Governance of the commons in southern Africa: knowledge, political economy and power

Abstract

Millions of southern African livelihoods continue to depend on the successful management and sustainable use of the commons – land and natural resources that are supposedly or actually managed, with varying degrees of success, as common property. This, above all, is the challenge to governance. The poor must tackle it – and governments and development agencies must support their endeavours – in the triple context of knowledge, political economy and power. This paper highlights the major factors and trends in these three areas that we must understand if we are to optimise support for the governance of the commons in southern Africa. If more commons around the region are studied from the same analytical perspectives, it will be easier to share experience and lessons in ways that can usefully inform development and conservation policy and programmes. This is what the Cross-Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa project, reported in this special issue, has tried to do.

Keywords:

• Southern Africa
• commons
• governance
• knowledge
• political economy
• power

This special issue was produced with the support of the European Union's Sixth Framework programme through the Cross-Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa Project No. 043982. This work does not reflect the Commission's views and in no way anticipates its future policy in this area. The authors would like to thank all the anonymous reviewers, and the Development Southern Africa publications team, who helped to make these papers publishable.

Notes

¹Governments of independent African states inherited these models from colonialists, and because these countries’ resource managers and the western experts that come with development aid are influenced by the western training most of them have had, this thinking has been further entrenched.

²Bromley (1991:2) suggests that the term ‘common property resources’ be abandoned for the more correct ‘common pool resources’. By implication, the term ‘common property’ should be reserved to refer to regimes.

³Economic instrumentalism holds the view that most critical decisions regarding allocation and use of resources are based primarily on economics rather than on conservation considerations. Devolutionism proposes that, in order to create positive conditions for sustainable use, the ability to take crucial management decisions should be devolved to the resource users. Collective proprietorship emphasises that it is important for users to have tenure and property rights if they are to manage resources sustainably.