Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 25, Issue 2, April 2008, Pages 240-248
Land Use Policy

Securing access to drylands resources for multiple users in Africa: A review of recent research

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2007.07.002Get rights and content

Abstract

This review discusses persistent tensions in efforts to secure land rights in Africa's drylands. Some researchers and practitioners advocate for formal, legal recognition of group rights as a way to secure access for drylands resource users. Others, on the other hand, speak against formal, legal protections. They argue that much of Africa's drylands are collectively held, often under customary tenures. Statutory law may undermine the dynamism, flexibility and inclusiveness of such tenures. By reviewing innovative efforts at securing access in different parts of Africa, the paper shows that any attempt to secure access for multiple users in drylands environments needs to identify frameworks for negotiated conflict resolution, crafting rules from the ground upwards, in addition to a more generic identification of rights. Policy-makers can thus focus on process, as well as the content of tenure arrangements, reconciling statutory rights with customary rights. For rights to be meaningfully secured, however, there is need to identify the nature and sources of threats that create insecurities and tailor policy solutions to threats. Elite capture and exclusion of women and young people continue to pose significant challenges in such decentralized processes.

Introduction

The past decade has seen a renewed interest among donors, researchers and practitioners in drylands development. Most of the world's drylands share similarities of low and variable rainfall (which introduces risk into life-supporting systems), fairly high social and natural diversity and striking consistency in the use of common property arrangements for resource management and access (Mortimore, 1998). In Africa alone, drylands (excluding deserts) cover 40% of the land surface and support an equal proportion of Africa's inhabitants (Anderson et al., 2004). Drylands contain most of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Mortimore, 1998): 12 of the world's 20 most disadvantaged countries are in dryland Africa. Among the populations of the drylands it is often the women who produce, manage and market most of the food for their families and societies, and who work directly with natural resources (FAO, 2003).

While the contribution of drylands and their populations to national and global economies and values are understated, their potentials for livestock development, wildlife and tourism, mining, solar and wind energy, etc., are clearly recognized (Anderson et al., 2004). But the populations living in these ‘marginal’ areas continue to face declining social and economic conditions (Swallow and McCarthy, 1999). The donor-supported, national government-led technical solutions of the 1960s and 70s such as range rehabilitation, water development, de-stocking, veterinary programs and livestock marketing interventions have failed (Sandford, 1983). These were primarily targeted at subsistence pastoral production systems with the objective of increasing productivity and controlling environmental degradation.

Similarly, the state-led institutional interventions of the 1980s that focused either on nationalizing and/or privatizing drylands resources have been consistently described by scholars and practitioners as ‘dismal failures’. Yet, again these were targeted primarily at pastoralists. The outcomes anticipated by these top-down interventions, often perceived as the silver bullets to solve all problems, were not realized: pastoralists continue to ‘overstock’ beyond what external experts consider the rangelands’ ‘carrying capacities’ and they continue to pursue, though at increasingly smaller scales, extensive livestock systems, shifting herds between wet and dry season pastures. The silver bullet of land tenure reform intended to achieve livestock de-stocking, increased market offtake and rangeland conservation missed its target (Niamir-Fuller, 1999; Lane and Moorehead, 1994; Mortimore, 1998; Baxter and Hogg, 1987; Horowitz and Little, 1987; Sandford, 1983).

Land tenure is once again high on the development agenda. de Soto's (2000) work in the urban settings of four countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America finds that formal titles (and their collateral value) are crucial for poverty reduction. However, de Soto's thesis has drawn widespread criticism, and its applicability to rural settings, especially in the drier parts of the world has been questioned (Cousins et al., 2005; Gilbert, 2002).

After briefly presenting the complexities of economy, politics and environment in the drylands, the paper develops the elements of a drylands tenure reform program appropriate to secure access to resources for multiple users and uses. Although not providing final answers to these questions, the evidence discussed suggests that in multi-user or multi-use environments such as the drylands, the focus of tenure regulation needs to shift from substance, i.e., the allocation of rights themselves, to process, i.e., rules and mechanisms for regulating access and use among multiple interests.

Section snippets

The drylands: environment, production strategies and resource tenures

Using Africa's drylands as an example, this section highlights key features of drylands environments, the diverse strategies of drylands resource users, and principal resource tenure issues that confront individuals and groups.

Tenure problems and recent innovations

The problem of securing rights for users in drylands areas is well reflected in processes of group ranch subdivision in Kenya's Maasailand (Mwangi, 2007a). While the creation of group ranches secured the substantive claims of individuals (i.e., men as household heads) in a corporate title, bureaucratic procedures for problem solving and resource allocation within the group ranch did not reflect local norms and decision-making protocols. Majority voting replaced consensus-based decision-making,

Essential elements of drylands tenure reform

The preceding review of drylands tenure issues in parts of Africa seems to suggest some convergence on the range of feasible solutions for drylands tenure options. First, there seems to be a recognition that drylands resources must be secured for drylands users against some form of threat, often external and that some legal solution at multiple scales that is premised on local customary rules may be appropriate and effective in protecting group rights.

However, in seeking legal solutions for

Discussion

The drive towards legal solutions and codification is grounded in the significant threat from external actors such as the state, which either appropriated or reallocated lands that were originally under customary authority. As indicated in previous sections, the codification of customary rights is one method for securing the rights of groups. However, many questions arise: If legal regimes are necessary to guarantee the security of resource rights, at what scale would this be most effective

Conclusion

The drylands are increasingly recognized as the domain of multiple groups pursuing diverse production strategies (pastoralism, agro-pastoralism, cultivation). Multiple institutional forms have evolved from within to sustain the complementarities and manage the often conflicting strategies even as external influences from states and markets pose increasing challenges. Tenure and access options for differentiated local actors to drylands resources and opportunities do matter. Securing these

Acknowledgments

In February of 2005, the UNDP Drylands Development Center (UNDP-DDC), the CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) and the International Land Coalition (ILC) jointly hosted an expert consultation to explore the challenges of designing and implementing a drylands tenure reform program. This workshop was followed by an e-conference on the same topic organized with FRAME, a knowledge-sharing network for the natural resource community.

We want to thank our

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