Policies, Interventions and Institutional Change in Pastoral Resource Management in Borana, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

The Borana rangelands of Southern Ethiopia are characterised by extensive livestock production under a communal land-use system that has evolved in response to variable rainfall and uncertain production conditions. However, the last two decades have witnessed an increasing privatisation of rangelands for crop production and private grazing. The results of a quantitative assessment are used to develop a framework for assessing the drivers of change and their long-term implications. It is concluded that certain national policies have resulted in conflicts of authority between traditional and formal systems, creating an avenue for spontaneous enclosures, associated conflicts and decreasing human welfare.

New rules are not rules: Privatization of pastoral commons and local attempts at curtailment in southwest Madagascar

“…The factors causing scarcity of the samata stocks are also widely known from other cases of dismantling of common pool resources: population growth (Niamir-Fuller and Turner 1999;Haller 2010), lower regeneration rates caused by climatic changes (Desta and Coppock 2004;Beyene 2011), higher pressure and overuse of the open access stock caused by the emergence of private stocks (Williams 1996). However, unlike many other cases, the privatization was not driven by changes in the regional and household economy (Ensminger 1997;Desta and Coppock 2004;Namgail et al 2007) or the overall political and economic system and its policies (Ensminger 1996;Getachew 2001;Kamara et al 2004).…”

“…Much effort has gone into identifying the drivers of such property rights transformations: population growth, immigration, resource use conflicts, commercialization, infrastructural development, technological change and intensified agriculture (Ensminger 1996(Ensminger , 1997Woodhouse et al 2000;Cleaver 2002;Lesorogol 2003Lesorogol , 2008Desta and Coppock 2004;Kamara et al 2004;Behnke 2008;Haller 2010;Beyene 2011). However, to date, little empirical work has been done to establish the processes and mechanisms that translate the motivation of individual users or groups into a stable transformation of property rights (Mwangi 2007).…”

The transformation of the Afar commons in Ethiopia: State coercion, diversification and property rights change among pastoralists

“…Berhanu et al (2007) describes for the Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia the importance of human capital investment and related support services for improving the pastoralist capacity to manage risk through a diversified income portfolio. The increasing privatization of rangelands for crop production and private grazing along this diversification is explained by Kamara et al (2004): certain national policies have resulted in conflicts of authority between traditional and formal systems, creating an avenue for spontaneous enclosures, associated conflicts and decreasing human welfare. finds that in Kenya households' gains from privatization depend on the particular ways of how the process of land tenure change and the pattern of diversification were integrated into the pastoral livelihood.…”

Comparing the Effectiveness of Informal and Formal Institutions in Sustainable Common Pool Resources Management in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Contributions of informal institutions to sustainable CPR management have been affected by conditions such as high population growth on limited CPRs (Dore 2001;Berhanu et al 2004), chronic poverty which can force the rural poor to free ride on CPRs (Banana et al 2007), lack of empowerment of CPR users (Average & Desmond 2007), increase in modernisation that can dissolve tradi t ionally developed values (Appiah-Opoku 1999), change in land tenure affecting the access to CPRs (Zelealem & Leader-Williams 2005), policies that do not give specifi c roles to informal institutions in sustainable CPR management (Brown 1999) and unclear boundaries of communal forests and grazing lands (Kamara et al 2004). Additionally, the socioeconomic characteristics of the CPR users infl uence the effectiveness of informal institutions, although the influence can be site-specific and varied among localities.…”