Fragmentation, Cooperation and Power: Institutional Dynamics in Natural Resource Governance in North-Western Namibia

Bollig, Michael; Schwieger, Diego A. Menestrey

doi:10.1007/s10745-014-9647-7

Cited by 61 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Our finding that top-down processes have triggered strong decoupling processes is corroborated by other studies from pastoral SESs (Li andLi 2012, Goldman andRiosmena 2013). In contrast, recoupling processes between social and ecological subsystems have rarely been observed (but see Bollig and Menestrey Schwieger 2014).…”

Section: Coupling Within and Between Subsystemssupporting

confidence: 88%

“…To address the relevant temporal scale of years to decades (Bollig and Menestrey Schwieger 2014) and to reconstruct practices and institutions in the baseline situation of the traditional pastoral SES, we combine a contemporary with a historical perspective, focusing on changes in the past century. Government interventions, i.e., cross-scale interactions from a higher organizational scale, are explicitly addressed.…”

Section: Scales and Analytical Levelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the resilience of a real-world social-ecological system: lessons from a multidisciplinary evaluation of a South African pastoral system

Linstädter¹,

Kuhn²,

Naumann³

et al. 2016

E&S

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. Assessing the resilience of a real-world social-ecological system: lessons from a multidisciplinary evaluation of a South African pastoral system. Ecology and Society 21(3):35. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08737-210335 SynthesisAssessing the resilience of a real-world social-ecological system: lessons from a multidisciplinary evaluation of a South African pastoral system ABSTRACT. In the past decades, social-ecological systems (SESs) worldwide have undergone dramatic transformations with often detrimental consequences for livelihoods. Although resilience thinking offers promising conceptual frameworks to understand SES transformations, empirical resilience assessments of real-world SESs are still rare because SES complexity requires integrating knowledge, theories, and approaches from different disciplines. Taking up this challenge, we empirically assess the resilience of a South African pastoral SES to drought using various methods from natural and social sciences. In the ecological subsystem, we analyze rangelands' ability to buffer drought effects on forage provision, using soil and vegetation indicators. In the social subsystem, we assess households' and communities' capacities to mitigate drought effects, applying agronomic and institutional indicators and benchmarking against practices and institutions in traditional pastoral SESs. Our results indicate that a decoupling of livelihoods from livestockgenerated income was initiated by government interventions in the 1930s. In the post-apartheid phase, minimum-input strategies of herd management were adopted, leading to a recovery of rangeland vegetation due to unintentionally reduced stocking densities. Because current livelihood security is mainly based on external monetary resources (pensions, child grants, and disability grants), household resilience to drought is higher than in historical phases. Our study is one of the first to use a truly multidisciplinary resilience assessment. Conflicting results from partial assessments underline that measuring narrow indicator sets may impede a deeper understanding of SES transformations. The results also imply that the resilience of contemporary, open SESs cannot be explained by an inward-looking approach because essential connections and drivers at other scales have become relevant in the globalized world. Our study thus has helped to identify pitfalls in empirical resilience assessment and to improve the conceptualization of SES dynamics.

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Section: Coupling Within and Between Subsystemssupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Scales and Analytical Levelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the resilience of a real-world social-ecological system: lessons from a multidisciplinary evaluation of a South African pastoral system

Linstädter¹,

Kuhn²,

Naumann³

et al. 2016

E&S

Self Cite

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“…Michael Bollig reports in his contribution that the hopes and aspirations of the Namibian government in the establishment of new commons corresponded to changing concerns about natural resource management on the international level: the state was meant to devolve the day to day management of natural resources to rural communities, provide conditions that locals benefitted economically from resources in the best possible way and that co-management of resources would result in management plans geared towards sustainability (Barnes et al 2002;Bollig and Menestrey-Schwieger 2014). There was a general consensus that a heightened sense of ownership, economic incentives and stable local social institutions were the key to sustainable resource use in the poverty-stricken, post-civil war communal areas of Namibia's north.…”

Section: Top-down: Co-managed Pastoral Commonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the "new commons", boundaries, rules and monitoring systems have to be established first of all, and we can learn much about the temporal and qualitative dimensions of emergent institutions of common pool resource management. When Namibian conservancies become established, the definition of spatial and social boundaries usually takes a long time and is much contested (Bollig and Menestrey-Schwieger 2014). The definition of internal zonation is another tricky step which is negotiated within a conservancy.…”

Section: Commons Theories: Towards An Advanced Post-ostromian Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The “new pastoral commons” of Eastern and Southern Africa

Bollig

Lesorogol

2016

Int J Commons

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“…Beginning in the 1990s the implementation of CBNRM led to a drastic reconfiguration of the organizational and institutional landscapes around rural water points (Barnes et al 2002;Davis 2008;Falk et al 2009;Silva and Mosimane 2013;Bollig and Menestrey Schwieger 2014;Menestrey Schwieger 2015;Schnegg 2016a). A shift toward self-governance meant turning ownership and responsibility of the borehole infrastructure over to local user groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Travelling models of participation: Global ideas and local translations of water management in Namibia

Schnegg

Linke

2016

Int J Commons

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Abstract:In recent decades, water management in Namibia has profoundly changed. Beginning in the 1990s the Namibian state has incrementally turned ownership of and the responsibility for its rural water supply to local user groups. While the state withdrew from managing resources directly, it continued to circumscribe the ways in which local communities should govern them. In so doing, a "new commons" was created. Inclusive participation became the leitmotif of the new management scheme and in particular the participation of women was a major political and societal goal. In this article, we use the notion of travelling models as a theoretical guide to explore how the idea of participation emerged in international development discourses and how it was then translated through national legislation into the local context. The results of the analysis show that more than 20 years after the formulation of international conventions the average participation of women in local water committees remains low. However, older women do manage the funds associated with water and thus occupy one of the most important functions. Our explanation takes the wider social and cultural field into account and shows that gender and generational roles provide elder women with autonomy and authority which prepare their ways into these new official roles. We conclude by considering whether and how the travelling model of participation has been changing local social structures in general and the role of elder women in particular.

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Fragmentation, Cooperation and Power: Institutional Dynamics in Natural Resource Governance in North-Western Namibia

Cited by 61 publications

References 28 publications

Assessing the resilience of a real-world social-ecological system: lessons from a multidisciplinary evaluation of a South African pastoral system

Assessing the resilience of a real-world social-ecological system: lessons from a multidisciplinary evaluation of a South African pastoral system

The “new pastoral commons” of Eastern and Southern Africa

Travelling models of participation: Global ideas and local translations of water management in Namibia

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