Digital Library of the Commons

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Relative Significance of the Physical Environment and the 1978 Land Use Decree on Agriculture in Nigeria: The Small Holders' Plight
(ORSTOM, 1979) Ojo, O.
"The promulgation of the Land Use Decree in 1978 is probably the most important step ever taken in transforming Nigeria's agriculture. Its aim is to revolutionise the customary land system considered as a threat to agricultural development. We examine in turn : the main concepts which, in the various régions of Nigeria and other tropical African countries alike, govern traditional land tenure; the problems set by the old system; the relations between land system and environment; the conséquences of the 1978 Decree for small holders."
Public Choice Analysis of Institutional Constraints on Firewood Production Strategies in the West African Sahel
(Resources for the Future, Inc, 1979) Thomson, James T.; Russell, C. S.; Nicholson, Norman
"This essay presents a public choice policy analysis of firewood production possibilities in the West African Sahel, the arid southern fringe of the Sahara Desert."
Open-Field Farms and Pasture Commons (1793-1815)
(Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd, 1912) Prothero, R. E.
"It might perhaps be supposed that in 1793 the agricultural defects of the ancient system of open arable fields and common pasture had been remedied by experience; that open-field farmers had shared in the general progress of farming; that time alone was needed to raise them to the higher level of an improved standard; that, therefore, enclosures had ceased to be an economic necessity. In 1773, an important Act of Parliament had been passed, which attempted to help open-field farmers in adapting their inconvenient system of occupation to the improved practices of recent agriculture. Three-fourths of the partners in village-farms were empowered, with the consent of the landowner and the tithe owner, to appoint field-reeves, and through them to regulate and improve the cultivation of the open arable fields. But any arrangement made under these powers was only to last six years, and, partly for this reason, the Act seems to have been from the first almost a dead letter. At Hunmanby, on the wolds of the East Riding of Yorkshire, the provisions of the Act were certainly put in force, and it is possible that it was also applied at Wilburton in Cambridgeshire. With these exceptions, little, if any, use seems to have been made of a well-intentioned piece of legislation."
Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity
(W. H. Freeman, 1977) Hardin, Garrett; Baden, John
From p. 112: "The carrying capacity of a particular area is defined as the maximum number of a species that can be supported indefinitely by a particular habitat, allowing for seasonal and random changes, without degradation of the environment and without diminishing carrying capacity in the future. There is some redundancy in this definition, but redundancy is better than inadequacy. Using deer as an example, the true carrying capacity of a region must allow for the fact that food is harder to get in winter than in summer and scarcer in drought years than in 'normal years.' If too many head of deer are allowed in the pasture they may overgraze it to such an extent that the ground is laid bare, producing soil erosion followed by less plant growth in subsequent years. Always, by eating the grasses that appeal to them, herbivores selectively favor the weed grasses that are not appealing, thus tending to diminish the carrying capacity for themselves and for their progeny in subsequent years."
Trouble Case Investigation of a Problem in Nigerien Rural Modernization: Forest Conservation
(University of California Press, 1973) Thomson, James T.; Charlick, R.
"This paper assesses the trouble case methodology as a research tool in the study of Nigerien rural modernization processes. As a vehicle to illustrate the methodology, I take the government forest conservation program, a critical if somewhat neglected component of the overall Nigerien rural modernization effort. "The paper comprises three parts: history of the forestry problem and attempts to solve it (sections I and II); theoretical framework, including a public goods analysis of the problem, a model of legal relationships, and a description of the trouble case methodology (sections III-V); and data and conclusions, consisting of forestry trouble cases, estimates of the effectiveness of current attempts to solve the problem and of other possible approaches, and an assessment of the merits of the trouble case methodology in this type of study (sections VI-VIII). "It is argued here that the Nigerian forest, from the viewpoint of most users, is an unregulated common property. In the absence of regulation it will be destroyed, with disastrous consequences for the environment and the local human ecologies. Regulation is thus a necessary condition for Nigeriens to sustain mutually productive relationship with each other concerning their forest resources. But current enforcement procedures, rendered ineffective by corruption and rule manipulation, fail to curb the developing negative dynamic in which users have little incentive to reorganize their demand patterns and no incentive to generate new supplies as existing ones are exhausted. A tragedy is therefore in the making."

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