The Endangered Commons of Africa – and How to Save Them
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If you want to learn more about the alarming enclosure of land commons in Africa – its history, current developments and the future – you can do no better than Liz Alden Wily's just-released series of briefing papers, “Reviewing the Fate of Customary Tenure in Africa.” The series of reports are published by the Rights and Resources Initiative, which describes itself as “ a global coalition of organizations working to encourage forest land tenure and policy reforms and the transformation of the forest economy so that business reflects local development agendas and supports local livelihoods.”
The five-part, 80-page document is a brisk, clear introdution to the history of land commons in Afrtica. Alden Wily, who studies land tenure practices from Nairobi, Kenya, explains the role of law, money and force in dispossessing native Africans of their customary lands. The basic story is that community-governed commons are being converted into private property traded in the market, resulting in all the familiar pathologies: People's sense of identity and connection to others wanes; they lose access and use of resources critical to their survival; ecosystems are damaged by market-driven enterprises and investors; and the displaced commoners, unable to support themselves, migrate to cities and become wage slaves, or fall to the margins of the new market culture by becoming beggars, pirates or hapless improvisers in the “informal economy."
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