Search

This paper examines changes in formal and informal land access rules for women in the Kafue Flats of southern Zambia and identifies alternatives to land privatization. In rural African communities dependent on subsistence production, access to common pool resources (CPRs) such as fisheries, wildlife or wild fruits made an important contribution to household food and nutritional security. In the pre-colonial period, the use of agricultural land and associated CPRs was governed by local institutions of common property, characterized by more-than-human relationships embedded in the local animistic ontology. To examine how women’s pre-colonial access rights were increasingly disregarded in the wake of new statutory laws, we analyzed qualitative ethnographic data on livelihoods and food security from three time periods between 2002 and 2018. The findings show how customary law land tenure has remained important, despite being complemented by statutory law designed to also protect women’s property rights. We conclude that women’s customary access rights to land and CPRs must be taken into account in the drafting of formal legislation, as suggested by successful examples of bottom-up institution building in other regions.

Development actors in West Africa have been promoting agroecological farming as a solution to combat climate change and to create more sovereign food systems that enhance the autonomy of local smallholders. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding the actual implementation of such programs and their potential to empower smallholders, especially in the West African region. Drawing on co-produced knowledge from anthropological fieldwork in Western Senegal, the case study of an alternative food network explores the interlinkages between the promotion of agroecology, anti-migration policies, and unequal power and market relations. Informed by decolonial political ecologies, the analysis reveals different layers of coloniality which complicate embodied effects on horticultural smallholders. The authors conclude that instead of fostering the emancipation of smallholders, development actors promote a labor-intensive and unprofitable way of farming that exploits local resources for the sake of green agendas and white markets. This article highlights the need for a critical reflection on the potential limitations of agroecology and calls for a more nuanced approach that considers the complex realities of smallholders in West Africa.

This article argues on the basis of a comparative study in floodplain areas in Cameroon, Tanzania, and Zambia that land tenure issues have to be related to historical institutional changes not only to property rights in land, but also to land related common pool resources. It further outlines that in addition to privatisation of resources, pastoralists face challenges from the fragmentation of cultural landscape ecosystems, which serves to undermine local common property institutions and their reciprocal resource management arrangements that provided resilience in floodplain ecosystems. Colonisation and postcolonial constellations led to a major institutional change from common to state property in African rangelands, and created legal and institutional pluralism which enabled more powerful state and wealthy actors to shop for institutions that suit them best, especially privatisation and open access constellations (Haller 2010). The article argues that it is this institutional change that transformed the previous cultural landscape ecosystems, that conservationists and governments now want to protect by excluding pastoralists. It will analyse how governments and environmentalists increase their bargaining power in order to appropriate these landscapes in the form of land as commons and green grabbing. It will do so by combining a New Institutionalism and Political Ecology approach (NIPE) with Appadurai's notion of scapes (1996) in a way that unpacks power dynamics for legitimacy-based governmentalities that link global and local scales. The article unpacks the idea of ideoscapes and adds a four-step historical phases model to the concept. This illustrates the scapes pastoralists are in (state, neoliberal, neoliberal applied including investment and conservation, and terrorism and control scapes). These scapes provide legitimacy capital for powerful actors, shape platforms for strategic selection of institutions (institution shopping) and act as Anti-Politics Machines (APM).

This article is an attempt to discuss the image of Alexander von Humboldt as a pure natural scientist with a humanist ethos, and to highlight that he was in fact one of the first thinkers who anticipated positions known today as political ecology. We outline that his universal knowledge obviously has contradictory perspectives, and was interpreted in several directions. On the one hand, there is the position taken by post-colonial critics that Humboldt showed Eurocentric and imperialist thinking during his travels to the Americas, as Pratt has advocated. On the other hand, and in explicit contrast to the post-colonial critique, Humboldt has been regarded by Sachs as a founding figure of American environmentalism and as "perhaps, the first ecological thinker." Furthermore, Wulf's biography titled The Invention of Nature tries to show that Humboldt wanted to bridge the gap between the emerging natural sciences and Romanticist aesthetics. However, based on his writings, we argue that his perception of nature has been misread and that his position was shaped by a view akin to open and critical political ecology, as opposed to pure nature constructivism without including local humans. We show this by focusing on his research methods that were open to local Indigenous ecological knowledge, his appraisal of Indigenous socio-cultural systems, his perception of nature as Indigenous cultural landscapes degraded by colonial and early capitalist market forces, his openness towards Indigenous ontologies of what we call nature, and finally his focus on local institutions for the sustainable governance of resources.

Abstract This paper focuses on establishing actors and their roles in the slaughterhouse processes in the Nanyuki slaughterhouse of Laikipia County. This is understood through the lens of the food system approach, based on the study findings of an anthropological study of pastoralism in Laikipia County, Kenya. This paper is guided by the specific objectives aimed at establishing the actors and their roles and describing the effects that institutional settings and changes have on slaughterhouse operations. Using a new institutionalism approach in social anthropology, the paper focuses not only on the actors and their roles but also on how externally shaped beef prices and standards shape the rules regulating access to the food processing processes for pastoral actors. We argue that this has an impact on pastoral economies and the question if and how pastoralists are able to benefit from this change in the food system. The study also identifies institutional settings and changes related to management, security and health concerns that impact the slaughterhouse operations and processes resulting from the dispensation of the devolved system of governance in the country. Data collection was through key informant interviews and unstructured observation of the slaughterhouse. The findings reveal economic and social relationships among actors involved in slaughterhouse operations and processes. The study also identified changes in formal institutional settings that impact the slaughterhouse operations, notably movement and no-objection permits as well as transportation and condemnation certifications. As a result, increased scholarship is recommended into slaughterhouse operations and processes as a means to understand the value addition that pastoralism has on the economic and food sustainability of the pastoral regions, counties and the nation as a whole.

This article discusses the co-management experiences of two tropical protected areas – the Korup National Park (KNP) in Cameroon, and the Natma Taung National Park (NTNP) in Myanmar. The discussion is anchored on the constitutionality construct and opens up reflections to guide future management processes and outcomes for protected areas. Based on a review of articles and institutional reports, complemented by interviews and focus group discussions, we comparatively analyze the manifestations of two constitutionality principles in co-management around the KNP and NTNP, and discuss future co-management perspectives. The paper concludes with reflections on how local level institutions could be activated in protected area management, especially with respect to enforcing catalyzing agents and improving state motivation and recognition of local institutional processes. The results do not only provide necessary ingredients to improve the institution-building process if co-management must become adaptive, but equally opens up new research avenues in the context of local power play and social learning. We argue that further studies should seek to understand conditions, under which catalyzing agents and the state could support and recognize endogenous institution-building processes to improve resource management outcomes.

The rise of palm oil as the world's most consumed vegetable oil has coincided with exponential growth in palm oil research activity. Bibliometric analysis of research outputs reveals a distinct imbalance in the type of research being undertaken, notably a disproportionate focus on biofuel and engineering topics. Recognizing the expansion of oil palm agriculture across the tropics and the increasing awareness of environmental, social, and economic impacts, we seek to reorientate the existing research agenda toward one that addresses the most fundamental and urgent questions defined by the palm oil stakeholder community. Following consultation with 659 stakeholders from 38 countries, including palm oil growers, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and researchers, the highest priority research questions were identified within 13 themes. The resulting 279 questions, including 26 ranked as top priority, reveal a diversity of environmental and social research challenges facing the industry, ranging from the ecological and ecosystem impacts of production, to the livelihoods of plantation workers and smallholder communities. Analysis of the knowledge type produced from these questions underscores a clear need for fundamental science programmes, and studies that involve the consultation of non-academic stakeholders to develop “transformative” solutions to the oil palm sector. Stakeholders were most aligned in their choice of priority questions across the themes of policy and certification related themes, and differed the most in environmental feedback, technology and smallholder related themes. Our recommendations include improved regional academic leadership and coordination, greater engagement with private and public stakeholders in Africa, and Central and South America, and enhanced collaborative efforts with researchers in the major consuming countries of India and China.

This Special Issue contributes to the debate that land grabbing should be discussed as commons grabbing [...]

Recent debates in social anthropology on land acquisitions highlight the need to go further back in history in order to analyse their impacts on local livelihoods. The debate over the commons in economic and ecological anthropology helps us understand some of today’s dynamics by looking at precolonial common property institutions and the way they were transformed by Western colonization to state property and then, later in the age of neoliberalism, to privatization and open access. This paper focuses on Africa and refers to the work of critical scholars who show that traditional land tenure was misinterpreted as customary tenure without full property rights, while a broader literature on the commons shows that common-pool resources (pasture, fisheries, wildlife, forestry etc.) have been effectively managed by locally-developed common property institutions. This misinterpretation continues to function as a legacy in both juridical and popular senses. Moreover, the transformation of political systems and the notion of customary land tenure produced effects of central importance for today’s investment context. During colonial times a policy of indirect rule based on new elites was created to manage customary lands of so-called native groups who could use the land as long as it was of no value to the state. However, this land formally remained in the hands of the state, which also claimed to manage common-pool resources through state institutions. The neoliberal policies that are now demanded by donor agencies have had two consequences for land and land-related common-pool resources. On the one hand, states often lack the financial means to enforce their own natural resource legislation and this has led to de facto open access. On the other hand, land legally fragmented from its common-pool resources has been transformed from state to private property. This has enabled new elites and foreign investors to claim private property on formerly commonly-held land, which also leads to the loss of access to land related common-pool resources for more marginal local actors. Thus, the paper argues that this process does not just lead to land grabbing but to commons grabbing as well. This has furthermore undermined the resilience and adaptive capacity of local populations because access to common-pool resources is vital for the livelihoods of more marginal groups, especially in times of crisis. Comparative studies undertaken on floodplains in Botswana, Cameroon, Mali, Tanzania and Zambia based on a New Institutional Political Ecology (NIPE) approach illustrate this process and its impacts and show how institutional transformations are key to understanding the impacts of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) and investments in Africa.

This paper is a summary of the findings of research work conducted in two case studies in the Rift Valley, Kenya. This study used the Neo-Institutional theory to interrogate how the rules and regulations (institutions involved) of the agrarian reform process in Kenya are constantly changing and helping to shape the livelihoods of social actors around Mau Forest. The first case study—Ndungulu, is a settlement scheme where the Ogiek ethnic community were resettled between 1995 and 1997 after the land clashes of 1992. The second case study is the Kamuyu cooperative farm, a post-colonial settlement scheme owned by a cooperative society that was founded in 1965 by members from the Kikuyu ethnic group. This study employed qualitative data collection methods intermittently between 2012 and 2017 for a total of two years. A total of 60 interviews were conducted for this research. Thirteen (13) of these were key informant interviews with experts on land. The qualitative interviews were complemented by participant observations and nine focus group discussions. The qualitative data from the interviews and focus group discussions were transcribed, coded and analyzed thematically. Observations documented as field notes were also analyzed to complement the study findings. In this paper, the challenges, bargaining position and power play between social actors and government institutions implicated in the agrarian reform process in Kenya has been brought to the forefront. For instance, due to the structural issues that date back to the colonial period, the Ogiek have found innovative ways to maintain their daily existence (e.g., maintaining traditional methods of apiculture in Mau Forest). However, constraints in accessing forest land has resulted in them taking desperate measures, namely; selling off land to the Kalenjin in what is called “distress land sales”. On the contrary, the neighboring Kikuyu have maintained their land ownership status despite recurrent ethnic clashes that have occurred during general election years.

Agriculture is the backbone of Kenya’s economy, supporting up to 80% of rural livelihoods. Kenya’s export horticulture is currently the leading agriculture subsector in Kenya and is regarded as an agro-industrial food system based on the economies of scale, producing for mass markets outside of the production area. Much of the food consumed from Kenya’s export horticulture sector has undergone multiple transformations and been subject to a host of formal and informal institutions (rules, regulations, standards, norms and values). Kenya’s export horticulture production, driven by rising global demands, has expanded beyond the ‘traditional’ mountainous high yielding areas into arid and semi-arid (ASALs) zones such as Laikipia County, Northwest of Mount Kenya. An anthropological study of export horticulture viewed as an agro-industrial food system in Laikipia County was carried out utilizing the new institutionalism theory in anthropology to explore the actors, rules and regulations linked to export horticulture production and access to common pool resources. The study employed qualitative data collection methods to collect data over an extended field work period of eight months. The data from 40 in-depth interviews complemented by unstructured observations, four focus group discussions and five key informant interviews was transcribed, coded and analyzed thematically based on the grounded theory approach. This paper, therefore, presents findings from the qualitative case study on the actors as well as the rules and regulations (the institutional settings) of export horticulture production and access to common pool resources from an emic perspective of the involved actors. The formal and informal rules and regulations which form the institutional setting in this food system are viewed as changing and defining the operations of the food system’s access and management of common pool resources, namely water and land. With the agro-industrial food system competing with local food systems such as agro-pastoralism and small holder agriculture for these scarce resources in a semi-arid zone, there is potential for conflict and reduced production, as well as overall benefits to the different actors in the study area.

Fisheries, wildlife and pastures are under massive pressure in the Kafue Flats, a wetland, which is one of the largest floodplains in Southern and Central Africa. This ecosystem which once harboured abundant common-pool resources and which was managed by local common property regimes is now being threatened with overexploitation. The last 30 years however, have witnessed severe pressure and overuse of these commons. A historical and institutional analysis of the situation of common-pool resources indicates that overuse of fisheries and the mismanagement of wildlife goes back to the erosion of traditional institutions by state governance. Institutional weakness resulting from economic decline in the country is of major concern as the institutions can no longer effectively enforce regulations in the area, a situation which has led to a de facto open access constellation for common-pool resources. The paper discusses three cases. The first is the WWF-Wetland Project and the Administrative Management Design (ADMADE) initiative which was designed to deal with management of Lochinvar and Blue Lagoon National Parks and the adjacent Game Management Area through the involvement of local chiefs and local communities. The second case refers to the Partners for Wetlands Project, which included local people via their chiefs as well as the public and private sectors from large agricultural enterprises to the eastern side of the Kafue Flats (Mwanachinwala Conservation Area project in Mazabuka). However, both attempts yielded poor results due to misconceptions of traditional representation of local communities and misinterpretation of local economic and political incentives. Although the ADMADE programme appears to be a scaling up case, its implementation continues to receive considerable resistance from opposition leaders of chiefs and later by the chiefs themselves. In the third case, the paper examines the fishery constitutional process which had started in 2004 for creating by-laws based on initiatives of local staff of the Department of Fisheries, local interest groups and researchers. A broad local debate on how to manage the fisheries in a sustainable way and develop locally based by-laws for joint management of fisheries gives good potential for success and appears promising for the future of fisheries in Kafue Flats. Despite many difficulties it is an example of local collective action in order to scale up governance of common-pool resources.

This paper addresses pastoral resilience by drawing out the coping strategies and mechanisms utilized by the Maasai Pastoralists through a food system approach, based on the study findings of an anthropological study of pastoralism as a food system in Laikipia County, Rift Valley, Kenya. The co-existence and interactions of pastoralism as a food system with other types of food systems in Laikipia, such as large-scale horticulture, justified the selection of the study site. This paper is guided by the specific objectives aimed at establishing actors and their roles, and describing the institutional settings and changes that sustain the continued practice of pastoralism. Using a new institutionalism approach, the paper focuses not only on the actors and their roles but also on how internal and external forces regulate access and use of common pool resources (CPRs) resulting in food sustainability within the food system amidst climatic challenges and cyclic humanitarian crises. We argue that this has an impact on the food system that continually defines and redefines the actors’ roles and institutional settings and changes (formal and informal rules, regulations, values and norms) that in turn affirm the value of pastoral economies and benefits accrued to a wide range of actors beyond the community and leading to pastoral resilience. Data collected through in-depth interviews amongst pastoral households identified actors and their roles in pastoralism in the household with a total of 50 households being conveniently sampled. Key informant interviews with key stakeholders in the food system described the institutional settings and changes and also identified actors and their roles in pastoralism. Three focus group discussions based on age and gender, established the actors and their roles and described institutional settings and changes to supplement data collected from interviews and unstructured observations aimed at giving a better description of the actors and their roles and also point to observable institutional settings and changes within and outside the community group ranches. The findings reveal that actors in the household, state, non-state, and service providers have developed varied coping strategies and mechanisms that sustain pastoralism. The study also identified institutional settings and changes that promote pastoral resilience, notably, private land ownership patterns, co-management of livestock markets, commercialization of herding, decentralization of livestock services, holistic management of pasture and the water-shed management plans. As a result, increased scholarship and advocacy in regards to the concept of co-management of livestock markets, are recommended as a means of understanding the pastoral resilience that the food system exhibits.

We enlarge the notion of institutional fit using theoretical approaches from New Institutionalism, including rational choice and strategic action, political ecology and constructivist approaches. These approaches are combined with ecological approaches (system and evolutionary ecology) focusing on feedback loops and change. We offer results drawn from a comparison of fit and misfit cases of institutional change in pastoral commons in four African floodplain contexts (Zambia, Cameroon, Tanzania (two cases). Cases of precolonial fit and misfit in the postcolonial past, as well as a case of institutional fit in the postcolonial phase, highlight important features, specifically, flexible institutions, leadership, and mutual economic benefit under specific relations of bargaining power of actors. We argue that only by combining otherwise conflicting approaches can we come to understand why institutional fit develops into misfit and back again.