Conflicting trajectories of landscape transformation in the humid tropical agricultural plantations of the Western Ghats, India

The forest-agricultural landscapes of the humid tropics are transforming in their physical and socio-cultural spaces. Even though the processes of landscape transformation are highly contextual, their drivers, impacts and implications fan out across multiple scales from the local to the global. In the present study, the processes of landscape change, their multi-scalar actors and trajectories are examined in the agricultural plantations of tea, coffee and cardamom within a humid tropical forest of the Western Ghats, India. It employs an integrated multiple-source analysis of data collected through household surveys and interviews, secondary datasets, satellite imageries and litigation documents. The landscape change processes identified in the physical, social and cultural spaces include confiscation of plantations by the state, simplification of agricultural practices or abandonment of cultivation altogether, casualisation and feminisation of labour and non-agricultural diversions such as land speculation and tourism, driven by the global plantation crisis and changes in national and state forest policies. Post-globalisation, there was a high out-migration of labour and a significant decline (43%) of the population in the region. The prominent institutional actors of the state, the planters and the judiciary make these forest-enclosed plantations a highly contested space, with 75% of the area under various conflicts of tenure. These processes and actors had resulted in contrasting trajectories of incipient forest regeneration on the one hand and increased degradation on the other. A contextualized analysis of these trajectories of landscape change in these globally important humid tropical landscapes can valuably inform sustainable natural resource management frameworks.