This paper attempts to identify the essential elements of the communal land tenure system which contributed to the sustainable use of resources in Africa. A number of factors which could enhance and preserve the sustainable use of communal land tenure systemS (given the socio-economic changes that have taken place) are discussed. Hardin's (1968) idea that resources held in common are likely to ...

Land tenure and carbon rights constitute critical issues to take into account in achieving emission reductions, ensuring transparent benefit sharing and determining non-permanence (or non-compliance) liabilities in the context of REDD+ strategies and projects. This is so because tenure systems influence who becomes involved in efforts to avoid deforestation and improve forest management, and th...

a r t i c l e i n f o The existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in Africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory. I make two clarifying contributions to this literature. First, I pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts....

Many authors have blamed African land tenure systems for the poor agricultural production and environmental degradation in Africa, and therefore the resulting hunger, environmental refugees and the lack of socio-economic progress. The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of tenure security in north-east Ghana and the implications for agricultural production and environmental sustainabi...

Humans have a long history of activity in Mediterranean Basin landscapes. Spatial heterogeneity in these landscapes hinders our understanding about the impacts of changes in human activity on ecological processes, such as wildfire. The use of spatially-explicit models that simulate processes at fine scales should aid the investigation of spatial patterns at the broader, landscape scale. Here, w...

This paper explores statistically the implications of the shift from communal to individualized tenure on the distribution of land and schooling between sons and daughters in Western Sumatra. The inheritance system is evolving from a strictly matrilineal system to a more egalitarian system in which sons and daughters inherit the type of land which is more intensive in their own work effort. Whi...

The purpose of this chapter is to describe preliminary results in the attempt to model the linkages between property rights, risk, and livestock development in Niger. Rainfall variation is often identified as the major environmental risk faced by agropastoralists (for example, Swallow 1994). Among the many riskmanagement strategies that are identified, livestock mobility is seen as one of the m...