COMMUNITY IN CONSERVATION

AFRICA

LAND TENURE/ PROPERTY RIGHTS/COMMONS

Fortmann, L (1985). “The tree tenure factor in agroforestry with particular reference to Africa.” Agroforestry Systems 2: 229-251.

Fortmann, L (1986). The role of local institutions in communal area development in Botswana. Land Tenure Center Research Paper #91, Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Fortmann, L (1990). “Locality and custom: non-aboriginal claims to customary usufructory rights as a source of rural protest.” Journal of Rural Studies 6(2): 195-208.

Fortmann, L (1995). “Talking claims: discursive strategies in contesting property.” World Development 23(6): 1053-1063.

This article examines discursive strategies in the struggle over property rights in rural Zimbabwe. Stories told by villagers and the owners or former owners of nearby large commercial farms are analyzed in terms of their framing of the issue, the voice of the teller, time frame and audience. Villagers' stories are shown to legitimize present claims in terms of past recognition of their access rights. Farmers' stories are shown to attempt to shift part of the legitimacy of their property claims onto grounds of ecological stewardship. (SSCI)

Fortmann, L and J Bruce (1993). Tenure and gender issues in forest policy. in Living with trees: Policies for forestry management in Zimbabwe, World Bank Technical Paper #210. PN Bradley and K McNamara, Ed. Washington, World Bank.

Fortmann, L and C Nhira (1992). Local management of trees and woodland resources in Zimbabwe: a tenurial niche. OFI Occasional Papers #43, Oxford, Oxford Forestry Institute.

Freudenberger, KS (1995). Tree and land tenure: using rapid appraisal to study natural resource management. A case study from Anivorano, Madagascar. Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Freudenberger, M, J Carney, et al. (1997). “Resiliency and change in common property regimes in West Africa: the case of the tongo in the Gambia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.” Society and Natural Resources 10(4): 383- 402.

West African rural communities frequently create rules and conventions to define rights of access and conditions of use to natural resources of great use and exchange value. One such example, the tongo, is all oscillating common property regime that regulates seasonal access to vegetation and wildlife located within village commons and an individually appropriated lands in many areas of The Gambia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. This ensures that a particular resource, such as fruits from domesticated and wild trees or grasses used for thatch, reach full maturity before being harvested by the community at large. While it often is concluded that these institutional arrangements are declining, this article adopts a historical perspective in showing that these regimes are much more resilient and flexible than commonly assumed. The authors suggest that the tongo is a foundation for working with African indigenous knowledge and institutions to develop an alternative, yet distinctly African, approach to resource conservation. (Source)

Ilahaine, H (1995). Common property, ethnicity, and social exploitation in the Ziz valley, southeast Morocco. Paper presented at the IASCP conference.

Kramer, RA and V Ballabh (1992). Management of common-pool forest resources. in Sustainable Agricultural Development: The Role of International Cooperation. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference of Agricultural Economists. GH Peters, Ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 435-446.

Lastarria-Cornhiel, S (1997). “Impact of privatization on gender and property rights in Africa.” World Development 25(8): 1317-1333.

This paper explores the transformation of customary tenure systems and their impact on women's rights to land in Africa. Emphasis is placed on the diversity of land rights within customary tenure systems, the different institutions and structures (e.g., inheritance, marriage) that influence rights to land, and the trend toward uniformity and increasing patrilineal control. With privatization, different rights to land have become concentrated in the hands of those persons (such as community leaders, male household heads) who are able to successfully claim their ownership right to land, while other persons (such as poor rural women, ethnic minorities) lose the few rights they had and generally are not able to participate fully in the land market. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.

Makuku, S (1993). “Community approaches to common property resources management: the case of the Norumedzo community in Bikita, Zimbabwe.” Forest Trees and People Newsletter 22: 18-24.

McGranahan, G (1991). “Fuelwood, subsistence foraging, and the decline of common property.” World Development 19(10): 1275-1287.

Ideally, common property can adapt to particularities in the social and physical environment to create environmentally sustainable regimes. In practice, common fuelwood foraging has been subject to numerous problems intimately linked to the historically changing role of common property. Schematic histories of fuelwood and forests in Europe and Java illustrate how common property systems have been undermined, and the different implications their dissolution can have. Both cases indicate that fuelwood problems may be best interpreted within the rubric of subsistence foraging and the decline of common property, rather than that of energy shortage and tree mismanagement. (Journal)

Neef, A and F Heidhues (1994). “The role of land tenure in agroforestry: lessons from Benin.” Agroforestry Systems 27: 145-161.

Nyerges, A (1996). “Ethnography in the reconstruction of African land use histories: a Sierra Leone example.” Africa 66(1): 122- 144.

The history of vegetation and land use in western Africa includes a pattern of environmental change that can best be described as gradual, subtle, and difficult to measure accurately. As compared, for example, with the process of large-scale felling in Amazonia, deforestation in this context is not readily amenable to analysis and quantification. Local ethnographic, ecological, and ethnohistorical techniques, however, can be used to develop the information required to advance our understanding of the processes of land use and forest change in the region. In this article, research into the contemporary ecology and ethnography of one swidden farming group, the Susu of Sierra Leone, is combined with historical reconstruction and ethnohistorical documentation of the area, beginning with the visit of the Portuguese Jesuit Priest Fr Balthazar Barreira in 1516. Later documentary sources include the journal of the British staff sergeant Brian O'Beirne, who explored the road from Freetown to the Fouta Jallon in 1821, and an account of a regional tour by the colonial traveller Frederick Migeod in 1922. These and other data are used to determine how present production systems cause processes of forest change, to assess the extent to which present production systems reflect the past, and to determine how past systems have affected the environment and changed and evolved over time. (Source)

Peters, P (1992). “Manoeuvres and debates in the interpretation of land rights in Botswana.” Africa 62(3): 413-434.

Peters, P (1994). Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy and Culture in Botswana. Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press.

Rohde, R (1993). Afternoons in Damaraland: common land and common sense in one of Namibia's former homelands. Centre of African Studies Occasional Paper #41, University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh.

Schroeder, R (1997). “Re-claiming land in the Gambia: gendered property rights and environmental intervention.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87(3): 487-508.

By definition, land reclamation programs render marginally productive land resources more valuable to a broader set of users. The question of who gets access to rejuvenated lands is often highly political, however. Environmental managers ''reclaim'' land resources by rehabilitating them, but they simultaneously reanimate struggles over property rights in the process, allowing specific groups of resource users to literally and figuratively ''re-claim'' the land. Relying on data gathered during fourteen months of field work between 1989 and 1995, this paper analyzes the openings created by environmental policy reforms introduced over the past two decades along The Gambia River Basin, and the tactics and strategies rural Gambians have developed to manipulate these policies for personal gain. Specifically, I demonstrate how women market gardeners pressed ''secondary'' usufruct rights to great advantage to ease the economic impact of persistent drought conditions for the better part of a decade, only to have male lineage heads and community leaders ''re-claim'' the resources in question through donor-generated agroforestry and soil and water management projects. This is thus a study of the responses different community groups have made to a shifting international development agenda centered on environmental goals. It is simultaneously an analysis of those environmental policies and practices and their impact on gendered patterns of resource access and control within a set of critical rural livelihood systems. (Source)

Shepherd, G (1992). The realities of the commons: answering Hardin from Somalia. in Forest Policies, Forest Politics. G Shepherd, Ed. London, Overseas Development Institute.

Tisdell, C and K Roy (1997). “Good governance, property rights and sustainable resource use.” South African Journal of Economics 65(1): 28-43.

Wilmsen, E (1989). Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.