Considerations for Commons Governance in Chilika Lagoon: New-Commonisation through Codification

Abstract

This thesis examines how communities can re-establish governing authority over shared environmental resources (commons) after periods of dispossession (decommonisation), a process described as ‘new-commonisation’. Focusing on Chilika Lagoon, India, it explores how small-scale fishery communities might regain autonomy following decades of externally-driven decommonisation, caused by privatization, encroachment, elite capture, and fragmented state interventions. The central argument is that legally-grounded recognition of commons is helpful for re-gaining rights and essential for protecting communities from renewed external threat. Drawing on process-tracing analysis of three cases; Shimshal Valley in Pakistan, forest governance under India’s Forest Rights Act (2006), and Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) in Papua New Guinea; the study identifies how community mobilisation and legal codification interact to regain and stabilize self-managed commons. Though the findings are hypothesis generating rather than hypothesis testing, they suggest that enduring governance outcomes emerge when communities achieve de jure recognition of de facto rights, and that their success depends on contextually-dependent enabling conditions, such as equitable enforcement, multi-level support and the mechanism for legal rights. As no two commons are identical, there is no single path to codification; legal arrangements must respond to the specific socio-political and ecological context of each community. This research contributes to commons theory by framing codified legal backing as a critical, yet under-developed, dimension of enduring commons governance, in the face of persistent external pressures.