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Misreading a pastoral property regime

February 3, 2017

Misreading a pastoral property regime

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My paper on Misreading a pastoral property regime is out in Ecology and Society. The paper is a response to an article by Haller et al. (2013) in Ecology and Society titled “How fit turns into misfit and back: institutional transformations of pastoral commons in African floodplains.” In the response, I argue that Haller et al.’s description of the pastoralists’ management of common-pool grazing resources in the Logone floodplain of Cameroon is incorrect in a number of ways. I summarize the findings from our longitudinal and interdisciplinary study to show that current pastoralists’ management of common-pool grazing resources in the floodplain is efficient, equitable, and sustainable. Specifically, ecological research contradicts Haller et al.’s proposition that resource degradation is due to overgrazing in a situation of open access. This is an important point to clarify because pastoralists are often wrongly accused of overgrazing the range.