Social licence issues in developing economies

This chapter considers the concept of a social licence to farm from the perspective of India, which has evolved over time from a colonial past into a democracy with a strong legal system and modern constitution. We suggest that India could have the potential to provide the legal framework to significantly advance the cause of sustainable agriculture. Unlike developed countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and France, India’s Constitution provides a right to life and explicitly incorporates environmental protection and improvement as part of state policy. It therefore has, to some extent, a structural advantage, although without more progress on poverty alleviation and food security the path forward will be painstakingly slow. History, population pressures, extreme poverty, economic, cultural and political capacity constraints, among many others, are all factors that must be taken into account to understand the inability of both the developed and developing world to move more rapidly towards a more sustainable form of agriculture. This chapter will focus on the development of agriculture in India, with some comparative examples from pesticide use in China and Bhutan. The problems identified may reflect the grim reality of developing nations, such as India, with relatively few resources to tackle the social licence aspect of farming. We will attempt to provide a different perspective on social licence to farm issues than may emerge from other chapters. We will highlight the competition between industry’s desire to use the environment as a ‘sink’ for noxious by-products and farmers’ desire to use the same environment for their economic interests. We will also highlight the problem of farmers themselves as sources of harmful pollutants. In this way, we hope to demonstrate that conflicts over social licence are about the legal and political system rebalancing the private interests of competing users. In the case of India, we will demonstrate how the Constitution, an overarching instruction to the courts about how they ought resolve such tensions, is a critical determinant to the outcome of such social licence to the environment conflicts. The chapter will conclude by briefly highlighting the equally serious problems facing a highly developed country (Australia). We will discuss the unsustainable farming practices and water usage of Cubby Station in the Murray– Darling Basin