Her Work and its Contribution to tHe tHeory and PraCtiCe of Conservation and sustainable natural resourCe ManageMent Policy Matters iuCn CoMMission on environMental, eConoMiC and soCial PoliCy issue 19 aPril 2014

POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM

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village baito. He will accuse him/her based 

on the ‘law of the fathers’, which is highly 

respected in the area. Neighbouring villages 

know that Lamza residents are very serious 

about the hiza’ti system and thus often afraid 

of not only the guard but also Lamza residents. 

The fact that monitoring is carried out by 

resource users, means that mutual monitoring 

is extremely important. A quasi-voluntary 

form of compliance based around the idea of ‘I 

will if you will’ is highly visible, and the reason 

why so few law breakers come from within the 

community.

Design Principle 5: Graduated Sanctions 

Punishments and sanctions designed to help 

regulate the hiza’ti system have evolved 

overtime. Fifty years ago, the punishment 

for any illegal action was about nine melelik 

(about five kilos) of cereals per shepherd. 

Today, the punishment is based around 

monetary fines and tied to the rules being 

contravened:

•

10 Nakfa

2

 per cattle and 5 Nakfa per 

sheep/ goat for illegally grazing out of 

season

•

100 Nakfa for illegally cutting trees with 

an axe

•

25 Nakfa for illegally collecting dry and 

fallen wood with bare hands

In general, penalties and sanctions are 

graduated and increase based on offender 

intent, degree of damage caused, and the 

offender’s past record. Generally, offences 

in relation to grazing fall into one of two 

categories. The first is unintentional damage 

(known as Wererta), typically when livestock 

that’s browsing at the periphery of the 

enclosure enters without being noticed by 

the herder. Though a punishable offense, it is 

considered less serious and so the punishment 

less severe. Other categories cover deliberate 

illegal entry (Hasya), or when a herder 

intentionally leads his livestock into the hiza’ti 

out of season. Since he is doing this knowingly, 

the fine is much higher (usually double). 

Design Principle 6: Conflict Resolution 

Mechanism

The village baito listens to and settles conflicts. 

It is rare that a resident of Lamza will appeal 

to the nearby Ministry of Agriculture office 

with regards to a resource-related conflict. 

While Lamza’s baito is capable of settling 

conflicts vis-à-vis resource use within the 

village, respondents revealed that for issues 

involving neighbouring villages, it is the ‘law 

of the fathers’, in combination with the baito 

system, that creates access to what Ostrom 

refers to as “rapid, readily accessible and low 

cost local mediation” (Ostrom 1990). When 

this does not suffice, government agencies are 

asked to get involved.

Acknowledging the role of elders and local 

authorities in mediating conflicts and the 

importance of a low-cost justice system, the 

government recently introduced ‘community 

courts’, whose decisions are officially 

recognised by higher-level courts. The 

presence of ‘community courts’ increase the 

capacity of the village baito to settle conflicts, 

and again this is reflective of a strong internal 

mediation procedure.

Design Principle 7: Rights to Organise

Study participants said that government 

interventions in the hiza’ti management 

system have been minimal and generally 

limited to the provision of seedlings and 

technical assistance. While villagers view 

their management system as largely self-

sufficient, with villagers holding the right 

to devise their own rules, it is also true that 

they are held accountable to an official inter-

village- institutional arrangement known as 

memihidar kebabi, which typically comprises 

of 3-4 neighbouring villages. The decisions of 

the baito prevail only if it does not contradict 

the verdicts of memihdar kebabi. 

At state levels, the Eritrean Forestry and 

Wildlife Conservation and Development 

Proclamation (No 115/2006; article 24) 

states that “communities… may utilize any 

naturally growing trees in accordance with the 

2 

1 Nakfa is equivalent to approximately USD$15

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POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM

55

management plan in which the government 

will have a role to play in the technical 

assistance as required”. This proclamation 

allows villagers to practice self-management 

in their woodland and/or woodlots, but 

within a framework of state ownership

3

. The 

Proclamation also states that government 

can enter into agreement with community 

members where appropriate, for the 

purpose of sustainable forest management, 

afforestation and reforestation, protection of 

wildlife, watershed management and the like.

Both land and forest proclamations give 

recognition to community-based resource 

management and limit the ability of 

government to interfere in situations where 

stable management scenarios are being 

achieved through customary means. However, 

the power of local people to exercise their 

rights is not absolute and remains contingent 

upon it being in line with government policy 

of the day. The State’s role in providing 

oversight is not, therefore, an immediate 

threat but still open to misuses of power that 

could potentially (and unilaterally) reduce the 

benefits that Lamza residents receive from 

resources within the hiza’ti. 

Design Principle 8: Nested Enterprises 

Given that the hiza’ti system is not part of a 

larger CPR, Ostrom’s eighth design principle 

was not included in this study.

CONCLUSIONS

This study reports on a community in the 

Eritrean highlands, holding a long tradition 

of communal resource management, which 

has developed a set of comprehensive village 

bylaws to enable the sustainable use of 

biologically diverse woodland enclosures of 

livelihood importance to local people. The 

study finds that these bylaws, or operational 

rules, play a major role in protecting, 

monitoring and enhancing the regenerative 

capacity of these enclosures, and appear to 

fulfil most of the design principles (Table 2) 

that Ostrom (1990) developed to characterise 

robust commons institutions and management 

systems. 

The study provides an illustration of how 

Ostrom’s Design Principles have stood the test 

of time (Cox et al. 2010) as a tool to assess CPR 

management, where trust and reciprocity is 

crucial to sustaining collective action in the 

management of shared resources. 

However, while the hiza’ti system of commons 

management appears robust and successful in 

terms of resource sustainability, this study also 

shows how tenuous certain aspects of the system 

can be (in this case, the arrangements around 

collective choice and the right to self-organise) 

because of their dependence upon supportive 

government policy—a situation that can easily 

change with political upheaval at the state 

level and/or the influence of evolving market 

economies. 

Yet despite the threat of upheaval, this study 

also shows how important it is to properly 

assess the effectiveness of local resource 

management efforts ahead of instituting 

any kind of external intervention that could 

fundamentally change a system’s dynamics. 

In this case study from Eritrea, locally-crafted 

institutional arrangements, evolved over many 

decades, have enabled a sustainable resource 

management system based around customary 

practices and norms. At the heart of this 

system is a degree of autonomy that provides 

resource users with the political space to craft 

operational and collective choice rules—a 

situation that requires continued statutory 

recognition and the kind of tenure security 

that incentivizes local people to use and 

protect the resource over the long-term. 

REFERENCES

Agrawal, Arun. 2001. “Common property 

institutions and sustainable governance of 

resources”. World Development 29: 1649-1672.

Arnold J.E.M. 1998. Managing Forests as 

Common Property

. Food and Agricultural 

3 

Land Proclamation (No 58/1994) declares a fundamental change to the customary tenure system and proclaims all land to be 

property of the state in which villages are allowed to ‘continuous use and control’ of their communal land including woodlands.

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