Founded on 11/11/2014 at Harvard Law School, and incubated at the Centre for Policy Research, LRI turns 11 today! The world today is remarkably different than at the time of LRI’s founding. Climate devastation, wars, internal armed conflict, and growing political and social polarisation have created unprecedented pressure on existing policy imaginaries relating to land, water, and forests, and indeed on the social contract between state and citizens envisaged in our Constitution. These changed circumstances have led us to reimagine the work of the Land Rights Initiative as it enters its second decade.

Last year, to mark their milestone 10th anniversary, LRI launched a year-long series of talks on “Legal History”. Celebrating LRI’s pioneering achievements in bringing land rights to the focus of academic and policy work in India, this series featured talks by twelve legal scholars, practitioners, and historians. The speakers lectured on a diverse range of subjects using a “legal historical” approach, one of the methodological approaches used by LRI in its work over the past decade. The goal of this series was also to take stock of all the changes in the legal landscape over the past decade across areas of law as diverse as property, taxation, free speech, criminal laws, artificial intelligence and copyright, electoral laws, competition and bankruptcy law, and to examine the intersections of these laws with LRI’s work over the past decade. Given the immense popularity of the series, LRI will be launching the next year long instalment of the Legal History Series soon.

This year, LRI will also be launching a new research project in the area of Climate Justice. Recognising that the atmosphere is an “ecological commons”, climate justice demands that these commons not be enclosed by a handful of polluters. Climate justice also demands that people be compensated for the impact of climate chaos caused by the actions of others. But above all, climate justice demands that every person, community, and society have the freedom to create economies that cause no harm to the climate or to other people. The climate justice movement builds on grassroots traditions often led by marginalised groups resisting legacies of colonialism and focuses on climate debt as a key organising arena. The climate justice movement is intersectional, understanding that intersecting social identities shape how people experience privilege and oppression.

India’s strategy for combating climate devastation as outlined in the government’s “National Climate Mission”, and in its “Nationally Determined Contributions” under the Paris Agreement have eight pillars. One of the pillars is afforestation and combating deforestation. India is a pioneer in the adoption of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, which recognises both individual and community rights to the forest of Scheduled Tribes or indigenous groups and other traditional forest dwellers. The Forest Rights Act encapsulates two important aspects of indigenous imagination. The first is that humans are not separate from the environment, and therefore no afforestation policy is workable without the active engagement of the communities that have been living in forests as their way of life for centuries. The second is that “jal, jungle, zameen” (“water, forest, and land”) are part of one indivisible ecosystem which is not just crucial to the Adivasi or indigenous way of life but for climate sustainability on planet earth. India has no legal framework to address climate concerns of other ecologically vulnerable communities like fisherfolk, pastoral and other nomadic communities.

LRI’s Climate Justice project will have four focus areas. First, ensuring effective implementation of existing domestic law like the Forest Rights Act in order to preserve and regenerate India’s forest cover. Second, aligning national laws pertaining to land, water, and forests to help government and the people better respond to climate threats. LRI has already done preliminary work in this area with their “Mapping Indian Land Laws” project, which is now available both in its web and mobile versions on landlawsofindia.org. This is India’s first ever interactive, exploratory archive of over five hundred colonial and post-colonial land, water and forest laws, a veritable “google maps for land laws”. Third, realigning international law frameworks currently operating in silos, including the following treaties, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Fourth, enabling alignment of India’s national laws on land, water, and forests, with the international legal framework described above, and in the process ensuring climate justice for all.

As always, we remain incredibly grateful to the Centre for Policy Research, the Centre on Law and Social Transformation at the University of Bergen, Harvard Law School, and our researchers, donors, mentors, collaborators, government, civil society groups, and communities that have made this journey possible and our work sustainable.

Dr. Namita Wahi,
Founding Director, Land Rights Initiative,
Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research