the most critical resource that determines progress and prosperity (Wickeri 2011; Pellissery 2016). With climate change, significant changes are being experienced by those who depend on land for their income.

The land in India is classified into nine different categories. These can be broadly categorized as based on land used for: agricultural purposes, forests, non-agricultural land and barren and uncultivatable land. Of the above-mentioned categories, the categories of land for agrarian use account for around 55 per cent of the total landmass of India. It is important to note that the less mechanized, rain-fed agriculture is not a productive endeavour. While around 60 per cent of the population work in the agricultural sector, the same sector contributes only 15 per cent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country. Therefore, agriculture has been the last choice of a job for most people, rather than a vocation that people consciously undertake to achieve progress and prosperity. The semi-skilled and semi-illiterate section of the population finds working on small patches of agrarian land to be the most dependable source of their livelihood.

In a study on LULC (land use and land cover), a substantial change in the LULC of India from 1880–2010 has been observed (Tian et al. 2014). The different periods when changes occurred 1880–1950, 1950–1980, and 1980–2010. From 1880–1950, large portions of forest were cleared under the colonial rule by the British for agriculture and for wooden logs. During 1950–1980, a similar trend continued but under the newly formed Indian state. The trend observed from 1980–2010 has been unique with respect to the forest cover. In this period there has been an increase in forest cover. Also there was an observed increase in the expansion of built-up areas from 0.43 million ha to 2.02 million ha, an increase of 0.26 million hectares every decade. This increase in built-up area is due to the increase in population and also the increase in the density of dwellings in urban agglomerations.

The Indian subcontinent has 15 different agro-climatic regions (Sinha 2007). Differences in these agro-climatic regions and the challenges posed by climate change can be summarized as follows:

• Mountain regions, where agriculture is practised on slopes and livestock such as sheep are depended upon, soil erosion and landslides pose a major threat. This is the Himalayan region of India. High intensity rains lead to excess flow in glacial rivers, bringing flooding to people and property. In one such flood in 2013, 5,700 lives were lost. This has also affected the tourism industry in this picturesque region.
• In the plains around rivers, two different types of threats are faced. In the lower plains, where tube well-based agriculture is practised, flooding is the main threat. With flooding in the Gangetic plains there is significant reduction of fertile soil, leading to low productivity of agriculture. In the upper plains, where a high degree of mechanization of agriculture has taken place, the threat is from water logging, salinity, alkalinity and a falling water table.
• In plateau regions, where rain-fed agriculture is the pattern, the unpredictability of the rains and heavy short spells of rain make agriculture difficult. In the state of Maharashtra there have been three major droughts in the past five years and spates of farmer suicides have been observed. In the past two decades about 300,000 farmers have committed suicide in India and the major reason for this is crop loss (Panagariya 2008).
• In island regions, submergence is the main threat.

This is illustrative of the diversity of different resource endowment of this country and the issues that already exist with respect to their specific geographies. Climate change poses different threats to different regions.

Changes in land use patterns have to be appreciated in the context of laws regarding ownership, transfer and the use of property in India. Land in India is subject to the state. That is the laws and acts passed by the central government are model laws, and they have to be adopted by the states to their specific requirements without compromising the fundamental premise of the model laws. This federal structure has given rise to differential property regimes emerging in India (Pellissery and Biswas 2012).

Impacts of extreme weather events

The impact of climate change is also largely beginning to appear in the form of extreme weather events like floods, droughts, El Niño and increasing average temperatures in the world. The Asia-Pacific region already accounts for 91 per cent of the world’s total deaths and 49 per cent of the world’s total damage due to natural disasters in the last century, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The major impacts induced by climate change specific to India (Rathore 2013; World Bank 2013) are discussed below. Then, its impact on agriculture, and thus land valuation is taken up later.

Some of the key extreme weather events recently experienced in India are:

• Extreme heat: The country is already experiencing warmer weathers and extended summers.
• Changing rainfall patterns: There has been an observed decline in monsoons since 1950s and an increase in instances of heavy rainfall. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, the decrease in rainfall is spatially coherent and not consistent in most states. But the effect of rainfall will be significant in the rain-fed agricultural regions of the states in India, around 60 per cent of the country.
• Droughts: In 2016 alone, drought in India has affected 330 million people (BBC News, 2016). There have been high levels of drought occurrences in the past decade including in 2012 and 2013. It is observed that South Asia has become drier since the 1970s.
• Floods: Higher temperatures have also altered the glacial rivers due to an increased rate of melting, which has led to series of flooding incidents, especially in the Himalayan rivers in India.
• Sea level rise: India has nine coastal states and two groups of islands – Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands. As India is close to the equator, it would suffer a rise in sea levels more than countries in the higher latitudes. Two of the most densely populated cities – Mumbai and Kolkata are also located on the coast.

These changes have affected agriculture, and land for agrarian purposes in significant ways:

• Agriculture and food production reduction due to land degradation: Per capita land holding has decreased systematically since the 1960s. Further, due to the introduction of hybrid agricultural practices since the Green Revolution in the early 1970s, which required the intensive use of fertilizers, the land quality has degraded (Pellissery and Jacobs 2017). There has been an observed reduction in yields of rice and wheat over three decades. In the last two decades this can be attributed to a change in the weather patterns. A reduction of 10–40 per cent of crop production is predicted due to an increase in temperature by 2080. It is predicted there will be a reduction of 4–5 million tons of wheat production with an increase in every 1 degree Celsius temperature (Aggarwal 2008).
• Water security: Private ownership of land in India does not specify who owns what is beneath the land, specifically water. Therefore, groundwater exploitation in India is the highest in the world. With such a high increase in its population, India is already experiencing water stress. This is getting more acute with the change in rainfall patterns. Due to erratic and high density rainfall in short periods of time, the percolation of surface water into the groundwater has actually reduced. Most of the deluge either drains into rivers and subsequently into the sea. With the change in land use patterns, the retention of rain water or river run-offs also reduces the holding capacity of water bodies such as lakes and ponds also, thus making it a case of double whammy. Water security issues in India are a reality. Governments send tankers to supply drinking water to villages that are drought-stricken. For instance, in the droughts in both 2012 and 2016, the Maharashtra government had to send tankers to supply drinking water to the Marathwada region of the state.
• Soil erosion: Due to the sporadic but high intensity rainfall, it is observed that soil erosion will be an inevitable consequence. Farming across India, except in some remote pockets, has been mostly chemical input farming (intense use of fertilizer). This extended use of fertilizers has reduced the fertility of the land.

It is important to contextualize these effects in different agro-climatic regions. Two recent instances of flood and drought serve this purpose. During the flood in the state of Uttarkhand in the Himalayan region in 2013, the government statistics estimated the damage with respect to agriculture was spread over 20,000 hectares and with a loss of more than 18,000 livestock. These losses and damages affect the marginalized sectors of the population the most (Kunwar 2013).

In another major flood in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu in 2015, the loss was over 3.5 lakh (= 100,000) hectares of food crop, around 35,000 hectares of horticulture loss and around 98,000 livestock. This flood affected 3.47 lakh families (PTI 2016).

In the Western Indian state of Maharashtra, only 17.5 per cent of agriculture is practised with the support of irrigation. Droughts in this region have hugely affected the rain-fed agriculture. The drought of 2015 affected 9 million people and 11,800 villages were declared as drought-stricken.

These different cases are indicative of how divergent responses are required. In the one part of the country, flood creates problems for agriculture and people, while in another part of the country, drought is the problem. This unpredictability has pushed people in the rural areas to abandon agriculture. According to the 2001 census, there were 127 million cultivators, but this number had fallen to 118 million in 2011. During the same period, numbers of agricultural labourers increased from 106 million to 144 million (Ministry of Agriculture 2015). As the agriculture becomes less and less productive, people stop cultivating and move to remain as labourers. A significant reason for the low productivity of agriculture in last two decades is climate change effects. Mendelsohn et al. (2000) calculated the reduction in agricultural production due to climate change could be around 12–15 per cent.

The direct consequence of weather events, therefore, is that the value of farm land for the farmer is reduced and he is forced to either leave the village to work in other farms elsewhere or has to move to urban areas looking for a job.

Property re-evaluation due to mitigation measures

The Garnaut Climate Change Review (2008) has convincingly shown that using mitigation efforts will be lower initially, but on a long-term basis the use is much higher than business-as-usual. As the government is taking steps through various measures to depart from business-as-usual, the economic costs are directly visible. One of the costs is in value of property. This section aims to focus on the changes to property valuation through mitigation efforts.

In India, the National Action Plan for Climate Change is the overarching framework through which mitigation efforts are undertaken. Under this there are many initiatives to protect different ecosystems under different climatic zones. With the aim of securing certain specific and fragile ecosystems the Indian government set up the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), composed of experts outside the government, and consequently a high-level working group constituting government members reviewed the WGEEP suggested recommendations and issued guidelines to the states – Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil, Nadu, Maharashtra – on how to set up rules of conduct of activity in ecological zones based on the level of sensitivity. It divided the Ghats into three zones of sensitivity (Gadgil 2011).

The repor...