A Regional Meeting of the
International Association
for the Study of the Commons

20 – 22 January 2009
Breakwater Lodge, Cape Town, South Africa
Hosted by the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies
PLAAS
at the University of the Western Cape

The objective of this Policy Forum is to share existing research and
experiences in the governance of large scale natural resource commons
across different ecosystem types in Africa. These include among others:
coastal zones; arid grasslands; forests; savannas and forest patches;
and floodplain ecosystems.
The Policy Forum brings together researchers and policy makers to
examine existing research on commons governance. Experience with
governance in one type of commons generates lessons of value to the
governance of other types of commons as well as for integrated
governance
The Policy Forum takes as its starting point the insight that
addressing natural resource degradation in Africa means finding ways to
identify reproduce and encourage existing positive practices of commons
management across wide scales. The dual challenge of governance is to
meet large scale problems with large scale solutions that are rooted in
local practices.

Meeting Themes
Within the broad area of the governance of multiple types of natural
resource commons we place our emphasis on the presentation of the
policy relevant research on the commons that African and other scholars
are currently carrying out. Therefore the following themes are meant to
be suggestive rather than exclusive:
1. Knowledge, Power, and Existing Commons Practices
In most commons ecosystems local, indigenous practices have been
developed based on the aim to control resource use for livelihood as
well as for political reasons. These institutions, based on membership
to a group, arrangements of reciprocal access between groups, timing
and for example in fisheries gear have been part of the local
management systems. Floodplain resources management have been embedded
into religious believe systems used for co-ordination, monitoring and
sanctioning reasons. One of the most important aspects is local
knowledge based on long-term experience about parametric changes in the
environment and flexible use of resources according to seasonal
variability. Still today researchers can be astonished about the large
local knowledge that exists on plants and animals. Historical context,
especially European colonialism, is important for understanding
institutional changes in management. Studies show that the strong
changes stem mostly from state intervention since colonialism.
Politically it has been difficult to really hand down and share power,
be this on a higher level (different levels of state actors) or be this
because local power structures and transformations have not been
understood. In addition, the way these areas have been traditionally
used for integrative livelihoods based on the use of multiple natural
resources (not only grass or wildlife but also plants for construction,
medicine etc), are not understood with technical approaches applied so
far. Therefore it was not possible to understand why and how local
governance can be reinforced. This panel is looking for relevant papers
which may address one or all of the following questions:
• What is the condition of indigenous environmental knowledge and
management skill? Is it robust, or dying out with the older generation?
How is it distributed across age, gender and economic groups in rural
society, and what social, cultural, spiritual or political factors
influence its use or sharing by and among these groups?
• How are indigenous technical knowledge, management skills and
management approaches perceived by external agencies?
• What is the state of the state? How vigorous or feeble is it in
promoting or diminishing the interests of those who live on and from
the commons?
• What is the state of the ‘community’? Are local institutions on the
commons vibrant or decaying?
• How homogenous are social, economic and political interests among
commons dwellers and users?
• Who are the winners and losers at the local level in the politics of
commons rights, use and management?

2. Building on existing practices to achieve effective commons
governance across extensive scales
In earlier generations, especially during the pre-colonial periods,
most southern African societies developed effective indigenous
institutions for the management of entire landscapes and their
component ecosystems, when this was in their economic (and sometimes
political) interest. Few of these integrated southern African systems
are effective today as they have gone through a great number of
changes, for example due to colonial influences, the increased role of
the market and due to conflicts over use and access to natural resource
systems. Meanwhile, most efforts to rebuild the management of the
commons through various initiatives have been specific to certain
resources or localised areas. Projects in many countries have
undertaken range management initiatives, but these have rarely proved
institutionally or – at least – economically sustainable. The same has
been true of forest and fisheries (co-)management interventions.
Although often technically competent, these sectoral initiatives have
failed to acknowledge the integrated ways in which livelihoods depend
on multiple natural resources within landscapes and ecosystems, and the
integrated ways in which resource governance must link into other
dimensions of local governance. Conversely, the smaller number of
ecosystem-wide land use planning initiatives that have sought to
enhance overall environmental health have been dominated by technical
approaches that failed to understood the differential roles of
resources in the spectrum of local livelihoods, and failed to achieve
the required broader reinforcement of local governance. This theme
explores opportunities and challenges with respect to remedies for this
by integrating scale –landscapes, ecosystems, and governing systems-
into the process. Papers in this theme will attempt to answer but not
be limited to the following questions:
• What is the level of dependence on the commons?
• How is the experience of the commons management at local level?
• Is it dominated by centrifugal tendencies, by ethnic difference, by
rapid demographic change, by the collapse of indigenous culture and
institutions, by political strife, by elite exploitation? Or are
elements of common identity and purpose identifiable?
• How is local level management affected by regional and or national
level management?
• What is the state of the law with regard to rights to the commons and
the use and management of commons resources? How does local legislation
relate to that at higher levels, and how do customary, statute and
common law interact in the tenure and governance of the commons?
• Is local level management a success story worth replication? Scaling
up (out)?
• What do the prevailing ecological systems and conditions dictate
regarding replicability?

3. The African Commons and Tourism.

Third World countries have offered their commons as bases for nature
based tourism industries. Trade-offs with the African communities
living out of their commons has had to be made. In some cases, local
communities have been relocated and or denied access to their commons
and coerced to adapt their livelihoods to tourism. In yet other cases,
there have been land restitutions to reverse historical injustices. The
governance of African commons has remained hotspots for debates in
livelihoods and socio-economic welfare on one hand and conservation and
tourism on the other. As more international tourists gaze on the
African commons, with all their stereotypes, this, together with other
global forces driving the world order affect issues of governance of
the commons. Consequently the commons are characterised by conflicts
over land use and land rights. Tourism as a rapidly growing industry is
adding more dimensions to the conflicts and trajectories of the
commons. The following questions will be explored:
• -What insights can be brought to explore these issues?
• -How are local livelihoods needs reconciled with national and global
tourism & commercial needs?
• -What are the prospects of sustainable community involvement in
tourism on an equitable and fair trade basis?
• -What are the implications of the ever expanding conservation and
tourism areas (both national and transfrontier) on the commons?

4. The African Commons and redressing historical discrimination,
particularly in respect to race and gender.

Africa is replete with historical cases of discriminatory policies on
access rights to natural resources based on race, gender and ethnicity.
Political change and recent development paradigms are trying to address
these historical racial, gender and ethnic imbalances in access to
natural resources. This theme calls for papers that interrogate
policies and strategies used to promote equitable distribution of
rights to natural resources and how policy changes affect the formerly
marginalised

5. Recent challenges to management of the commons such as HIV/AIDS and
climate change.

Hazardous events such as droughts, hurricanes or floods increasingly
affect people from low income countries everywhere in the world.
Adaptations to the new situation include alternative livelihood
strategies, which are often found in informal sectors such as the
exploitation of common pool resources (e.g. fisheries) creating new,
dislocated workforces vulnerable to HIV due to social disruption and
lacking access to HIV related preventive or therapeutic services. Women
are particularly affected by the livelihood changes when they relied on
agricultural activities: Engaging in sexual transactions, which exposes
them to HIV/AIDS, is often a last resort. At the same time, chronic
illness and death related to HIV further weakens the productivity of
affected households, requiring new survival strategies, creating more
HIV vulnerable persons. The panel invites researchers working in
African contexts to submit abstracts of paper exploring on these issues
of how such external factors affect the commons.

6. Traditional institutions and the governance of African commons.

This theme explores the role of traditional authorities in governance
of the commons and the heterogeneity of local leadership from a
critical historical perspective (construction of local governance and
justification on issues of co-management in fisheries, wildlife,
pasture and other land uses). Specifically questions of representation
of local interests and critiques of elite capture are a focus of this
panel. Additionally, the role of so called pre-colonial or traditional
rules and regulations and their transformation for the management of
the commons in the context of the nation states are of basic interest.
Does the incorporation of such traditional institutions and rules
enhance or hinder co-management structures.

7. The contribution to food security of the African commons.

The commons traditionally provided the resources for food security in
Africa. Economic and social transformations during and since the
colonial period have broadened the options and threats. Urbanisation
and the expansion of non-agricultural modes of employment have made it
possible for growing numbers of people across the continent to be food
secure without producing food themselves. In many countries, expanding
commercial farming sectors produce much of the food – usually on land
excised from the commons. In some cases, food security is assured
through commercial imports by countries paying for these commodities
through their activity in other economic sectors. Elsewhere, the food
security of people on impoverished commons depends on imports of
donated food aid. Understanding the current and potential contribution
of the commons to African food security means understanding the often
multiple, local and migrant strategies with which people construct and
try to sustain their livelihoods. It requires an understanding of the
(often gendered) impact on food security of various economic
transformations of the commons. For example, as resource extraction of
fish, fruit or veld products is commercialised, is local people’s
access to food resources compromised? Does male-dominated
commercialisation inhibit women’s resource uses, which often contribute
more directly to household food security than those of men? As
community-based resource use enterprises such as ecotourism develop new
benefit streams from the commons, is resource access for food security
jeopardised? Does food insecurity result from new waged employment in
enterprises based on sustainable use of commons resources, as people
lose the time they could previously devote to food collection or
production? The widespread privatisation of the commons may arguably
increase aggregate food production if it involves more intensive
farming practices, but may also restrict the access of the poor to
food, thus diminishing their food security. There are many trends to
explore with regard to the role of the African commons in the
continent’s efforts to sustain and enhance its food security.

8. Implications of urbanisation and commercialisation for the African commons.

The governance and management of the African commons is becoming
increasingly complex due to multiple pressures on commonage land and
resources. Two such pressures are rapid urbanisation and economic
transformations of the commons. Urbanisation presents distinctive new
challenges with respect to the commons, such as more intensified
urban-rural linkages in terms of food production, land speculation,
urban sprawl and other urban – periphery political-economic relations.
Moreover, commons are being taken to urban environments, for example in
urban agriculture. Economic challenges to commons governance and
management are, for example, pressures for commercialisation of land
and resources, rural unemployment and the search by rural youth for
jobs in urban centres. Amongst others, this leads to questions around
privatisation and individualisation, with due consequences for common
property. This theme invites papers exploring the following questions:

• How have African rural-urban relations changed over the last decades
due to urbanisation and what are the effects on the governance and
management of the commons?
• What types of urban commons are evolving and how are they governed?
• What type of general political-economic challenges and opportunities
can be identified with respect to the commons?
• What are the effects of increasing pressures for commercialisation of
land and resources and land speculation for access to and governance of
rural commons?
• What is the effect of rural unemployment and the rural-urban labour
migration for rural and urban commons?
• How can the link between the globally dominant political ideology of
neoliberalism and African commons be conceptualised?

9. Good Governance, Accountability and the Commons

Increasingly there is recognition that advocacy for tenure reforms and
equitable´benefit sharing on the commons will not achieve its goals
without good governance and a reduction of corruption.. We should not
drive the debate on see commons at a speed that overlooks complexity,
corruption and accountability. This theme can be analysed from various
perspectives including: commons and local governance, commons and
resource management participation; and commons and institutional
development in Africa.

10. Security, insecurity and displacement: implications for Commons management

In Africa, insecurity related to climate change is a relevant issue.
Many issues arise including the equity of community principles,
sustainability of natural resources and the new concept of resource.
Periods of drought when resources normally available in commons became
rarer stress resource allocation arrangements. The poor require more
resources from the commons to compensate for poor harvests. In addition
the insecurity issue linked to climate change can create many other
conflicts through family dislocation, loss of solidarity, and
population displacement. Papers in this theme will address, among other
things, the implications of climate linked to the conservation and
allocation of common resources.

Practical Details

Submission of Abstracts: 15 September, 2008 to i.malasha@cgiar.org

Programme Committee:
Dr. Isaac Malasha, Chair, World Fish Centre, Zambia
World Fish Centre
P.O. Box 51289, Ridgeway, Lusaka,
ZAMBIA
Tel: (+260) 211 257939/40
Fax: (+260) 211 257941
i.malasha@cgiar.org

Dr. Doug Wilson, Vice Chair, Aalborg University, Denmark
Mr. Koffi Alinon, PIC Projetct / University Mande Bukari, Mali
Mr. Ba Boubacar, Coordinateur ONG Eveil, Mali
Dr. Lucy Binauli, University of Malawi, Malawi
Dr. Mafa Hara, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Dr., Moenieba Isaacs, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Dr. Lapologang Magole, University of Botswana, Botswana
Dr. Emmanuel Marfo, Forestry Research Institute of Ghana,
Dr. Paul Ongugo, Kenya Forestry Research Institute, Kenya
Prof. Dianne Rocheleau, Clark University, USA

Organizing Committee:
Dr. Frank Matose, Chair, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
PLAAS, University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535, South Africa
+27 (0)21 959 3733
fmatose@uwc.ac.za

Ms. Tersia Warries, Vice Chair, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Dr. Ben Cousins, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Dr. Mafa Hara, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Ms. Rikke Jacobsen, Aalborg University, Denmark
Dr. Doug Wilson, Aalborg University, Denmark

Co-sponsorship:
International Association for the Study of the Commons
The European Union Sixth Framework Programme CROSCOG Project
Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies
The Worldfish Centre

Registration fee: 150 USD
Conference dinner: 30 USD

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