Espen Sjaastad

Indigenous land rights in sub-Saharan Africa: Appropriation, security and investment demand

Abstract We discuss the links between rights appropriation, tenure security, and investment demand in sub-Saharan Africa. Common assertions regarding indigenous tenure are: 1. (a) insecurity of tenure leads to suboptimal investment incentives; and 2. (b) appropriation of land rights in the public domain is rent-dissipating. We argue that land use and investment decisions among African farmers often have two motives — productivity and rights appropriation. The usual assertions thus seem contradictory. We offer a conceptual model to show that indigenous tenure may provide equal or higher investment incentives than private rights, and may promote modes of rights appropriation that are productive rather than wasteful.

The Prejudices of Property Rights: On Individualism, Specificity, and Security in Property Regimes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a nation with little wealth must be in want of land privatisation.1 This received truth — a prejudice — continues to animate the policy dialogue in a number of countries where traditional property regimes have not been shown to be failures (Bromley, 1991). In other words, given the ecological-economic nexus, common property regimes can be quite appropriate, despite various efforts to prove them ‘inefficient’ or destructive of environmental resources (Bromley, 1992). In this article we shall address a different prejudice pertaining to property rights — namely, that the transition from common property to private property represents a move towards more individual, more specific, and more secure land rights (Cohen and Weizman, 1975; Demsetz, 1967; Feder, 1987; Feder and Feeny, 1991; Feder and Noronha, 1987; Feder and Onchan, 1987; Feeny et al. 1990; North and Thomas, 1973; Platteau, 1996; Ruttan and Hayami, 1984). This is a prejudice because, to the extent that these outcomes are thought to be desirable, they are only so because of the normative system out of which they arise. In the extreme, institutions that ratify individualism at the expense of social cohesion can be questioned on grounds of sustainability.

Land Reform, Range Ecology, and Carrying Capacities in Namaqualand, South Africa

Abstract In South African rangeland management, there is a long history of using the notion of carrying capacity as a central planning tool for environmental conservation and agricultural modernization. Today, in the new South Africa, the “need” for livestock keepers to adhere to a defined carrying capacity in order to conserve rangeland resources and to achieve economic development remains an institutionalized “fact.” In this article, we use interviews, livestock and rainfall data, policy documents, and aerial photos to discuss the idea of carrying capacity as it is currently used in the implementation of land reform in Namaqualand in the Northern Cape Province. This article is a contribution at the interface of human ecology and political ecology, linking environmental issues to economic constraints, land rights, social justice, and values. Policymakers and extension services usually see carrying capacity as a purely technical issue. We argue that this is problematic because it gives privilege to environmental sustainability and to one particular perception of the ideal landscape at the expense of livelihood security and poverty alleviation. It also perpetuates the colonial myth that the private ranch system is an ideal one, independent of disparate production goals and unequal economic opportunities and constraints, and it ignores evidence going back more than half a century that the Namaqualand range is capable of sustaining livestock densities far greater than those recommended. The winners that emerge from the current policy focus on carrying capacity are the few emergent black commercial farmers as well as conservationist interests; the losers are the majority of poor stockowners in the communal areas.

Climate variability, food production shocks, and violent conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

Earlier research that reports a correlational pattern between climate anomalies and violent conflict routinely refers to drought-induced agricultural shocks and adverse economic spillover effects as a key causal mechanism linking the two phenomena. Comparing half a century of statistics on climate variability, food production, and political violence across Sub-Saharan Africa, this study offers the most precise and theoretically consistent empirical assessment to date of the purported indirect relationship. The analysis reveals a robust link between weather patterns and food production where more rainfall generally is associated with higher yields. However, the second step in the causal model is not supported; agricultural output and violent conflict are only weakly and inconsistently connected, even in the specific contexts where production shocks are believed to have particularly devastating social consequences. Although this null result could, in theory, be fully compatible with recent reports of food price-related riots, it suggests that the wider socioeconomic and political context is much more important than drought and crop failures in explaining violent conflict in contemporary Africa.

Misreading the Arctic landscape: A political ecology of reindeer, carrying capacities, and overstocking in Finnmark, Norway

Sámi reindeer pastoralism in Norway is said to be in a state of crisis that has lasted for several decades and is due to excessive numbers of reindeer. A general overstocking of the range is believed to cause widespread pasture degradation, poor economic performance, and increasing land-use conflicts. These are the main assumptions of a dominant narrative shared by key government and non-governmental actors, most scientists, and the media. The resulting policy focuses on reducing reindeer numbers to set carrying capacities in order to promote ecological sustainability and improve economic performance through the means of increasing carcass weights. The article presents a critical review of the ecological evidence behind the dominant narrative. The authors conclude that the narrative and the associated policy lead to a misreading of the Arctic pastoral landscape that neglects both alternative scientific evidence and interpretations in line with non-equilibrium ecology as well as the indigenous knowledge of the reindeer herders. Hence, such alternative perspectives generally remain invisible to the government institutions that regulate the practice of reindeer management. Further, the authors’ study resonates with wider theoretical debates about state governance within political ecology and development studies in general.

Conservation and Development: Justice, Inequality, and Attitudes around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

ABSTRACT Do national parks promote development in their immediate surroundings? And is local development instrumental in the success of conservation goals? We investigated allocation of opportunities and burdens around a national park in Uganda. Our findings suggest that direct benefits from conservation and development projects may promote distributional justice by compensating for park-related damages, but are too limited in their coverage to impact development. Indirect benefits related to transportation, health, education, and security affect a far greater segment of the population. Furthermore, the benefits of conservation tend to increase local economic inequality. Contrasting tendencies in terms of distributional justice and economic equality can partly be explained by the human geography of national parks and this geography must be taken into account if broad development goals are to be achieved. Improved local attitudes towards the park seem to have resulted from a complex of effects rather than any single development initiative.

The Political Economy of Conservation at Mount Elgon, Uganda: Between Local Deprivation, Regional Sustainability, and Global Public Goods

This paper presents a case study from Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda, examining and deepening an understanding of direct incomes and costs of conservation for local people close to protected areas. In the early 1990s, collaborative arrangements were introduced to Mount Elgon National Park to improve people-park relations and enhance rural livelihoods after a period of violent evictions and severe resource access restrictions. In areas with such arrangements – including resource access agreements, Taungya farming, and beekeeping schemes – we observe a marginal increase in annual incomes for involved households. Other incomes accrue from tourism revenue sharing schemes, a community revolving fund, and payments for carbon sequestration. However, these incomes are economically marginal (1.2% of household income), unevenly distributed and instrumentally used to reward compliance with park regulations. They do not necessarily accrue to those incurring costs due to eviction and exclusion, crop raiding, resource access restrictions and conflicts. By contrast, costs constitute at least 20.5 % of total household incomes, making it difficult to see how conservation, poverty alleviation and development can be locally reconciled if local populations continue to bear the economic brunt of conservation. We recommend a shift in policy towards donor and state responsibility for compensating costs on a relevant scale. Such a shift would be an important step towards a more substantive rights-based model of conservation, and would enhance the legitimacy of protected area management in the context of both extreme poverty and natural resource dependence.

Mathieu versus de Soto: A Comment

In the previous issue of Forum for Development Studies, and in the context of rural Africa, Paul Mathieu airs some concerns about Hernando de Sotos theory of how formalisation of rights to assets may assist in poverty alleviation. In a sharp rejoinder in the same issue, de Soto ridicules Mathieu and his concerns. Mathieus points, however, cannot be dismissed so easily. First, governments may be unwilling to implement changes for reasons of both individual power and economic gain. Second, formalisation programmes are costly, and the substantial funds needed for design and implementation do not seem compatible with the current trend of cutting public expenditure. Finally, de Soto does not pay enough attention to the problem of reaching agreements about acceptable and expedient rights systems. An assertion that all rights are compatible on the ground ignores important problems related to conflicting narratives, identities, and legal traditions. Dr de Sotos ideas about poverty alleviation are, as yet, untested in Africa, and critical views on obstacles that may be encountered should be welcomed, not dismissed.

The Reconstruction of Communal Property: Membership and Rights in Limpopo's Restitution Process

This article analyses the problem membership in the Communal Property Associations that represent beneficiaries in the South African restitution of farmland. As government intends to change the claims deadline from 1998 to 2018, the issues addressed in this article take on greater salience. The recreation of recipient communities raises important issues about the meaning of rights, the meaning of community, and the power to decide about these meanings. The article shows how material considerations have influenced the choices of the actors involved, from prospective members to central government, in a cluster of rural restitution cases in Limpopo Province. In part, the primacy of material considerations reflects the success of the government in deflecting the focus of the land reform process away from justice and towards economic realities. These considerations have also served to exacerbate problems related to overlapping land claims, multiple membership, the ambiguous role of traditional leaders in land reform, gender discrimination, and – more generally – an uneven distribution of the benefits of land restitution. These problems have emerged in a context where government, under pressure to achieve a lot in a limited amount of time, failed properly to analyse and anticipate the scale and nature of the difficulties associated with communal land claims and the formal recreation of community. The result is a land restitution process that in its attempt to resolve old forms of injustice may end up producing new ones.