Commons that provide: the importance of Bengaluru’s wooded groves for urban resilience

Abstract

Urban commons constitute important social-ecological systems for the resilience of cities of the Global South. However, rapid urbanization has led to large-scale degradation and transformation of several commons, impacting the resilience of traditional and vulnerable users. Gunda thopes (hereafter ‘thopes’) are wooded groves that constitute important yet neglected peri-urban commons of Bengaluru city in southern India. Traditionally used and managed by local communities, these thopes as urban commons provided a range of ecosystem services. Thopes supported traditional livelihoods and subsistence use by local communities, urban poor and migrants and were central to the cultural lives of local residents. Urbanization has resulted in changes to the status, use, management and perceptions of thopes with significant degradation in the last three decades contributing to declining ecosystem services. This paper examines the loss of ecological and social resilience, especially for marginalized residents, when ecosystem services of urban commons decline owing to urbanization.

Keywords

• urbanization
• urban commons
• ecosystem services
• social–ecological systems
• resilience
• india