Institutions put to the test: Community-based water management in Namibia during a drought

Towards an Arid Eden? Boundary making, governance and benefit sharing and the political ecology of the “new commons” of Kunene Region, Northern Namibia

“…The boundaries of these grazing territories are still porous though: A third of the households surveyed in 2012 said that they would have access to pastures beyond the boundaries of their conservancy through kinship ties in times of need. Schnegg and Bollig (2016) showed that during the drought 2013/2014 quite a number of households crossed conservancy boundaries in their search for pasture. Events occurring Towards an Arid Eden?…”

“…Poverty, exclusion from markets, and the rule of traditional authorities were major challenges (Bollig 2006). Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) became the umbrella term for a number of initiatives which were meant to establish and/or strengthen communal institutions capable of managing natural resources in a sustainable, economically rational and socially equitable manner (Bollig and Menestrey Schwieger 2014;Schnegg and Bollig 2016). These projects and programmes established new commons which were grafted onto and blended with earlier forms of communal management, e.g.…”

The “new pastoral commons” of Eastern and Southern Africa

“…In the case of the 30 Namibian conservancies Bollig reports on, there is a strong countercurrent to such boundaries: generally dry seasons and even more so droughts necessitate migrations across such boundaries. Schnegg and Bollig (2016) show that during the drought of 2012-2015 many households temporarily left the area of their conservancy to seek grazing. The same holds true in Kenyan cases, as the papers in this issue demonstrate, when there is drought, the appeal to provide grazing access is very strong.…”

Water versus Wireless Coverage in Rural Mali: Links and Paradoxes

“…For instance, Adams and Zulu [29] explain that cell phones and android applications are used to underpin peri-urban water supplies in Malawi, while Wakeyo and Gardebroek [30] argue that wireless devices allow for the sale of irrigated crops at a reasonable price, thus fostering water harvesting practices among Ethiopian farmers. Mponela et al [31] show that mobile phones can be a key determinant for the adoption of agricultural technologies among smallholder farmers in southern Africa, and Schnegg and Bollig [32] describe how cell phones support community-based water management during droughts in rural Namibia. In certain cases, the connection is so explicit that hand pumps for water extraction are used to charge cell phone batteries.…”