Knighton, Ben. 2006. "Can Notions of Common Property and the Common Good Survive? The Consequences of Classical Economics for Karamojong Nomadic Pastoralists." Presented at "Survival of the Commons: Mounting Challenges and New Realities," the Eleventh Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bali, Indonesia, June 19-23, 2006.

Abstract

"Despite the attempt of the Government of Uganda to grant private land titles in Karamoja, communal grazing rights are very much perpetuated by traditional politics and religion in Karamojong culture. Far from being in decline, the pastoralist range management system is in expansionist mode with more livestock and more herders than ever before. However this system is a threat to the new world order for three reasons. It is inimical to capitalist development as the Karamojong are most reluctant to commoditize their wealth in cattle or to cut themselves off from cattle- based livelihoods and values. They carry small arms to protect their herds and sometimes to acquire cattle from their enemies. They do not subscribe to national or international goals of economic development, refusing a sedentary lifestyle compatible with Ugandan norms of 'civilization', so that their continuing identity may survive with surprising autonomy.

"Basic to the discrepancy between local and Western notions of what is sustainable are different notions of livestock and space. Karamojong notions of freedom is the treasured right of each herd-owner or herder of a family herd to decide on a daily basis when and where herds should graze. This usually involves a 'tracking' strategy, seeking grazing areas with the optimum rainfall, nutrients, and minerals at any particular time. Any imposed restriction on grazing in order to protect pastures is regarded as a social threat. Western concepts of rangeland managements derive from the agrarian and industrial revolutions when British land tenure was transformed by enclosure, at great social cost, to ensure that there were private returns to investment to land, so that those who did not invest in land improvement did not suffer from the externalities of public benefits. Commons therefore came to be seen as threats to property and as public 'bads', standing in the way of progress including improved cattle breeding and productivity.

"To develop rangeland management to approximate to Western livestock economies, it was therefore thought necessary by colonial develop mentalists and their heirs, either to control grazing to increase animal productivity or, failing that, to limit livestock numbers to a notional carrying capacity, with each head of cattle needing a certain area in order to flourish in an ecologically sustainable way. This approach has proved to be more ideological than scientific with considerable anti-poor, even anti- people, implications. However the biologist Garrett Hardin has rehearsed the 200 year-old economics of enclosure for general application in the world and linked it to the care of the environment, putting the burden of proof on pastoralists that their communal grazing is not economically damaging. Also involved is the Malthusian threat of the growth of sheer numbers dependent on a much slower growth of land productivity. This grants international support for reform of land tenure. The paper will examine whether the application of such economic and geographical norms are applicable to the Karamojong livestock economy. This will involve taking seriously local presuppositions and the corrective measures built into Karamojong nomadic pastoralism."