THEME: “Sustainable infrastructure, services and social protection for gender
equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls”

Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) in partnership with Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA) and through the support of the Global Green Grants is implementing a project on Climate change, Livelihoods, and energy targeted at Women and Youth in Narok County.

The topic of large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) has attracted wide interest in the literature and the media. However, there is little work on the gendered institutional changes and gendered impacts on common pool resources (CPR) due to LSLA. The aim of this paper is to address these impacts.

This Special Issue contributes to the debate that land grabbing should be discussed as commons grabbing [...]

This special issue of Policy Matters focuses on the outreach and impact of Dr. Elinor Ostrom's groundbreaking research on common property (or commons) theory. Her work was instrumental in shaping contemporary analyses of resource management and conservation, especially at a local level. This collection of research papers, essays, commentaries, and songs build upon her work and provide case studies demonstrating the practical application of her theoretical contributions. 

The Franks Tract State Recreation Area (Franks Tract) is an example of a complex contemporary park mired in ecological and socio-political contestation of what it is and should be. Located in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, it is a central hub in California’s immense and contentious water infrastructure; an accidental shallow lake on subsided land due to unrepaired levee breaks; a novel ecosystem full of ‘invasive’ species; a world-class bass fishing area; and a water transportation corridor.

Local commons are underutilized in resource management models, thus limiting the effectiveness of the commons concept. This study examined the actual situation of the local commons in Altanbulag soum, a suburb of Ulaanbaatar City, Mongolia, where land degradation is a concern, using the case study method. Interviews using semi-structured questionnaires were conducted with pastoralists. It investigated land use and pastoralists’ relationships to open-access summer pastures, summer camp selection, grazing practice, and acceptance of migrants.

Sustainable land management is of utmost importance in Ethiopia and relies on Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) measures collectively implemented by smallholders through participatory processes. This paper contributes systematic evidence on how SWC strategies are implemented and how participation is operationalized.

Pastoralism faces diverse challenges, that include, among others, land tenure insecurity, that has necessitated the need to formalize land rights. Some governments have started regularizing rights for privately owned land, but this is complex to implement in pastoral areas where resources are used and managed collectively. Our aim was to assess how the scale of communal land tenure recognition in pastoralist systems may affect tradeoffs among objectives such as tenure security, flexibility, mobility, and reduction of conflicts.

The paper discusses the link between commons as they might have been used in
prehistoric Norway and the rules concerning the exploitation of the commons as
found in the oldest known legislation for regions of Norway, Gulating Law and
Frostating Law. One clear social dilemma has been identified: the setting of a
common date for moving animals from the home fields up to the summer farms
and home again in the fall. The problem was obvious and the solution not
particularly difficult to institute. Many more problems were of course present,

The paper reviews the development of the legal status of Norwegian commons from the first known legislation on commons. The development can be divided into 5 periods.
The first period lasted until about 1300. In this period, the commons changed from being a local matter for the chiefs and the local thing to become a national resource where also the King had rights to resources for defence of the realm.

The paper is part of a joint presentation with Marius Grønning at the 5th International and Interdisciplinary Symposium of the European Academy of Land Use and Development (EALD) held in Oslo 3-5 September 2015.