PASTORAL COMMONS SENSE: LESSONS FROM RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN POLICY, LAW AND PRACTICE FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF GRAZING LANDS

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper analyses key issues concerning the collective management of grazing lands, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. In the dry belt South of the Sahara, natural resource management systems need to come to terms with an environment characterised by scarce and erratic rainfall, entailing that resources fluctuate considerably in time and space, and that neither the resource base nor the user community are stable and clearly delimited. Herd mobility is the key strategy used by herders to cope with this difficult environment. As with other common pool resources (CPR), recent legislation has moved towards the recognition of mobility as the key strategy for pastoral resource management, although implementation is lagging and bedevilled by conflict and ambiguity among the plethora of institutions involved. Examples of successful and less successful CPR pastoral systems—ranging from the Scottish crofters to Kenyan Masai—are given. The paper describes the importance of common rangelands for the livelihoods of the poor and the major trends in relevant policy and legislation; it analyses a series of successful and unsuccessful rangeland management systems and draws conclusions on the factors affecting the nature and performance of these systems. It discusses key factors affecting the nature and performance of CPR management regimes and the importance of: • establishing secure legal rights for local communities over the grazing land on which they depend; and • creating conditions that enable local communities and their elected representatives to assume their responsibilities and manage these resources in a sustainable and equitable manner.