Customary Authorities and Environmental Governance in Africa: A Systematic Review

Abstract

In this systematic review of 68 English-language articles we explore the roles of customary authorities in environmental governance in sub-Saharan Africa. We identify four roles that customary authorities take: a managing role is most common, followed by supporting, enforcing, and rent-seeking roles. These roles often occur in combination (most commonly managing with rent-seeking and managing with supporting) and in many environmental domains, often involving land. Importantly, the impact of customary authorities on environmental governance is more often positive than negative, especially in supportive roles and in the environmental domains of biodiversity and climate change. Rent-seeking is most often associated with negative environmental outcomes; managing both with positive and negative outcomes. Unclear relationships or legal frameworks between customary authorities and the state are also associated with less effective governance. Our work demonstrates the important roles of customary authorities in environmental governance and provides suggestions for further comparative analysis.

Keywords:

• Chiefs
• customary authorities
• environmental governance
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• sustainability
• systematic review
• traditional authorities

Introduction

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the world regions most affected by environmental degradation and is vulnerable to impacts of future climate change (Adekunle 2021; Sarkodie 2018). Observed environmental degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa is diverse, with issues ranging from biodiversity decline to pollution from mining activities and disrupted water cycles due to land use change (Guzha et al. 2018; Ifelebuegu et al. 2017; Jewitt et al. 2015; Perrings and Halkos 2015; Ochieng et al. 2010). Moreover, because of changing weather patterns (including increased rainfall variability and fluctuating temperatures), there is a general decrease in natural resource productivity and an overall increase in land degradation (Sarkodie 2018; Omisore 2018). These environmental issues pose a risk to human well-being, not least because “65% of the working population are dependent on the agricultural sector for their daily livelihoods” (Sarkodie, 2018: 21993).

African approaches to environmental governance vary but, like everywhere, some have struggled to address the increasing challenges which arise from environmental degradation and climate change. For example, centralized regulation of fisheries in Malawi, faced with limited local legitimacy, resulted in a steady decline in fish stocks (Russell and Dobson 2011). Similarly, institutions managing forestry in Cameroon were captured by local elites, reducing the country’s forest resources (Brown and Lassoie 2010). Integrating customary (or traditional) authorities into the environmental governance systems is often viewed as a solution to these challenges, given their influence on environmental issues at the local level (Russell and Dobson 2011; Zulu 2008; Zulu et al. 2018). For instance, centralized authorities in Ghana might have de jure authority over forest management in the country, but de facto control often lies with customary authorities (Agyei et al. 2019). Similarly, in South Africa, customary authorities play a significant role in the regulation of firewood harvesting and are regarded as the highest authority in firewood governance, deciding who is allowed to harvest and where harvesting is acceptable (Findlay and Twine 2018). Moreover, customary authorities are thought to have the local knowledge, networks, and sanctioning abilities to create – and enforce – effective common-pool resource institutions (Ostrom 1990). It is thus not surprising that the role of customary authorities has gained increasing scholarly attention, especially with the recent drive toward more decentralized and inclusive environmental management, such as community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) (Brown and Lassoie 2010; Silva and Mosimane 2014).

We define customary authorities – such as chiefs, kings, and queens – as leaders who have power because their communities view them as embodying the communities’ customs, traditions, and long-standing social structures, and thereby allow them to take leadership roles (Agyei et al. 2019; Ehrhardt 2023).

In many cases, customary authority can extend into environmental governance, which can be defined as “the set of regulatory processes, mechanisms and organizations through which political actors influence environmental actions and outcomes” (Lemos and Agrawal 2006). But while there is hope for the potential of customary authorities to improve environmental governance, there are conflicting reports on whether customary authorities in fact promote sustainability, or whether they serve to exploit and degrade the natural environment. For example, a study by Yeboah-Assiamah et al. (2019) found that cooperation between formal institutions and customary authorities strengthened the wildlife protection governance in Ghana. Similarly, studies by Totin et al. (2018) and Ngwenya et al. (2017) identified customary authorities as positive influences on the sustainability of environmental management. In contrast, other studies found that customary authorities had a mixed or negative impact on environmental sustainability (Djenontin and Zulu 2021; Adom and Boamah 2020; Majambu et al. 2019; Kita 2019). For example, distrust between stakeholders, unclear rules and regulations, and elite capture prevented successful governance of various environmental resources such as water, fisheries and land in Ghana (Adams et al. 2019; Ahmed et al. 2019) or Malawi (Russell and Dobson 2011).

This mixed picture of positive and negative involvement of customary leaders is also present in the literature on natural resource management, an important domain of environmental governance. A review on decentralized natural resource governance (Larson and Soto 2008) shows that customary authorities are an important aspect of governance arrangements in sub-Saharan Africa, but that there is variation in outcomes: in some contexts they rule in a “despotic” manner, whereas in other places they may be progressive forces and capable leaders (Larson and Soto 2008). Similarly, a critical (unsystematic) review by Osei-Tutu et al. (2021) highlights a lack of clear consensus in the literature. Many authors claim that customary authorities should be involved in natural resource management due to their local legitimacy, yet there are also others who argue that customary authorities are “not democratic and not accountable”, prioritize their personal interests, and entrench gender and ethnic marginalization (Osei-Tutu et al. 2021: 186). Furthermore, a review of community-based natural resource management in Ghana and Zambia highlights that strong institutions at the local level – which often include customary leaders – are essential for effective governance; but that they are not sufficient, and often fail, for example due to an absence of multi-scale collaboration, inadequate local participation, and limited sustainability beyond their short-term funding (Adeyanju et al. 2021).

Thus, while there is wide agreement on the important role of customary authorities in environmental governance in Africa, it is key to get a more systematic and comparative overview of what we know about their specific roles in, and contributions to, environmental governance and the conditions under which they positively or negatively influence sustainability. To this end, we have conducted a systematic literature review of the English-language literature on the roles and impact of customary authorities in environmental governance, to not only identify current trends but also highlight key avenues for future research. The paper is organized around the following research questions, beyond a general description of the reviewed literature (section “General Findings”):

1. How do customary authorities relate to other actors involved in environmental governance in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular the state (section “The Connections of Customary Authorities to Other Stakeholders in Environmental Governance”)?

2. What roles do customary authorities undertake in environmental governance in sub-Saharan Africa (section “Role of Customary Authorities in Environmental Governance”)?

3. How do customary authorities influence the sustainability outcomes of environmental governance in sub-Saharan Africa (section “Effect of Customary Authorities on Environmental Sustainability”)?

Methodology

Search Terms & Data

To address these questions, this review is based on the guidelines recommended by Siddaway et al. (2019) and followed the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method (Moher et al. 2009). First, search terms for the review were defined on i) environmental domain, ii) governance and management, and iii) customary authorities (see Supplementary Materials A for full search terms). The associated search string was run through the Web of Science, a high-quality search engine (Falagas et al. 2008), on November 22, 2021. The PRISMA diagram for this study is given below (Figure 1).

Figure 1. PRISMA flow diagram for search on customary authorities in sustainable environmental governance (based on Moher et al., 2009).

Screening & Exclusion Criteria

Importantly, articles not written in English were excluded from the search. We acknowledge that, as a result, we have excluded a wide range of research in French, Portuguese, and other languages, but given language barriers this was outside the possibilities for the current review. The articles were screened by reading through the title and abstract and excluded if they met at least one of the following exclusion criteria:

1. Article not related to environmental governance;

2. Article only mentions customary authorities or environmental governance in passing or does not mention them at all;

3. Article does not analyze cases within sub-Saharan Africa;

4. Article on management of nonrenewable resources such as mining or oil drilling were excluded if no sustainability component was involved (such as managing pollution, negative environmental externalities, etc.);

5. The article does not use primary research (theoretical papers and reviews/syntheses of primary research are excluded).

When exclusion of an article was uncertain based on title and abstract screening, it was included at this stage to ensure high sensitivity. Next, the remaining articles were read in full and excluded if they met any of the same exclusion criteria listed above. The number of papers excluded based on each criterion is given in the Supplementary Materials (Table S1). All borderline cases were collected in a separate document and assessed again by a second reviewer. These borderline cases, together with their decision for inclusion or exclusion, as well as reasoning for this decision are provided in Table S2.

Data Extraction

Information relevant for this literature review was then extracted in a systematic process from the included papers. Specifically, information was collected on basic characteristics of the study, including i) the research method (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods), ii) journal, iii) publication year, iv) country and region in which the study took place and v) the institution(s) authors were affiliated to. In addition, when available, information was collected on:

1. The environmental domain discussed in the paper.

2. The stakeholders discussed in the paper.

3. Whether customary authorities were explicitly recognized by their respective government. Coded as yes/no/not applicable (NA), where NA included articles that did not explicitly state anything about government recognition.

4. Whether the article explicitly mentioned that a legal framework existed around customary authorities. Coded as yes/no/NA, where NA included articles that did not mention legal frameworks.

5. The effect of customary authorities on environmental sustainability, as described by the paper. This refers to the environmental sustainability outcome and could be positive, negative, mixed, or undetermined.

6. The specific de facto roles of the customary authority involved. The four inductively identified categories can be seen in Table 1. The role refers to the nature of tasks the leader undertakes in the environmental governance framework, as assessed by the authors of the reviewed articles. Multiple roles could be allocated to customary authorities in a single paper.

Table 1. The four main roles of customary authorities in sustainability governance as derived from a systematic review of the 68 included papers.

Role	Description	Example
Enforcing	Supervising and regulating communities’ compliance with existing formal/informal rule frameworks	Enforcing hunting bans in conservation areas (Adom and Boamah 2020)
Managing	Creating rule frameworks with some level of decision-making power	Regulating access to trees (Majambu et al. 2019)
Rent-seeking	Using governance framework for private gain/interest	Corruption, circumvention of state institutions to sell land for private gain (Ahmed et al. 2019)
Supportive	Supporting, amplifying other stakeholders	Conflict mediation, representation, education (Ngaruiya and Scheffran 2016)

A more detailed overview of the coding procedure can be found in Supplementary Materials B. The full dataset can be found in Supplementary Materials Table S3.

Results and Discussion

General Findings

We included 68 papers in the review, comprising 69 cases of customary authority in environmental governance (see Figures 1 and 2). No institution or author dominated these results, and articles were published by different journals. The first papers that met the inclusion criteria were published in 1997 and the most recent ones in 2021. As Figure 2 shows, 32 studies focused on West Africa and 25 of those focused on Ghana. In addition, 12 studies were conducted in Southern Africa, with seven in South Africa. Note that one study (Sjostedt and Linell 2021) focused on 7 countries in Southern and South-Eastern Africa; we have counted this study once for each individual country, and once for the region Southern Africa. A further 17 of the reviewed studies were focused on East Africa, including 7 in Malawi, whereas only 7 focused on Central Africa. One paper discusses Africa as a whole (Larcom et al. 2016). Importantly, this regional distribution is likely a result of our focus on English-language publications in this review.

Figure 2. Map of locations of the customary authorities in the included papers, showing the dominance of Ghana; numbers of cases listed by environmental domain, with forestry and biodiversity/conservation as most common.

While customary authorities were engaged in different environmental domains, they were most frequently involved in forestry (21), biodiversity (12), and agriculture (9), followed by climate change (8), other types of resource management (8) and other land uses (4) (Figure 2). In this study we only attributed one domain category to each individual case; however, it is still important to note that environmental domains are often interlinked in practice.

Qualitative methods were by far the most common, with 44 papers only using qualitative tools in their research. An additional 22 papers combined qualitative and quantitative methods. Only one paper exclusively used quantitative methods (Christensen et al. 2021), and another did not have a research method that could be classified within these two dimensions; it used historical and spatial data analysis (Larcom et al. 2016). Within all the studies, (semi)-structured interviews were conducted most frequently (61 out of 68 papers), followed by focus group discussions (21) and participatory research, such as participant observation and participatory rural appraisal (15). When a quantitative component was included, surveys were the most common: they were conducted in all 22 papers where a mixed method was identified. Other methodological tools were used much less frequently, and included spatial analysis, ethnography, aerial photography, or narrative analysis.

The Connections of Customary Authorities to Other Stakeholders in Environmental Governance

By definition, customary authorities are recognized in specific communities, with more or less strong community ties depending on factors such as the extent to which they can claim to embody custom and their selection procedures (e.g., hereditary, elected, or selected by the state) (Ehrhardt et al. 2024). Additionally, they can have strong connections to the state and other governance stakeholders (Ubink 2008). Their connections to the state often have historical roots in the precolonial and colonial eras, as colonizers oftentimes employed African customary authority systems as part of their own governance approach; but after independence, these connections changed in diverse ways across Africa (Ubink 2008). We disaggregate the connections of customary authorities in three dimensions, which have been suggested as important to the efficacy of customary authorities in contemporary governance: their legal position, relationship to the state, and connections to other governance stakeholders (e.g., Holzinger et al. 2016; Ehrhardt et al. 2024). The subsequent three sections address each of these dimensions in turn.

Legal Position of Customary Authorities

Almost half (30) of the papers used in this review indicated that there was an explicit legal framework to circumscribe the role of customary authorities in environmental governance. In Ghana, which is the focus of 16 of those 30 articles, land governance is constitutionally vested in “stools and skins”, which is a symbol for chieftaincy and means that communal land is entrusted to customary authorities on behalf of the people and government (Hirons 2014). In other cases, customary authorities can also be included in “softer” ways, as shown by an example in Malawi’s fisheries, where chieftainship is recognized only as a form of customary law (Kosamu et al. 2017).

Three papers stated explicitly that there was no legal framework. For example, in Lesotho’s water governance customary authorities are not recognized by law, but still play a substantial role to skew the effects of state governance (Workman 2019). But perhaps more importantly, 35 papers (containing 36 cases) did not address the state-recognized legal status of customary authorities in environmental governance at all. Given existing evidence for the increasing legal integration of customary authorities in African governance (e.g., Holzinger et al. 2020) and the hypothesis that legal integration matters for governance efficacy (e.g., Henn 2022), this highlights an important gap in the reporting in scientific studies on this topic.

Relationship between Customary Authorities and the State

One of the reasons legal integration of customary authorities matters for effective governance is that it affects the relationship between customary authorities and the state. A total of 20 cases described a competitive relationship between customary authorities and state, and another 20 a complementary one, in which the customary authorities and state actors supported each other. A mixed relationship, in which competitive and complementary aspects were both identified, was identified in 9 cases, while for 20 cases the relationships and interactions between customary authorities and the state was not analyzed and remained unclear.

The relationship between state and customary authorities is closely connected to legal integration and to the different roles of customary authorities described in section “Role of Customary Authorities in Environmental Governance”. For example, when the de facto role of customary authorities neatly fits into the official de jure role the government has assigned to them, the institutions are complementary, whereas if this is not the case, they may clash, and the interaction becomes competitive. Moreover, the relationship between states and customary authorities, even within the same country, is highly variable. For example, in Ghana’s Upper West Region, a policy to design innovation platforms to tackle climate change adaptation aimed to embed the legal role of chiefs in the actual implementation of these platforms led to a complementary interaction (Totin et al. 2018). But, in contrast, another article has found competitive interactions of customary authorities and the state in other parts of Ghana (Ahmed et al. 2018).

Such competitiveness may stem from the fact that the customary authorities go beyond their role as custodians in this context, by acting as landowners/sellers, expropriators, negotiators, or sources of conflict (Ahmed et al. 2018). But it can also be because relations are not clear: five articles described how an unclear definition of responsibility between customary authorities and state actors led to tensions between the state and customary authorities, and community confusion as to who to address concerns to. For example, maintenance of water tanks in Lesotho is the responsibility of local councils instead of customary authorities. Some community members find this to be unjust and choose to ignore it by continuing to follow the old systems, where customary authorities set the rules (Workman 2019). Naturally, this leads to strain and competition between the local councils and the customary authorities.

Customary Authorities’ Interactions with Other Stakeholders

In addition to the state, a variety of other stakeholders also interact with customary authorities in environmental governance initiatives. Figure 3 below gives an indication of the stakeholders identified in the reviewed articles.

Figure 3. Mapping of the different stakeholders interacting with customary authorities in environmental governance and their relationships.

It shows that national and local state actors generally provide the legal framework for environmental management and can grant authority to customary authorities (even as their legitimacy generally comes from their community embeddedness). Local governments are important but are also often dependent on collaboration with customary authorities. At the edges of the state, there are (state-mandated) specialized governance entities such as forestry committees, conservancy committees, or fisheries committees, who are tasked with the administration of a particular environmental domain/resource. They are often managed by the state, but dependent on close collaboration with customary authorities. Private-sector stakeholders (e.g., enterprises, loggers/miners) may also connect with customary authorities, often because the latter can grant access to resources, and in return, they can provide a source of income to customary authorities. Civil society organizations have an interest in interacting with customary authorities to promote their causes and constituencies. And in some cases, customary authorities may have to coordinate with other customary authorities in a particular area or environmental domain.

All these examples underline that customary authorities rarely operate in isolation, even if the specific constellations of stakeholders vary between contexts. Moreover, they emphasize the importance of better understanding the systems of governance that customary authorities are a part of. Few of the reviewed articles systematically analyzed the position of customary authorities in relation to wider stakeholder networks, with notable exceptions including Djenontin and Zulu (2021) and Atuo et al. (2020). These analyses suggest several topics worth exploring in future research, including the conditions under which customary authorities become integrated into the state (or “co-opted”) as de facto, or even de jure, local governments; the ways in which customary authorities relate to private enterprises; and the impacts of the increasing use of committees in African environmental governance (what Archambault and Ehrhardt (2022) refer to as “committeefication”).

Role of Customary Authorities in Environmental Governance

A key finding of our analyses is the diversity of roles of customary authorities in environmental governance and the fact that, in 49 out of 69 cases, they undertook more than one role (see Table 2 for all combinations of roles). The most common role of customary authorities in environmental governance was management; rent-seeking occurred only in conjunction with other roles (see Table 2).

Table 2. Numbers of cases with different roles of customary authorities in environmental governance, including combinations, as derived from a systematic review of the 68 included papers.

Role	Number of Cases
Managing	7
Enforcing	4
Supporting	5
Managing + Enforcing	8
Managing + Supporting	13
Managing + Enforcing + Supporting	2
Enforcing + Supporting	3
Rent-seeking + Managing	13
Rent-seeking + Enforcing	3
Rent-seeking + Supporting	2
Rent-seeking + Managing + Supporting	2
Rent-seeking + Managing + Enforcing	3
NA	4
Total	69

Customary Authority as Managers

Management occurred in 48 out of 69 cases and was by far the most common role found (Table 2). In all those cases, customary authorities were involved in creating the rules for environmental governance. For example, customary authorities play a critical role in determining land allocation for agriculture and forestry in Ghana, as they are commonly seen as custodians of community land (Ahmed et al. 2018; Hirons 2014). Ghana is a country with exceptionally high inclusion of customary authorities in the legal governance framework, which may also help to explain Ghana’s prominent appearance in our results (Gilli et al. 2020). While the state formally owns the land, customary authorities hold the land in trust for their constituents and regulate access to trees and agricultural lands according to customary law.

Similarly, a managing role is also observed in Cameroon and Lesotho, where customary authorities oversee water resources as local managers in decentralized water governance (Tantoh et al. 2021; Workman 2019). In the Mahushe Shongwe Game Reserve in South Africa, customary authorities are also important stakeholders in managing the reserve. They regulate access to environmental resources, by issuing permits and providing (or retaining) personal approval for the collection of resources (e.g., timber for construction) (King 2007). These examples highlight how customary authorities can fulfill their managing roles, even in some cases without explicit government support. Because while some state-delivered environmental governance programs aim to include customary authorities only as mediators (supporters) or enforcers of rules, such as in Lesotho, the situation on the ground can tell a different story (Workman 2019).

Customary Authorities as Enforcers

Customary authorities also frequently undertook enforcing roles (23 cases), monitoring and enforcing their communities’ compliance with existing institutional frameworks. In some cases, these roles were part of effective governance arrangements. In Cameroon’s forest management, for example, the state is considered the ultimate authority and landowner, and customary authorities can only use their influence to alter policy outcomes and enforce compliance (Kimengsi and Balgah 2021). The state in this case designs the policy for exploiting non-timber forest products, whereas customary authorities can “tone down” policies due to their status in the community. In contrast to the above example on Ghana, where land was allocated by the customary authority (management), this highlights how the enforcing role is restricted to implementing and tweaking government policy. But customary authorities can use this enforcer role creatively: for instance, they can form alliances with forest conservators to use state allocation policies to their own or their communities’ advantage (Kimengsi and Balgah 2021). Similarly, as examples in Zambia and Nigeria show, they can affect compliance with biodiversity conservation. This results from divergent views on property rights of wildlife in Zambia (Bwalya Umar and Kapembwa 2020), and the vital importance of including customary authorities in shaping conservation initiatives due to their representative function in Nigeria (Atuo et al. 2020).

In other cases, however, customary authorities can impede effective governance in their enforcing roles. In Ghana, for instance, customary authorities have had a role in climate change adaptation programs, with mixed effects on the success of their implementation (Sova et al. 2017). As they are often trusted sources of traditional knowledge and customs, they are actively framing the climate change debate in customary terms, which can be in line, or in competition, with the state agenda (Sova et al. 2017).

Customary Authorities as Supporters

In a supporting role (27 cases), customary authorities provide services that strengthen the wider governance system. They act, for instance, as representatives for their constituents, or connect them to (state) resources. These supporting roles can be vital to success or failure of policy initiatives. For example, in Malawi customary authorities are essential “secondary” actors in fisheries, as they provide the link between state-mandated actors and the local fishers, and support them through conflict resolution (Kosamu et al., 2017). In the case of putting in place innovation platforms in the Upper West region of Ghana, customary authorities sometimes serve as facilitators. However, ambiguous responsibilities can also make the relationship between traditional and modern forms of governance more tense (Totin et al. 2018).

It is important to recognize that the three roles of customary authorities in environmental governance we have discussed so far – managing, enforcing, and supporting – appear both in isolation and in combination. Two good examples of combined roles include forestry in the DRC and conservation in Namibia. In the DRC, customary authorities are both enforcing and managing, as they are on the one hand ensuring community cohesion and protection of land (enforcing), and on the other regulating access to and exploitation of the forests (managing) (Majambu et al. 2019). In biodiversity management in Namibia, customary authorities are supportive by helping the state to create conservation boundaries, but also managing as they sit as representatives on the conservation management committees (Silva and Mosimane 2014). In combination, these functions can strengthen each other, but also compete – particularly if they are combined with the fourth role, rent-seeking.

Customary Authorities as Rent-Seekers

In 23 out of the 69 cases, customary authorities are involved in rent-seeking practices (Table 2), which involves customary authorities visibly trying to (ab)use an environmental governance initiative for their own private interest (beyond any remuneration or benefit they are meant to receive). Rent-seeking is only identified alongside one or more of the three other roles; and it occurs most often with management roles (in 18 cases). As an example, the customary authorities’ role as custodians of land in Ghana gives them the opportunity to use their power to extract resources, especially when the state is absent (Ahmed et al. 2018; Brobbey et al. 2021; Hirons 2014). This can allow them to manipulate the distributional effects of communal land management, such as can be seen in the case of large-scale land acquisitions for jatropha production in Ghana (Ahmed et al. 2018). Here they operate in parallel to the state and use their power to advance their personal economic interest (“grab benefits”) at the expense of the community (Ahmed et al. 2018). In a different example, customary authorities in Malawi co-manage fisheries together with state-mandated institutions, often resulting in elite capture, rent-seeking, and corruption (Russell and Dobson 2011).

If we disaggregate the cases of customary authority involvement in environmental governance by environmental domain, our results show that rent-seeking appears most often in Forestry (7 cases) and Other Resource Management (4 cases). In fact, rent-seeking occurs in all environmental domains involving resources, except in those related to Climate Change Adaptation. A possible reason for this is the fact that there are not really any resources that can be extracted in activities related to climate change adaptation, as it concerns more a threat to livelihoods than an opportunity for income generation. This may well be related to the fact that supportive roles are also most prevalent in cases where climate change adaptation is the priority (6 out of 8 cases, e.g., Kita 2019).

Effect of Customary Authorities on Environmental Sustainability

The effect of the actions of customary authorities on environmental sustainability diverges across contexts. Out of the 69 cases reviewed, 17 were coded as having positive effects on the outcomes of environmental governance, 10 as negative, 16 as mixed, and 26 as undetermined. When customary authorities were coded to have a positive outcome on environmental sustainability, they make a productive contribution to the governance initiatives. In Ghana’s Upper West Region, for example, customary authorities play an important role as enforcers of customary rules on conservation, by instituting a taboo on monkey hunting/killing (Yeboah-Assiamah et al. 2019). They also serve as judges when someone does not adhere to the rules. In Botswana, customary authorities enjoy a significant amount of legitimacy and provide an enabling environment for participatory decision-making. They also mediate access to livelihood resources such as natural resources or state services, which makes them crucial partners in climate change adaptation projects (Ngwenya et al. 2017).

However, customary authorities can also have negative effects on environmental governance. In Liberia’s forest governance, customary authorities have the mandate to regulate forest access, but go mostly unchecked and are not held accountable for their negative actions. This results in them abusing their mandate regulating forest access and becoming complicit with larger external companies that extract forest resources (Christensen et al. 2021). In Ghana, where the land administration system is often opaque and allocation is discretionary to customary authorities, who serve as custodians of land, they often act as gatekeepers of large-scale land acquisition (Ahmed et al. 2018). Much like in Liberia, these chiefs can become complicit with foreign investors for the purpose of their individual economic benefit.

In other cases, the role of customary authorities in environmental governance allows for both positive and negative impacts to occur, depending on, for example, the roles they take or the relationships with other stakeholders such as the state. For example, power relations and weak institutional configurations are contributing factors to poor forest governance in Sierra Leone, where some customary authorities’ primary interest is a show of power vis-à-vis the elected, state-mandated authority (Djenontin and Zulu 2021). When power becomes the main concern, this harms the effective distribution of forest resources. However, customary authorities can also play an important role in granting legitimacy and recognition to agreements set by the state as acknowledged representatives of their respective communities. A second interesting example is related to climate change adaptation in Malawi: here formal inclusion or exclusion of customary authorities in state-driven programs is found to be irrelevant, as all programs are prone to elite capture by customary authorities. However, they “oscillate” between benevolent and malevolent capture (Kita 2019). This is illustrated, on the one hand, by customary authorities’ grip over their communities, and cherry-picking which government decisions to adhere to for their own benefit; and, on the other, by being helpful in contextualizing decisions to local circumstances of their people. They can therefore serve both as barriers and enablers to state initiatives (Kita 2019).

Papers coded as undetermined do not explicitly state the effect of customary authorities on environmental governance. This is, for instance, the case in a study across seven African countries, which shows that customary authorities can substitute for, or compete with, state institutions (Sjostedt and Linell 2021). However, it does not specify the actual impact on environmental sustainability. Another example is that of charcoal production in Ghana, where customary authorities are involved but their effect on sustainability is inconclusive (Brobbey et al. 2021). As these examples show, there is a wide variety of potential effects customary authorities can have on sustainability, and the effective implementation of environmental governance. To clarify these variations, we disaggregate the outcomes of the different cases by domain (Figure 4A) and by role of the customary authority (Figure 4B). Note that a case was only coded to have one environmental domain, but often multiple roles; therefore, the sum of cases in Figure 4A (69) is smaller than that of 4B (121).

Figure 4. (A) The impact of customary authorities on sustainability by environmental domain; (B) The impact of customary authorities on sustainability by governance role.

Figures 4A and 4B show that impacts differ across the different environmental domains and roles. The highest number of positive outcomes, on the one hand, can be found in the Biodiversity domain, where 7 out of 12 cases show that customary authorities have a positive effect on sustainability (Figure 4A). If we look at the kinds of roles that customary authorities take in cases with positive outcomes, it is striking that 11 had customary authorities take supportive roles (Figure 4B). An illustrative example of this is wildlife conservation in Namibia: here, customary authorities are involved in conservation management in a limited fashion, but also act as a symbol of unity and representatives for local communities and are associated with more effective conservation (Silva and Mosimane 2014). Figure 4B also shows that 10 cases of managing roles had positive outcomes.

Negative impacts, on the other hand, appear in most domains – including Forestry (3 cases), Agriculture (2 cases), and Pollution (2 cases) – with the exception of the Biodiversity and Climate Change Adaptation (Figure 4A). An illustrative example of negative environmental effects in forestry is in Liberia, where leaving the power of customary authorities unchecked leads to collusion of these customary authorities with logging companies, driving deforestation (Christensen et al. 2021). This highlights how the availability of resources, together with management by customary authorities that lacks transparency, can lead to negative sustainability outcomes. Similar is a case in Sierra Leone, where the chiefs’ mandate to allocate land allows them to endorse large-scale land acquisitions and cause vulnerability of local communities, as well as negative long-term effects on sustainability (Yengoh et al. 2016). However, as the number of negative cases across all environmental domains is fairly small, it is difficult to establish clear associations with certain domains.

When it comes to roles, negative sustainability outcomes are relatively common in cases where customary authorities undertake rent-seeking and/or managing roles (9 and 10 cases, respectively; Figure 4B). In fact, there is only one case in which rent-seeking bore positive effects on the sustainability outcome, which is in a study on biodiversity in Ghana. Interestingly, in this case the productive synergy between traditional and “modern” institutions is highlighted, and benefit-sharing measures, as well as stakeholder inclusivity, allow for a positive contribution of customary authorities to sustainability (Yeboah-Assiamah et al. 2019). This is especially true, as the rent-seeking for customary authorities focused on benefits of conservation (eco-tourism), rather than exploitation of nature. In general, however, the connection between rent-seeking, resource-rich environmental domains, and negative sustainability outcomes is suggestive of a trend: customary authorities may be most likely to engage in rent-seeking in cases where valuable resources are exploited and tradeable (and where transparency or accountability are low). This may well come at the expense of environmental sustainability.

Conclusion

As climate change and other factors increasingly threaten Africa’s natural environment, scholars and policy makers often hail customary authorities as key stakeholders to address these challenges. No systematic overview exists, however, of the specific roles these authorities play in environmental governance, or their impact on the quality of governance and environmental sustainability. Our review of the English-language articles on these dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa confirms the important role of customary authorities in environmental governance throughout the region. More specifically, we identify four roles that customary authorities take in this respect, with a managing role being most common, followed by supporting, enforcing, and rent-seeking roles. Importantly, these roles often occur in combination; and in most of them, customary authorities collaborate closely with other stakeholders (e.g., as brokers, in councils, or in committees), both within and outside the state framework.

Our review suggests that the impact of customary authorities on environmental governance is more often positive than negative, especially when they take supportive roles and work in the environmental domains of biodiversity and climate change. In contrast, rent-seeking is most often associated with negative environmental outcomes, as are resource-rich environmental domains - except in cases where rent-seeking is tied to sustainable activities, such as eco-tourism. Management roles show a mix of positive, negative, and uncertain outcomes. Furthermore, while more systematic research on the legal and political position of customary authorities in different governance arrangements is needed, our findings suggest that a lack of clarity of either their legal position, or of the division of roles with the state, is associated with poor governance outcomes.

These findings contribute to our understanding of the ways in which customary authorities can promote – or threaten – environmental sustainability. They can also provide important starting points for policy development to enhance their impact. Furthermore, we have identified several gaps in the literature and other concrete avenues for further research needed to complement and refine our findings. First, we suggest a systematic review of the literature in languages other than English. This would expand the geographical scope of our findings and, hopefully, further refine our understanding of the different governance roles and the conditions for customary authorities to contribute positively to environmental governance. Second, we suggest further empirical studies of customary authorities in environmental governance that explore, and test, our classification of roles and the identified relationships between the governance roles and environmental impacts of customary authorities in different environmental domains with new data. In their design, we suggest these studies should pay special attention to two gaps we have identified in the reviewed articles: first, providing more systematic (qualitative and quantitative) assessments of the environmental impacts of governance arrangements; and second, conducting more detailed analyses of the legal and political position of customary authorities in environmental governance.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their feedback on the manuscript, which helped to improve the quality of the final product considerably.