The Resilient Nature of Common Property Resource Management Systems: A Case Study from the Guassa Area of Menz, Ethiopia

Abstract

"Many communities world-wide face serious environmental degradation, including deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, overexploitation of biodiversity and serious air and water pollution problems, all associated with mismanagement of natural resources. However, natural resource management institutions that are based on systems of common property can often prevent many instances of mismanagement of natural resources. To this end this paper examines how a common property resource management system in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia survived various government sponsored development packages and social changes. In the district of Menz, the Guassa area, common property resource management worked under an indigenous resource management institution known us the Qero system, based on the existing Atsme Irist indigenous land tenure system. The rules of exclusion governing access to the use of the Guassa area resource were aspects of the Atsme Irist land tenure system that conferred usufruct right on the members of a group tracing their lineage back to their pioneer fathers. Furthermore, the user community was organised at parish level, an arrangement that gave the Guassa area the status of consecrated land, under protective patronage of the Christian church in Ethiopia.

"Following the 1974 Socialist Revolution in Ethiopia, the then governing regime proclaimed the Agrarian Reform in 1975. All land that was in private ownership or communal tenure was transformed into the state or public land tenure system. In turn, this result in the formal ending of the Qero system in Menz. However, as further social and economic changes took place, such as land redistribution and villagisation programmes, the Guassa common property user community informally responded to these changes by forming new indigenous institutions that were in line with the new social and political order. As a result, the current Guassa resource owners have continued to manage their natural resources under a modified common property system until now. Furthermore, this system of management has been extremely important for the livelihoods of the local community, for environmental sustainability, and also for the conservation of the endemic and endangered flora and fauna of the area. The Guassa area illustrates how resilient can be true common property resource management systems when exposed to rule changes and pressure from outside forces. Instead of collapsing when the rules were changed, the existing common property resource management system evolved into a new institution that has adapted, chameleon-like, to the new political order."