Why Must India Recognise Its Open Ecosystems? Rethinking ‘Wastelands’ and the Role of Pastoral Communities

The open ecosystems of India also known as wasteland are essential ecologically and home to pastoralism &this needs policy change and participatory conservation efforts.

There are many and varied landscapes within India and they contain a large category that were long considered by economists to be ecologically deprived; the famous wastelands. These ecosystems range in locations, sizes and include arid grasslands, scrub forests, alpine meadows and open savannah and maintain a delicate balance, defining and supporting biodiversity, climate, and traditional ways of life. However, these have been misclassified in colonial and utilitarian logic, resulting in a general neglect and wrong policy interventions, usually in favour of tree plantation, industrialisation projects or development of infrastructures that destroy their ecological integrity.More importantly, these open landscapes are the lifeline of communities, some of whom include the Rabari, Gujjar, Bakarwaland Dhangar,who use these landscapes to rear their livestock and travel seasonally as well as to manage land that they have co-evolved with and have sustained these ecosystems over centuries. The fact that they are barred from formal conservation discourse is risky both ecologically and culturally. The article steps into the rich history, potential and offerings of the open ecosystems of India, challenges the legacy of the label wasteland, and makes a case to take a paradigm shift on land-use policy and stories of conservation. The preservation of these lands cannot be limited to the realm of environmental justice: the decision to recognise and preserve these lands is an act of commitment to an inclusive and sustainable development that rests on both scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge.

Concept of Open Ecosystems

Ecology: Minimalism as Diversity
In spite of the low density of trees, open ecosystems exhibit the remarkable diversity. Grassland mosaics are conducive to species such as the Indian wolf, chinkara and caracal and are good habitat to endemic medicinal plants and pollinators which occur in alpine meadows. They include low-density plants and seasonal changes as the features of their ecological architecture, which leads to resilience against climate variations and supports species that form the niches usually unaddressed in the forest-based conservation paradigm.

Climate and Soil: Carbon Bank Secret
Open ecosystems are critical in terms of carbon storage mostly by fixation in the soil. These landscapes do not hold carbon in biomass as it is the case with dense forests but ensures its stability in the root systems and topsoil. In semi-arid areas, such as the Deccan Plateau, scrublands are used to prevent desertification, moderating microclimates and regulating hydrological cycles via ground water recharge and albedo. Climatic services provided by them are the less put-value given that green-cover measurements which give precedence to the tree density, exist.

Cultural Landscapes: Co-evolution with Communities
The evolution of many open ecosystems has been with human management, especially local stewardship of pastoral and agro-pastoral people. Rotational grazing and movement according to seasons leads to the regeneration of the grassland avoiding overcrowding, thereby creating a sustainable relationship between land and livelihood. Such landscapes are not just ecologic areas, they are cultural spaces with decades and centuries of adjusting the use of lands, oral education culture and mutual self-government.

Misconceptions: The Price of Oversimplification
They are perceived to be unproductive or even degraded land with incorrect notions grounded on colonial and industrial models of land uses. These sweeping generalisations can encourage an ill-considered policy of afforestation or infrastructure on ecosystems not well-suited to these activities, which menace biodiversity and cultural identity.

The Misnomer of Wasteland

A History of Mislabelling (Colonial Origins)
The wasteland concept grew in the British colonial era and it has been based on the land-use ideologies of utilitarianism which holds that the land is productive when it is under agriculture or forest. Any land that was not giving timber or crops was declared as waste without the consideration of the ecological role that they play. This reductionist categorization still continues to modern policy as it determines the Wasteland Atlas of India, and land-use choices that favour development at the expense of conservation.

Policy Persistence
According to the Wasteland Atlas of India published by the Department of Land Resources, almost seventeenpercent of the Indian land is categorized as a wasteland. This involves deserts, high altitude meadows, wetlands and grasslands most of which are biodiversity hotspots. This kind of labelling exposes these zones to forests, industries and renewable energy projects which in most cases do not involve ecological analysis. Land cover is considered as a proxy of land value by the atlas whilst relegating the cultural parameters and ecological parameters.

Ecology Ramification
The result of misclassification is our use of such tricks as monoculture plantations and fences that destroy the original ecosystems. As one example, afforestation of grasslands violates soil carbon cycles and pushes other species such as the Great Indian Bustard and the Indian wolf out of their native habitats. Scrublands and ravines that are critical in water-holding and preventing erosionare not considered important or taken as they have to serve other purposes, which weakens their inherent protection.

Social Fallout
The pastoral communities that rely on the landscapes as grazing grounds are displaced and their livelihood is taken away including the Rabari, Dhangar, and Bakarwal. Their long-standing land management is not included in the official conservation models even though it contributes to the health of the ecosystem. Their label as the wasteland negates their culture and destroys the principles of community-led sustainability.

Pastoralists and their Ecological Role

Pastoralists of India living as mobile and semi-mobile livestock keepers and functioning across open spaces are an important component of the ecology of India, but are underrepresented and under-accepted in the general conservation and land development aspects of the land.

Mobility as a Basis of Livelihood
Gujjars Bakarwals, Rabaris, DhangarsandMaladharis are pastoralists who use seasonal population movement to utilise the grazing land of varying topography- Himalayan grasslands and the east to the arid thorny plains. This free movement averts over-grazing, it maintains regeneration of pastures and it keeps animals healthy. Such patterns, usually centuries old, are influenced by the ecological cycles and traditions, and pastoralism is a well-proven pattern of an ecologically advantageous system of land use.

Grazing and Ecological Stewardship
The view that managed grazing is degrading is not true nevertheless, it improves biodiversityin the hands of pastoralists. The livestock movement allows the spreading of seeds, suppresses of invasive species, and structures grasslands. Dung fertilises the soil and rotational grazing simulates the actions of a natural herbivore grazing, maintaining pollinators and ground-nesting birds. Pastoralists,therefore are de facto managers of open ecosystems and safeguard ecological order by way of living rituals.

Native Knowledge and Adaptation
The pastoral communities have strongecology intelligence; they understand when to start moving herds, how to measure the health of the pasture in addition to understanding which breeds are adaptable in particular climates. They have native animals, such as the tough Kankrejcattle or Changthangi goats, which are genetically accustomed to such local environments and thus provide resilience when subjected to climatic pressures. This indigenous knowledge can play an imperative role in climate adaptation policies.

Policy Shadows and Blind Spots
In spite of their contribution, the pastoralists are confronted with diminishing commons, fencing, afforestation efforts, and lock-out of pastoralists in protected lands. Sedentary agricultural or industrial land use is privileged over mobile livelihoods in the policies. This discrimination in form of non-recognition of the communities and inaccessibility to forest rights disadvantages such communities facing the risks of cultural oblivion and even ecological extinction.

Ecological significance of wastelands

The so-called wastelands in India (which, are commonly assumed to be barren lands deemed unproductive), are actually quite rich in ecological terms and they contribute heavily to climate regulation, tiny fraction of biodiversity preservation and to rural lives and livelihoods of people.

Biodiversity Reservoirs
Grassland, scrub and rock outcrops are wastelands that have endangered and unique species. The Indian wolf, the caracal, Bengal florican and the Great Indian Bustard rely on these open habitats as habitats to survive. Migratory birds and amphibians are supported in the marshes and in salt flats and desert oceans contain tough flora and fauna. Such landscapes do not fall under a responsible area and thus preservation of these landscapes becomes important to the ecology of India.

Regulation of Climate and Soil health
Wastelands are the open ecosystems and thus play a large part of making the climate resilient. They have soils which serve as carbon sinks where they can hold organic matter and stabilize greenhouse gases. These lands control microclimates via albedo and replenishing groundwater compared with monoculture plantations. Scrublands, savannah preventsdesertification whereas alpine meadows and zones of glaciers affect hydrological processes. Their eco services are undervalued by the biases in the policies that preference the tree covers in favour of the soil-based carbon storage.

Ecosystem services and livelihoods
The grazing, fodder, fuel wood, and medicine plants picked by many rural and pastoral communities rely on the lands. The degraded pastures are termed as wastelands and facilitate the rotations grazing systems that can improve soil fertility and biodiversity. Village grasslands such as commons constitute part of the livestock-based economy, particularly, in arid and semi-arid land. They are generally not visible to the established land-use indicators and yet they support the livelihoods of millions of people.

Misclassification
The word wasteland fixes a concept of utilitarianism that ignores the value of ecology. These territories tend to be infested by afforestation policies, solar plants and other industrial activities, which disturb delicate ecosystems. Their ecological value must be appreciated by a change in policy that is, shift towards the extraction, restoration and neglectlessness to stewardship.

Policy Gaps

There is an increasingly urgent danger to the open ecosystems of India arising not only of the ecological stresses but also due to policy gaps, and interventions that fail to understand their worth and functioning.

A Biased Conservation Fore-Sight
Forested landscapes have always been given priority in India when it comes to environmental policies at the expense of open ecosystems. Even the afforestation under schemes like Green India Mission tends to encroach on the scrublands and grasslands and replaces the native species through planted exotic or fast-rising one like eucalyptus or Prosopis juliflora. These interventions distort indigenous biodiversity, change hydrological flows and diminish the storage of carbon in the soil.

Renewable Energy Projects
Enormous quantum of solar and wind energy plants are being erected on the lands on which wastelands are located. Although renewable energy is essential, its implementation on sensitive conservation commons displaces pastoral settlers and subdivides habitats. As an example, wind parks in the Thar Desert resulted in limited access to grazing lines, and affected livelihoods along with migratory species, such as the Great Indian Bustard.

Blind Spots in Law
Laws do not always apply to open ecosystems and their consumers. The Forest Rights Act (2006) centres on forest dwellers and does not give any formal recognition to the pastoralists. The same applies to land-use planning systems, which often do not incorporate seasonal movement or rights to common grazing resulting in fencing, fragmentation and loss of access to formerly communal commons.

Inadequate Ecosystem Specific Policies
India does not have individual protection systems of the open ecosystems. They are viewed as degraded lands that should be rehabilitated instead of living biomes that need to be managed uniquely. This leads to policies which only focus on the ecological niceties, which include soil-based carbon sequestration or the significance of rotational grazing in sustainability of biodiversity.

Conclusion

The open ecosystems of India that are commonly categorised as wastelands are ecological resources and therefore a priority that should be actively discussed in the policy, conservation and development fronts of the country. To the contrary, these are not desolated, idle lands but richly endowed with life, inhabited by endangered species, pools full of soil carbon, and traditional pastoral lives that have been with them since time immemorial. The ‘wasteland’ labelling associated with the colonial history of land classification still misrepresents land-use priorities, promoting interventions, such as:afforestation and industrialisation, which is destabilising both their ecological integrity as well as displacing people.It is not only necessary to recognise the value of open ecosystems, but it is also necessary to understand the underlying mentality behind the existence of an open ecosystem, to stop treating them as missing pieces of the forest map and instead treat them as biomes as essential as other biomes as well. The conservation strategies should stop focusing on trees but instead entail pastoral understanding, community care and climate resilience by soil-based techniques. Such reimagining is not only green but is socially just. The ecological future of India is also synonymous with recognising what is there in plain view, but as the green landsare violated under the name of wastelands.