Common Property Resource: Victim of Ambiguities in and Failure of Property Right Institutions during Transition and Restructuring of the Ethiopia Economy

Abstract

"Survey data from 149 randomly selected rural households in Hirna watershed in eastern Ethiopia were used to identify determinants of household choice among alternative land property right regimes to help mitigate negative consequences of scarcity induced land degradation and land related conflicts. Socio-economic, demographic, agro-ecological, and institutional information were collected with the help of interview using structured questionnaire. It has been observed that absence of clearly defined property right and management plan have led to overexploitation of the hillsides leading to perpetuation of poverty and food insecurity.

"The study used an adaptation of the multinomial model to environmental entitlement framework and theory of collective action for empirical analysis. Multinomial discrete choice models were specified for explaining decision of household heads for most preferred property right regimes. Overall, variables including dependency ratio and level of education of the household head provide the most predictive power whether or not the household prefers common property resource regime, where as number of household members, livestock holding of the household and area of cultivated land lost due to enclosure of part of the watershed were found to be more relevant in determining household's preference for resettlement to other potential areas. On the other hand, age of household head, number of household members and level of education of the household head were found to be statistically significant in determining the likelihood that a household prefers intensifying agriculture.

"The paper finally concludes that most institutional solutions proposed by the primary resource users as an optimal way to deal with resource degradation problem originating from failure in property right regimes to community forestry depend up on different properties of the actors and their resource endowment. Hence, authorities need to have better knowledge of how they should orient their effort to intentionally design institutional innovation that might enhance rural livelihoods but also responsive to the natural resource. "