Legal empowerment for local resource control

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requirement in much of rural Africa. This is because registered private
ownership of rural land is rare in much of the continent (see above, chapter
2.3). Extending consultation requirements to a wider range of resource right
holders is therefore crucial for the relevance and usefulness of mandatory
consultation processes. In this sense, legal reform to secure local resource
rights may include not only introducing new consultation requirements, but
also extending existing requirements to a wider range of resource users.
Among resource rights not amounting to ownership and/or not legally
registered, further differences of treatment may exist between different
types of resource users – for instance between farmers and herders. This
may reflect entrenched government perceptions about the economic
contribution of different forms of resource use. In this contest, pastoralism
has often not been considered as a form of productive resource use
deserving legal protection – although the “pastoral” legislation recently
adopted by some Sahelian countries has started to recognise pastoralism as
meeting “mise en valeur” requirements (e.g. Mali’s Pastoral Charter 2001 –
see above, section 3.1.3).
In addition, under customary resource tenure systems, pastoralists tend to
hold rights that differ from those of farmers, and that focus on flexible
arrangements enabling herb mobility and periodic access to strategic
resources such as water and dry-season grazing (rather than on permanent
exclusive rights over clearly delimited lands). While these resource rights are
not less worthy than those held by farming groups, their lack of exclusivity
makes them more vulnerable to encroachment.
This legal vulnerability of pastoral rights may also be reflected in
consultation requirements. In Ghana, for instance, while the Timber
Resources Management Act requires local consent for farmed land and for
forest plantations, it is silent on grazing lands.
As a result of these differences in treatment, much pastoral land in many
parts of Africa has been converted to other forms of resource use, usually
with the explicit or implicit backing of the government – including within
the context of foreign investment projects. Again, legal reform extending
the application of consultation processes to all local resource users,
including pastoralists, would help secure their resource rights.