Thesis (MAgric (Agricultural Economics))—University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / The natural resources mainly land, forests, and grazing lands in the Highlands ago-ecological
zone of Eritrea are in a severely degraded state. And much of these common pool resources
comprise commons i.e. they are managed under the common property rights management
regimes.
“The tragedy of the commons”, model suggests that all commons will inexorably suffer
overexploitation and degradation. Contrary to this deterministic proposition, however,
common property theory argues that the ‘tragedy’ is not due to inherent flaws in the common
property rights management regimes, but because of institutional failure to control access to
resources, and to make and enforce internal decisions for collective use. If the commons
dilemma situation exists- i.e. ‘tragedy’, then the underlying problem is the degeneration of
the existing common property rights resource management regime into open-access-like
regime—a condition that can potentially trigger “the tragedy of the commons”. The question
of how to deal with the problem of the commons is, therefore, primarily an issue of the
existence of efficient institutions.
The prevailing severe degradation of the common-pool resources in the Highlands of the
country thus calls into question the robustness of the common property rights regimes that are
in place for the governance of these resources. This thesis attempts to address this important
problem specifically in relation to forest and grazing land common pool resources.
A case study based on a single-case qualitative and exploratory-explanatory research design
was carried out in a village located in the Highlands of the country. Data were collected
through various forms of interviews (semi-structured interviews, in-depth interviews, key
informants interviews, group discussions, and informal conversational interviews), direct
observation, and document review. The data, gathered largely through using these separate
lines of enquiry, were crosschecked to provide a triangulation of methods and to strengthen
the validity and reliability of the data.
The empirical findings reveal that existing common property rights management regimes for
the management of the local common pool resources of the case study area have weakened
over time. These findings indicate that, there is a significant incongruence between
appropriation and provision rules. And this is manifested in terms of appropriation
externalities and demand side and supply side provision externalities. This situation implies
that existing local institutional arrangements i.e. common property rights management
regimes in the case study area are not sufficiently robust to solve common pool resource
appropriation and provision externalities.
Though generalisation cannot be made beyond the case that was studied, there are several
lessons that may be drawn from this field analysis, which may have valid implications for the
natural resources management challenges and opportunities of the entire Highlands agoecological
zone of the country.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/1968 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Habteab Sibhatu, Adam |
| Contributors | Vink, Nick, University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Science. Dept. of Agricultural Economics. |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Stellenbosch |
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