THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

Other scholars in the area of property rights like Engerman and Metzer who studied land
rights, ethno-nationality and sovereign history, noted that traditionally property rights are
viewed as necessary pre-conditions for the efficient operationalization of the environment
market place community user. 672 This same argument is reinforced by McKean who states
that there are natural resource regimes that are governed as open access regimes but no one
claims recognized property rights. 673 This same postulation appears to fit well in the
Kakamega scenario, where the structure of traditional authority in a great measure presides
over ecological and cultural decisions among the Luhya sub-tribes. But we also have to look
at the property rights regimes in Kakamega from another view especially where a
formal/national resource regime management style exists but inherently met with
immeasurable acrimony and missive. There are general principles which are necessary but not
sufficient in them for the efficient normalisation of property rights regimes.
In making an analysis of the above postulation, we observe that specific attributes of social
and ecological contexts which must be represented. The social contexts, as we have noted
earlier contain all the dynamic relationships between the humans and nature, but must also
contain entitlements and duties that come with the entitlements in maintaining the resources
of nature. For instance, as we mentioned earlier, during the study we wanted to investigate the
respondents’ views on whether the current formal legalities such as the Forest Act, the
Environmental Management and Coordination Act, the Local Government Act among others,
favoured their social and cultural interests. 61.64% responded in the negative, arguing that
they felt the current legalities didn’t favour their social and cultural interests. Only 34.29 felt
otherwise. We also wanted to find out whether the respondents felt that the current forest
authorities know about their social, economic and cultural interests.
From the field results, 63.01% of the respondents answered that some of the authorities didn’t
know about their interests, while 36.01% informed the researcher that the forest authorities
knew about their local interests. The above accounts paint a picture of unmitigated resource
usage interests and resource rights between the formal institutional regimes and the local
institutional regimes. For example, the respondents gave instances of when the forestry
authorities curtail them form collecting local herbs which they use in some of their traditional
ritual ceremonies, an issue that put forest wardens and local communities at logger heads
Further still, it was also found out that some of the forest authorities did not even trust the
local tribal heads that worked to prevent unhealthy access by those thought to be
destructionists within their localities. In one such instance a local tribal head among the Tiriki
informed the researcher that they feel mistrusted by some of the forest wardens. As this key
respondent informed; “they think that the local authorities connived with the destructionists
672
Engerman, L.S and J, Metzer. 2004. Land Rights, ethno-Nationationalism and Sovereignity History.
London:Routledge.
673
McKean, A. M. 1992. Management of Traditional Common Lands (Iriaichi) in Japan. In Making the
Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy, edited by. D. W. Bromley. San Francisco: ICS Press.
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