Resetting the forestry commons: Constitutionality as a conflict resolution strategy in African woodlands

This paper comparatively analyses three case studies in Mali, Senegal and Tanzania regarding common property institutions for forest commons and their transformations during colonial and post-colonial times. Then common pool resource management was fragmented and common property was increasingly turned into state and private property and local control over resources was removed. This led to grabbing processes by foreign investors and conflicts between local and outside users of forest resources and degradation of these resources. The paper further outlines the reactions to these processes. It also highlights the neglect of the gender and marginal groups dimensions in studies of constitutionality (developing a sense of local ownership in the bottom-up institution crafting processes for the governance of the commons). In the cases of Mali and Senegal these constitutionality processes were for managing the forest resources. This led to a mitigation of existing resource conflicts. In Tanzania, out of a land-use conflict, local people had managed to create a kind of an informal convention with a British investor about land use in the valleys, which however remains fragile. The conflict arose because women had largely been left out in land deal negotiations and institution-building about the acquired land, as well as were confronted with institution-shopping by the investor and from below by fellow community- and family-men. This impacted heavily on their workload and hampered their abilities to fulfil their care work. Thus, this paper fills the gap on gender (and more differentiated – intersectionality, and generally the involvement of marginal groups) in the constitutionality process to support the “resetting of the forest commons”. These have been neglected factors that need to be addressed for successful forest resources management and governance.