DIVERSITY OF COMMON PROPERTY RESOURCE USE AND DIVERSITY OF SOCIAL INTERESTS IN THE WESTERN INDIAN HIMALAYA

Resources of mountain environments are often held and used as commons. This paper examines the use of mountain commons in two villages in th e Manali area, Kulu Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India, where the land se ttlement of 1886 provided the local people with well defined resource rights and allowed a degree of local control. Each village had a resou rce area which included a series of zones from agricultural land at ab out 2,000 m to the highest pastures at about 4,000 m. Within this area , ten categories of land use were identified: three kinds of private p roperty agricultural land; four kinds of common-property grazing land; and three kinds of forest land, two of which had elements of common-p roperty. Diversity of land use was due to a diversity of interests bas ed on gender, caste, and ethnicity. Village-based social institutions, mahila mandals and mimbers, allowed these diverse interests a voice i n resource management.