Browsing by Author "Unruh, Jon D."

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Changing Dispute Resolution Institutions in the Ethiopian Pastoral Commons
(2000) Unruh, Jon D.
"Pastoralist access and use of common grazing and watering resources in the Horn of Africa increasingly include competition and confrontation over what are perceived to be diminishing resources and/or reduced access. Traditional dispute resolution institutions are presently undergoing change in response to a number of regional and global forces that have varying impacts on different pastoral groups, locations, and resource access arrangements. At the same time state and international donor interest in reducing violent confrontation over access to commons between and within pastoral groups have led to attempts to modify or insert different arrangements for dispute resolution institutions so as to advance varying agendas. "This paper will report on Ethiopia's recent experiences with state and donor intervention in the changing institutions of dispute resolution for pastoralist groups. With examples from the Afar of northeast Ethiopia, the Somali of the Southeast, and a set of smaller groups from the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region in the southwest, the paper will explore how dispute resolution institutions are changing, and compare and assess the role of donor and state attempts to advance new institutional arrangements. The role of state boundary, food security, bush encroachment, globalization, and inter-state conflict will likewise be explored in the context of their reciprocal relationship with commons dispute resolution, in order to examine linkages with other problematic issues facing the Horn in the new millennium."
Land Dispute Resolution in Mozambique: Evidence and Institutions of Agroforestry Technology Adoption
(2002) Unruh, Jon D.
"Successful adoption of natural resource management technologies requires that important fundamentals of property rights be significantly established. Because disputes over property rights occur universally, the ability to successfully defend ones rights to property exercises a central influence on the tenure security necessary for technology adoption. However defending rights to property rests upon the possession of evidence significantly available, and widely regarded as legitimate. This chapter presents work carried out in postwar Mozambique on the availability and legitimacy of evidence pertaining to land tenure dispute resolution. What is unusual about the Mozambique case is that the physical presence of a natural resource management technology, agroforestry trees in this case, also serves as one of the most widely available and legitimate forms of evidence in the postwar period. Such an arrangement reveals important aspects about the reverse relationship between property rights and technology adoption. While such an evidence role for a technology at first may appear to encourage further adoption of agroforestry, important influences on property rights in the postwar setting serve to discourage full adoption, and jeopardize the long-term presence of existing agroforestry trees. It remains to be seen if recent legislative changes regarding property rights will successfully engage customary forms of evidence and encourage full adoption of agroforestry in Mozambique."
Land Dispute Resolution in Mozambique: Institutions and Evidence of Agroforestry Technology Adoption
(2001) Unruh, Jon D.
"Successful adoption of natural resource management technologies requires that important fundamentals of property rights be established. Because disputes over property rights occur universally, the ability to successfully defend ones rights to property exercises a central influence on the tenure security necessary for technology adoption. However, defending rights to property rests upon the possession of evidence that is readily available and widely regarded as legitimate. This paper presents work carried out in postwar Mozambique on the availability and legitimacy of evidence pertaining to land tenure dispute resolution. What is unusual about the Mozambique case is that the physical presence of a natural resource management technology-- agroforestry trees in this case-- also serves as one of the most widely available and legitimate forms of evidence in the postwar period. Such an arrangement reveals important aspects about the reverse relationship between property rights and technology adoption. While such an evidence role for a technology may at first appear to encourage further adoption of agroforestry, important influences on property rights in the postwar setting serve to discourage full adoption and jeopardize the long-term presence of existing agroforestry trees. It remains to be seen if recent legislative changes regarding property rights will successfully engage customary forms of evidence and encourage full adoption of agroforestry in Mozambique."