Editorial

In his seminal paper ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, the American scientist Garrett Hardin used a parable to explain how a shared pasture will inevitably be overgrazed if all the cattle owners are intent on maximising the number of their cattle. Hardin argued that for herders sharing a common pasture (the commons) on which they are all entitled to let their cows graze, each herder's interest is to put as many cows as possible onto the pasture. After all, the individual gets all the benefits from the additional cows, while the damage to the commons is shared by the entire group. However, these individually rational decisions mean that all will suffer in the end: ‘Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all’ (Hardin 1968:1244).

The central question that Hardin posed is about the problem of access to resources and the appropriate institutional arrangements required for fair and equitable distribution. Hardin's paper has spurred new theoretical thinking, inspired scholarship in social research, and spawned whole new university departments and research institutions, all aimed at trying to find solutions to this vexed question.

Yet do societies sharing commons in southern Africa today provide illustrations to prove Hardin's case? The case studies in this issue challenge Hardin by showing how users of a commons can in some cases co-exist for centuries without ruining their commons, and that it is sometimes governments influenced by Hardin's pessimistic view who bring about ruin, or the threat of ruin, by upsetting the intricate arrangements achieved by local people.

For the more than three-quarters of the southern African people who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods and socio-economic development, issues of access and institutional arrangements are an everyday reality. At the centre of these daily struggles are property rights that give entitlements to resource benefits and rules under which those entitlements are exercised. Entitlements entail structures of institutional arrangements. Institutional arrangements include mechanisms for defining and enforcing rights, consisting of not only formal procedures but also social customs, legitimacy and recognition of rights to resources.

This is what the current special issue on the Cross-Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa project is about – a contribution to the scholarship and policy debates about how knowledge, political economy and power relations influence and determine institutional arrangements for access to resources in southern Africa. The papers, drawn from a variety of commons-sharing situations across the region, further take up and take on Hardin's thesis, locating how communities manage their resources and where states are placed in these debates.

The debate Hardin set going is a perennial and productive one. We invite readers to take it further by submitting debate articles in response to the viewpoints expressed in this issue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mafaniso Hara

Guest Editor

Frank Matose

Guest Editor