Economic Value of Village Common Property Resources in Ganjam District of Orissa

Abstract

The common property resources (CPRs) play an important role in the ecological, socioeconomic and cultural life of the people of the villages in India. The rural CPRs include ponds, grazing lands, threshing ground, village forests, and orchards and so on. It is reported that the income generated by the CPRs for the poor rural families is higher than the benefits derived from a number of anti-poverty programmes.

The failure of the economic markets to reflect the total economic value (TEV) of the CPRs is often cited as the most prominent factor behind the 'tragedy of commons'. During the last two decades in environmental and ecological economics conceptualizations have advanced to capture the components of TEV of environmental resources through a number of market and non-market techniques. This paper applies some of those methods to determine the economic value of the CPRs in three villages - Gurunthi, Moundpur and Krishnapur - of Ganjam district of Odisha, India. The study uses a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) survey mainly to derive the present use value of the resources in money terms. An attempt is also made to elicit the preferences and willingness to pay of the people for the continued existence of the resources.

The study concludes that the CPRs yield a variety of goods and services with a small amount of labour that fetches a good return in the market.

The net present value (NPV) calculated from the direct use value of the resources is comparable with the value of the private lands of the villages. People feel that they should be adequately compensated when development projects claim their CPRs.