Ideal Free Distributions of Mobile Pastoralists in Multiple Seasonal Grazing Areas

Rangeland governance in an open system: Protecting transhumance corridors in the Far North Province of Cameroon

“…Pastoralists share an ethos of open access, which prescribes that all pastoralists, regardless of class, ethnicity or nationality, have free access to commonpool grazing resources. Contrary to expectations, there is no evidence of a tragedy of the commons (Moritz et al 2013b;Moritz et al 2013a;Scholte et al 2006). We have found indications that the system we describe for the Chad Basin is common in other pastoral systems in West Africa (Niamir-Fuller 1999), even when it is not labelled as such (Frantz 1986;Horowitz 1986;Stenning 1957;Swallow 1990), and it has also been described for pastoralists outside Africa (e.g.…”

“…The rules are reaffirmed in everyday practice every time pastoralists set up camps in new sites without asking. The ethos and practice of open access is a form of everyday management that regulates the use of common-pool resources in that there are two important outcomes: the emergence of an ideal-free-like distribution of mobile pastoralists in which the distribution of grazing pressure matches the distribution of grazing resources (Moritz et al 2013b;Moritz et al 2013c) and the lack of major conflict among pastoralists (Scholte et al 2006). These outcomes require the everyday commitment of pastoralists to the ethos and practice of open access.…”

Misreading a pastoral property regime in the Logone floodplain, Cameroon

“…Similarly, we found that when the grasslands in the floodplain recovered after the reflooding project in the 1990s, the increase in grazing pressure closely tracked the increase in biomass (Scholte et al 2000(Scholte et al , 2006. This also suggests that pastoralists distribute themselves over seasonal grazing areas in an ideal free distribution (Moritz et al 2014b). …”

Open property regimes

“…It is an open system and this is reflected in the (recent) history of pastoral movements in the floodplain and beyond, which shows that the pastoral population is constantly changing in response to intra-and inter-annual changes in the distribution of grazing resources. We have found that open access to common-pool grazing resources and independent decision-making of highly mobile pastoralists results in an ideal free distribution of pastoralists in which the distribution of grazing pressure matches that of the distribution of grazing resources (Moritz et al 2014a(Moritz et al , 2014b. We have described this as a selforganizing complex adaptive system in which common-pool resources are managed without central or collective control (Moritz et al 2015a).…”

“…First, we used ethnographic methods to describe how open access works in the Logone Floodplain (Moritz et al 2013a). Second, we used spatial methods to document an ideal free distribution of pastoralists in the floodplain (Moritz et al 2014a(Moritz et al , 2014b. Third, we used agent-based modeling to show that it is relatively easy for pastoralists making independent movement decisions to achieve an ideal free distribution at the population level (Moritz et al 2015a).…”