Garba Tula Governance Assessment Final Report ... - Land Portal

Garba Tula Governance Baseline Assessment, April 2011
has noted that the agitation for recognition and protection of community land rights is closely linked to
grievances arising from historical injustices suffered by specific communities whose land was wrongly
alienated during the colonial and post-colonial periods. The specific definition of what comprises the
Garba Tula community will clearly have a crucial bearing on the eventual successful reform of Garba
Tula’s land ownership governance mechanisms, and it will be vital that this aspect is acknowledged and
addressed in the IUCN Garba Tula project. Dimensions of this issue are also addressed in the next
section.
4.2 Natural resource use access and regulation
Although secure land tenure is a vital foundation for strong natural resource governance,
complementary natural resource management institutions are vital if community members are to realise
the collective benefits from land ownership. Such mechanisms can play an essential role in regulating
access to the area and the use of the natural resources the area contains, and in sanctioning individuals
that transgress the standards set by the area’s communal owners. Indeed, the ability to exclude “free
riders” from an area or from accessing resources is one of the cornerstones of common property
resource management, without which many of the long-term benefits of formal communal ownership
will not be realised. As pressure on Garba Tula’s rangelands appears set to increase and the conversion
of land to agriculture and other uses continues to reduce the resources available to community
members, this ability to control and regulate access and use of the area’s natural resources is perhaps
more important now than ever before.
Historically in Garba Tula, as with many communally owned and primarily pastoralist areas, customary
institutions have fulfilled this vital resource management role (even in the absence of secure ownership
rights), and have successfully controlled and regulated access to the area and the natural resources it
contains. As mentioned above, land in Garba Tula was traditionally part of a common property regime
implemented by the Borana community, with ownership vested in the community and supervised by an
intricate governance mechanism with a hierarchy of organisation at the “Olla” (several closely
interconnected households), “Artha” (a cluster of Ollas) and “Dheth” (a grazing area community
comprised of several Arthas) levels. A council of elders placed at the head of each of these mechanisms
was traditionally responsible for managing the utilisation of all community resources at the appropriate
level, drawing strategic guidance from unwritten traditional rules, regulations, norms, values and
beliefs. 3
Critical among the functions of these customary governance mechanisms was of course the
management of the grazing regime, and they traditionally provided the checks and balances necessary
to sustainably manage key pasture resources. Other communities were not necessarily excluded from
accessing these resources, but would require permission from the appropriate council of elders to make
use of them in the areas under their jurisdiction. Even within the Borana community itself, members of
different Dheth would require permission to use resources from the Council of Elders associated with
the Dheth in the area they were planning to move to. Alongside overall access, use of grazing areas
themselves was also regulated by these mechanisms, with different areas set aside for different types of
livestock depending on their physical strength, household use, and lactation state. For example, young
and lactating herds would be grazed close to households, while mature herds were kept further away,
with separate areas set aside for herds transiting through an area. 3
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