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Abstract
In Meru, Tanzania local initiatives were instrumental in establishing a gravity irrigation system in the 1890s. The original property rights institutions governing furrows were characterised by de facto communal ownership and management combined with private temporary user rights. Over the last 12 decades farming systems in Meru have experienced changing land/labour ratios, overall technological and institutional change as well as increased demand for irrigation water. The furrow system has been extended and due to general agricultural intensification access to water has become an important pre-condition for production in the current local system of agricultural production. However, it is argued that in the midst of drastic overall change in the area, irrigation furrows have experienced no significant change in either technology or property rights institutions. It is found that institutional continuity is explained by the natural characteristics of water, property rights embeddedness in socio-economic structures, and challenges of managing it as a common-pool resource.
Notes
1. Adams, “How Beautiful is Small?”; Adams, Watson and Mutiso, “Water, Rules and Gender”; Börjeson, “Boserup Backwards?”; Davies “Wittfogel's Dilemma”; Lerise, “Planning the End of the River”; Potkanski and Adams, “Water Scarcity”; Spear, Mountain Farmers; Sutton, A Thousand Years of East Africa; Sutton, “Engaruka.”
2. Widgren and Sutton, Islands of Intense Agriculture in Eastern Africa.
3. See, for example, Alchian and Demsetz, “The Property Right Paradigm”; Berry, No Condition is Permanent; Carlsson, To Have and to Hold; Chenje and Johnson, Water in Southern Africa; Cleaver, “Moral Ecological Rationality”; Ostrom, Governing the Commons.
4. Kimambo, “Environmental Control and Hunger.”
5. Potkanski and Adams, “Water Scarcity.”
6. Sutton, A Thousand Years of East Africa; Sutton, “Engaruka.”
7. Börjeson, “Boserup Backwards?”
8. Östberg, “The Expansion of Marakwet Hill-furrow Irrigation.”
9. Stump, “Intensification in Context.”
10. Widgren and Sutton, Islands of Intense Agriculture in Eastern Africa.
11. Iliffe, Africans.
12. Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth.
13. Börjeson, “Boserup Backwards?”
14. Widgren, “Towards a Historical Geography.”
15. Austin, “The ‘Reversal of Fortune’”; Djurfeldt et al., African Food Crisis.
16. Bromley, Economic Interests & Institutions; Feder and Feeny, “The Theory on Land Tenure and Property Rights.”
17. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.
18. Alchian and Demsetz, “The Property Right Paradigm”; Berry, “Property, Authority and Citizenship”; Cleaver, “Moral Ecological Rationality”; Hodgson, Economics and Institutions.
19. See, for example, Berry, No Condition is Permanent; Berry, “Property, Authority and Citizenship”; Mamdani, Citizen and Subject; Peters, Dividing the Commons; Peters, “Inequality and Social Conflict over Land in Africa.”
20. See, for example, Berry, “Debating the Land Question in Africa”; Odgaard, “Scrambling for Land in Tanzania”.
21. See, for example, Peters, Dividing the Commons; Peters, “Inequality and Social Conflict over Land in Africa.”
22. Carney and Farrington, Natural Resource Management and Institutional Change; Platteau, “The Evolutionary Theory of Land Rights as Applied to Sub-Saharan Africa”; Ribot, “Decentralization, Participation and Representation.”
23. Carlsson, To Have and to Hold.
24. See, for example, Kay, Franks, and Smith, Water.
25. Ostrom, Governing the Commons.
26. Chenje and Johnson, Water in Southern Africa, 75.
27. Ostrom, Governing the Commons.
28. See for example Adams, Watson, and Mutiso, “Water, Rules and Gender; Andelson, Commons Without Tragedy; Bromley, Making the Commons Work; Carlsson, To Have and to Hold; Dahlman, The Open Field System; Ostrom, Governing the Commons; Peters, Dividing the Commons.
29. Adams, “How Beautiful is Small?”
30. Chenje and Johnson, Water in Southern Africa.
31. Spear, Mountain Farmers.
32. Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity, 31–2, 102–3; Spear, “Land, Population and Agricultural Development on Mount Meru”; Spear, “Struggles for the Land.”
33. Puritt, “The Meru of Northeastern Tanzania.”
34. Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity, 185; Puritt, “The Meru of Northeastern Tanzania.”
35. Östberg, “The Expansion of Marakwet Hill-furrow Irrigation”.
36. Spear, Mountain Farmers, 32–3.
37. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000.
38. Spear, Mountain Farmers.
39. Davies, “Wittfogel's Dilemma.”
40. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000.
41. Spear, “Struggles for the Land,” 221; interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000.
42. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000.
43. Davies, “Wittfogel's Dilemma.”
44. Interview with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000.
45. See, for example, Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, 77–8.
46. Kanthack, Report on the Control of Natural Waters; Mwita, “Rights in Respect to Water in Tanzania”; TNA 471/w.2/8 vol. I, 4–5.
47. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000; water committee members, Meru, November 2007.
48. Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity, table 4.1
49. Spear, Mountain Farmers.
50. Spear, Mountain Farmers.
51. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000.
52. TNA 3495 vol. I; interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000; interview with private irrigation furrow owners, Meru, November 2007.
53. Davies, “Wittfogel's Dilemma.”
54. Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity, 106.
55. Mwita, “Rights in Respect to Water in Tanzania”, 12–17; TNA 471/w.2/8 vol. I, 6–7.
56. TNA 471/w.2/8 vol. II.
57. TNA 471/w/2/8 vol. II, 3–4.
58. TNA 471/w/2/8 vol. I, 1.
59. Interviews with water users, Meru, March 2011.
60. Hillbom, “Farm Intensification and Milk Market Expansion.”
61. Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity, table 4.1
62. Börjeson, “Boserup Backwards?”
63. Kivelia, “Population Pressure and Land Degradation in Tanzania,” 58.
64. Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity, 35, 39.
65. Carlsson, To Have and to Hold; Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity; Puritt, “The Meru of Northeastern Tanzania,” 93; Spear, “Land, Population and Agricultural Development on Mount Meru,” 3.
66. Hillbom, “Farm Intensification and Milk Market Expansion.”
67. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000.
68. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000; water committee members, Meru, November 2007.
69. Interviews, J. Kobalyenda, Principle Water Officer, Ministry of Water, Dar s Salaam, October 15, 1998; J. S. Nasari, Regional Hydrologist, Regional Water Office, Arusha, April 21, 1998.
70. URoT, “Rural Water Policy,” 2–3.
71. Easter, Plusquelle, and Subramanian, “Irrigation Improvement Strategy Review,” 11–16; Saleth and Dinar, “Water Challenge and Institutional Response.”
72. Saleth and Dinar, “Water Challenge and Institutional Response,” iii, 35.
73. Friis-Hansen, “Agricultural Policy in Africa after Adjustment.”
74. Interviews with private irrigation furrow owners, Meru, September 2000; water committee members, Meru, November 2007 and February 2009.
75. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.”
76. Peters, Dividing the Commons; Peters, “Inequality and Social Conflict over Land in Africa.”
77. Interviews six water committee members, Meru, September 2000 and November 2007.
78. Potkanski and Adams, “Water Scarcity.”
79. Berry, “Debating the Land Question in Africa”; Odgaard, “Scrambling for Land in Tanzania.”
80. Interviews with oral history key informants, Meru, September 2000; water users, Meru, November 2007.
81. Interviews with private irrigation furrow owners, Meru, September 2000; water committee members, Meru, November 2007, February 2009 and March 2011.
82. Larsson, Between Crisis and Opportunity.
83. Interviews with key informants, Meru, March 2011.