This article examines how Payments for Environmental Services PESS) influence household land-use behavior in the context of common-property lands.
Drylands cover around 40%% of the world, host nearly one third of its human population and 50%% of the world's livestock and have traditionally been used and managed by pastoralists through communal or common property rights-based land tenure systems (McDermott et al. 2010; United Nations Environment Management Group 2011).
In 1797 Thomas Paine, one of America's founders, penned a pamphlet arguing that every person is entitled to share in the returns on the common property of humanity: the earth's land and natural resources (today, you might include radio spectrum or the profits of central banks).
This can be through promotion of common property and consolidation of land for optimal utilization of ecological heterogeneity and enhancement of resilience.
But with many waiting lists now closed, and an estimated demand for 90,000 more plots (in addition to the 330,000 currently available), we are still far behind our Anglo-Saxon forebears in the distribution of land as common property.
Rural and urban lands are within the exclusive domain of the State and the common property of the Ethiopian Nations, Nationalities and Peoples (FDRE Constitution Art 40(3)).
Similarly, it is imperative that pastoral land remain as common property, given that further fragmentation is considered detrimental to socio-ecological system sustainability.
Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange" (Hadera 2002).
A number of similar tools have been developed for ranchers in southern Africa, but there has been little help for land managers under common property regimes.
The well-established community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programme enables communities on communal land to form common property conservancies through which they can manage and utilise wildlife mostly for tourism.
Land and houses are common property on More's imaginary island of Utopia, where everyone works for at least two years on the communal farms and people change houses every 10 years so that no one develops pride of possession.
