This article first appeared in Pambazuka News

Much time has already been spent in justifying or dismissing President
Obama’s selection for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. In contrast, little
attention has been paid to the other Nobel awardees, particularly Elinor
Ostrom, the 73-year-old woman professor of development economics at
Indiana University, who together with Professor Oliver E. Williamson,
shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. I argue here that the choice
of Ostrom for this important award is perhaps more significant for
Africa’s poor than the recognition bestowed upon president Obama, our
collective pride for the Obama’s international respect notwithstanding.

Since the 1960s, the predominant policy prescription for ensuring the
sustainable exploitation of land resources in Africa has been the
individualisation of land held under custom. This move was largely
driven by neoclassical economists led by Garrett Hardin, who called his
famous 1968 essay on shared resources “The Tragedy of the Commons”.

Hardin persuasively argued that a shared village grazing pasture would
tend to get overused and eventually destroyed because more people
utilised the common grazing ground without paying for the cost of
maintaining it, a phenomenon known in economics as free-riding. This
view has inspired a variety of land reforms with a general trend toward
market-oriented access to, and the privatisation of, land through
private entitlement. The premise was simple: individualised tenure
offers the best certainty in land rights, which provides incentives for
sustainable use and facilitates access to credit for investment in
agriculture and natural resources, hence contributing to increased
productivity and improved natural-resource stewardship.[1]

Evidence now suggests that this individualisation of common property has neither
yielded the economic and environmental returns envisaged nor improved
living standards for those affected. For instance, according to Rutten,
a Dutch scholar who undertook extensive research work in Kajiado—one
of the three Maasai districts in Kenya where the individualisation of
title was pursued through the establishment of group ranches with
funding from the World Bank and DfID (UK Department for International
Development)—grazing land had reduced by well over 40 per cent over
the period 1982 and 1990, leading to increased vulnerability and
destitution of pastoralists,[2] not to mention accelerated wanton
environmental degradation.

By awarding Ostrom the prize, the Nobel Committee indicated that a paradigm shift has occurred and that in fact Hardin’s famous tragedy of the commons theory should no longer be treated with
reverential deference. Consequently, the developmental superstructure
based on Hardin’s theory must yield to more cooperative property
regimes. Ostrom’s research suggests that far from a tragedy, the commons
can be managed from the bottom-up for a shared prosperity, given the
right institutions. In her study “Governing the commons: the evolution
of institutions for collective action” (1990), based on numerous case
examinations of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and
groundwater basins, Ostrom observes that resource users frequently
develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule
enforcement to handle conflicts of interest.

On this premise, she proceeded to propose eight “design principles” of stable local common pool
resource management, most of which are not too dissimilar to
those already in place in pastoral commons in the Sahelian regions of
Africa.[3] These Sahelian common property systems, now codified as
“pastoral codes”, allow for the surveying, mapping and
recording of “all forms of existing and practiced land rights, such as
they are perceived and presented by the holders of these rights
themselves”.[4] Ostrom’s proposals suggest that while markets can
organise production and consumption pretty efficiently, they can only do
so when supported and nurtured by networks and communities. In Ostrom’s
thesis therefore, private associations often, unaided through state legislation, have managed to avoid the tragedyof the commons and develop efficient uses of resources.

The recent adoption by the African Union (AU) of the “Framework
Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa” under the guidance of the late
Professor Hastings Okoth Ogendo and the ongoing attempts by the AU and UN-OCHA
(United Nations—Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) to formulate a continental policy on pastoralism suggest
increasing macro-policy recognition of the importance of common property
regimes and also suggest, implicitly, that Hardin’s postulates
is no longer stand as holy ground. Similarly, the current emphasis on
participatory forest management points to the importance of local
community cooperation as the singular logic in sustainable environmental
resource use. This is in contrast to the individual-responsibility
models of the last three to four decades. Coming hot
in the heels of these developments, Ostrom’s Nobel prize should serve to
catalyse efforts aimed at the protection and promotion of indigenous
systems of resource utilisation in Africa.

Because the resilience of indigenous systems of land management have
time and again proven that commons do not have to end in tragedy,
Ostrom’s Nobel is well-deserved. More importantly though, her prize is
deserved because the utilisation of her economic theory will unlock the
potential of common-property regimes which, if better deployed, could
serve to ensure a more people-centred face of national development in
Africa. Such a shift will protect vulnerable communities and individuals
from the unchecked market and environmental shocks that presently
imperil their existence and threaten global food security.

NOTES

[1] Economic Commission for Africa, Land Tenure Systems and their
Impacts on Food Security and Sustainable Development in Africa (2004), p
15.
[2] M.M.E.M., Rutten Selling wealth to buy poverty : the process of the
individualization of landownership among the Maasai pastoralists of
Kajiado district, Kenya, 1890-1990 (1992, Verlag breitenbach Publishers,
Saarbrücken, Fort Lauderdale)
[3] Volker Stamm Darmstadt, ‘New Trends in West African Land
Legislation? The Example of Cote d’Voire and Mali’ available at
http://www.iied.org/publications>
[4] Id.

The result, The Gleaners and I, is a moving depiction of the people who — after the harvest — pick through the dirt to find potatoes and tomatoes left behind, scour the beach for oysters washed up after storms, pick grapes and figs that farmers reject, and go “dumpster diving” to recover discarded loaves of bread, sandwiches and other food.

Gleaning has a long history among commoners. It’s what they do to put food on the table. Although gleaning often exists in the twilight zone between law and custom, the law in many instances formally recognizes gleaning as a right. In the film, a lawyer standing in a field reads the text of a 1554 French law that allows “the poor, the wretched, the deprived” to enter the fields once the harvest is over, and take what they wish. It may be the odd-shaped potato, the overripe fig, the damaged apple or the supermarket product whose “sell by” date has passed.

Varda’s film, released in 2000 but available on DVD, is essentially a road-trip to various places in France where gleaners prowl for leftover food. It must have required a lot of patience, resourcefulness and charm for Varda to identify so many different types of gleaners and then earn their trust.

It’s quite a cast of people we meet: rural drifters, homeless alcoholics, gypsy families living in trailers and alienated punks who live on the street. There are also families who cut grapes from an abandoned vineyard; a chef who gleans because he “likes to know where his food comes from”; and a former grad student who has lived off discarded food for the past ten years (and who serves as a volunteer teacher of English to immigrants). In urban settings, the gleaners don’t glean, they “salvage” discarded furniture and broken objects from the streets.

One of Varda’s goals in making her film was to “bring gleaners out of their anonymity.” That she does. While most of the gleaners face genuine hardships and precarious living arrangements, none comes off as an object of pity. If anything, their gleaning reveals them to be resourceful, uncomplaining people. Many of them are quite amiable, in fact, and generous in sharing what they find. When Varda notes how many bags of grapes one gleaner has harvested, the man replies, “Oh, there will be people to share it with.”

Many gleaners express amazement and disgust at the perfectly good food that farmers and supermarkets discard. One farmer estimates that, of 4,500 tons of potatoes that he harvests, 250 tons are simply dumped back into the field to rot. That many potatoes are considered too big or too small, too damaged or too misshapen to sell. Varda repeatedly finds heart-shaped potatoes nestled among the dirty gleanings, and say they are her favorites.

It is interesting to note how farmers regard the gleaners and their scavenging. One farmer is happy that gleaners can pick the apples he doesn’t pick. He actually registers gleaners and allows each to take 400 pounds of produce apiece, for a total of about 10 tons.

Among the oyster beds on the French coast, gleaning is “tolerated but not really allowed — although it’s not downright illegal,” according to one oysterman. No one seems to know exactly how much people can take, or how many yards away from the formal oyster beds gleaning can occur. Some people say 10 yards, others 25 yards.

The owner of a vineyard, however, deliberately destroys the grapes that he doesn’t intend to use. Concerned about the reputation of the quality of his vineyard, his crews pick the grapes and let them rot on the ground. As the owner explains, the first harvest of grapes is used to make high-quality vintage wine while the “second harvest” of grapes, or “verjuice,” produces only cheap table wine. Allowing the second-generation grapes to be associated with his vineyard’s name might harm its reputation. For this reason, gleaning from vineyards in Burgundy is prohibited.

It’s amazing how many food crops are gleaned — wheat, potatoes, cabbages, olives, figs, grapes, tomatoes, apples, oysters and more. To round out her film, Varda also visits with some artists who make paintings, wall fixtures and small towers out of found objects. A brickmason makes towers that bring to mind the famous Watts Towers.

Somehow Varda also locates men who recover discarded television sets from the streets in order to salvage the copper wire in them. “Res derelictae” is the legal doctrine that allows such deliberately abandoned, “ownerless” things to be taken without it being regarded as theft.

I had been unaware of this remarkable film until a student at Sarah Lawrence College contacted me to ask about the legality of gleaning excess food in the United States. A good question — one that I don’t know the answer to. If anyone know more, please get in touch!

The student had been inspired to investigate this question by Varda’s film, which was shown in her class on the commons taught by Professor Charles Zerner. Thanks to them both for alerting me to The Gleaners and I. The film reminded me how much of my life figuratively depends upon gleaning after harvests made by others. This was precisely the lesson that Agnès Varda learned — that she was gleaning the found emotions and experiences from other people’s lives to make her film.

Sing’Oei is co-founder of CEMIRIDE, the Centre for Minority Rights Development in Kenya. Writing in the Pambazuka News, a pan-African website, Sing’Oei points out that Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” parable was responsible for spurring the privatization of land rights over the past generation. Development authorities favored access and use of agricultural lands under market-based policies. Sing’Oei writes:

The premise was simple: individualised tenure offers the best certainty in land rights, which provides incentives for sustainable use and facilitates access to credit for investment in agriculture and natural resources, hence contributing to increased productivity and improved natural-resource stewardship. Evidence now suggests that this individualisation of common property has neither yielded the economic and environmental returns envisaged nor improved living standards for those affected.

Sing’Oei cited a Dutch scholar who studied the privatization of land titles in Keny and found that the amount of grazing land declined by over 40 percent between 1982 and 1990, “leading to increased vulnerability and destitution of pastoralists] not to mention accelerated wanton environmental degradation.”

Ostrom’s Nobel Prize could betoken a paradigm shift in development policies, says Singf’Oei, suggesting that Hardin’s tragedy theory will “no longer be treated with reverential deference.” Instead, there is likely to be more emphasis on cooperative property regimes where resources are “managed from the bottom-up for a shared prosperity, given the right institutions.”

Already, many of the design principles for successful commons can be seen throughout Africa. Sing’Oei notes that the “pastoral codes” used in the Sahelian regions of Africa allow for “the surveying, mapping and recording of ‘all forms of existing and practiced land rights, such as they are perceived and presented by the holders of these rights themselves’. Ostrom’s proposals suggest that while markets can organise production and consumption pretty efficiently, they can only do so when supported and nurtured by networks and communities. In Ostrom’s thesis therefore, private associations often, unaided through the instrumentality of state legislation, have managed to avoid the tragedy of the commons and develop efficient uses of resources.”

Here is Sing’Oei’s commentary at Pambazuka News

(Thanks to Nicola Bullard of “Focus on the South”:http://www.focusweb.org for bringing this essay to my attention.)