Disputing the Floodplains: Institutional Change and the Politics of Resource Management in African Wetlands (African Social Studies Series, 22)

This book has received the Environmental Research Award 2011 of the University of Bern, Switzerland.

African Floodplains in semi-arid areas are important for local livelihoods as they harbor many common-pool resources such as fisheries, pasture, wildlife, veldt products, water and land for irrigation. However, in many of these areas resources are under pressure. This book is presenting seven case studies from Mali, Cameroon, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana based on anthropological fieldwork (2002-08) and explores how these common-pool resources have been managed in pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial times. The major focus of the study is how institutional change has contributed to resource management problems and offers a comparative analysis based on the New Institutionalist approach (Jean Ensminger, Elinor Ostrom), which is combined with a special focus on ideology, discourse and narratives while focusing on conflict and power issues.

With a foreword by Elinor Ostrom.

Tobias Haller, Ph.D. (2001) in Social Anthropology, University of Zürich, is Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland, He has done fieldwork in Cameroon and Zambia and supervised research in many other African Countries. He has published on environmental and resource management issues (commons, protected areas, indigenous peoples and oil exploitation) and New Institutionalism in Africa with a comparative focus on other continents. His publications include Fossile Resources, Indigenous Peoples and Oil Companies (Lit-Publishers, Hamburg, London 2007) and People, Protected Areas and Global Change (NCCR Bern, 2008) and papers in journals such as Human Ecology, Environment and Development, Human Organisation, African Anthropologist, Food Policy, Journal of International Development.