Researcher(s)
Funder
Global Challenges Research Fund

Exploring a sharing society: land and sustainability in India

In the last decade, 50 million hectares of land have been ‘grabbed’ for urban expansion, industry, infrastructure and mining in the South. Of these, 5 million hectares are in India.

The project will work with partners who lead, advocate for and document peoples’ movements against this land grab and who seek more equitable, sustainable land use. These various groups understand land in multiple ways: as a base for growth, but also as more than individualised property – as collective history, memory, and people's connection to the earth.

The project develops this multidimensional engagement with land academically, and then delves into its practical implications for sustainability.

Among planned events are an impact-oriented workshop which will consider whether ‘multidimensional land’ can be the building block for a ‘sharing society’ of resource use. This will draw on the idea of the ‘sharing economy’, in which users have temporary access to assets with potential capacity, along the lines of Uber and AirBnB. The workshop will investigate whether multidimensional land can be shared among stakeholders who are invested in its use and preservation.