Customary tenure & reciprocal grazing in Ethiopia

The article “Customary tenure and reciprocal grazing arrangements in eastern Ethiopia” by Fekadu Beyene (2020; Development and Change 41 (1): 107–129) examines how customary tenure provides a basis for reciprocal access arrangements and facilitates access to grazing resources in order to adapt to changing conditions. A literature review on range ecology and governance guided the overall analysis. Empirical results from three case studies involving Somali and Oromo pastoralists showed that internal social relationships and kinship structures are important determining factors in facilitating access to common grazing. Many institutional arrangements exist, with different kinds of incentives. For instance, trading of grazing rights at household level provides an important safety net for poor pastoral and agropastoral herders. Evidence from the three cases revealed that the influence of resource attributes on institutional choice favours flexibility rather than supporting the axiom of the conventional property rights theory, which considers greater exclusivity to be a natural response to scarcity. Institutions supporting reciprocal grazing relations are characterised by negotiability and ambiguity of rights: clan rules facilitating reciprocal grazing are not based on maximising benefits from the commons but rather on maximising security of use rights through investing in relations with others.

Posted on 24 April 2022 in Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Mobility & Land Tenure