Editorial

Development Southern Africa special issue on governance of the commons

The October 2009 special issue of Development Southern Africa (Vol. 26, Issue 4) was particularly timely, dedicated as it was to the current debate on how best to govern the commons. Soon after this issue appeared, we heard that Professor Elinor Ostrom had received the Nobel Prize in Economics for her revolutionary contribution to this debate. In a nutshell, Ostrom won this prize for showing that, contrary to Hardin's famous 1968 claim, privatising natural resources or handing them over to the government is not necessarily the way to halt environmental degradation: people can manage their commons if left to themselves.

The guest editors for Development Southern Africa 26(4) reminded us of what American scientist Garrett Hardin wrote in his seminal paper The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin, 1968). He argued that if herders share a pasture where their cows graze, each herder's interest will be to put as many cows as possible onto it, since each will get benefits from the additional cows, while the damage to the pasture will be shared by the whole group. These individual decisions mean that all will suffer in the end from the inevitable overgrazing: ‘Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all’ (1968:1244).

As Glenn Ashton (2009) observes, ‘Elinor Ostrom has stood all of this on its head’. In her lifelong work on forests, lakes, groundwater basins and fisheries, she has shown that communities, when given the right to self-organise, can govern themselves democratically to preserve a resource.

The authors who contributed to Development Southern Africa 26(4) provided strong support for her thesis, in the form of case studies drawn from several southern African countries, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. They showed how users of a commons can in some cases co-exist for centuries without ruining it, and that it is sometimes the institutions and regulations that bring about ruin. The stories in Development Southern Africa 26(4) give credence to Ostrom's findings, and will help us to better understand the conflicts that arise when governments intervene where the people have governed the land for centuries.

This March special issue of Development Southern Africa (Vol. 27, Issue 1) now tackles another question that must be answered in the context of development in southern Africa: how best can we deal with the problem of homelessness? The researchers involved in the Human Sciences Research Council study have convinced us once again that our special issues are making a valuable contribution to key debates in our region.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marié Kirsten

Editor