Managing African Commons in the Context of Covid-19 Challenges

Abstract

The idea of a Special Issue focusing on managing the African Commons was ignited as a result of the IASC 2020 Virtual Conference on African Commons held from 13 to 27 July 2020, which generated momentum on the need to better further dialogue on the African Commons. Marco Janssen organized the virtual events. Due to the debates generated and in consultation with the editors of IJC, it was felt that African Scholars should be encouraged to publish through Special Issues focusing on Africa. At that time, it was also envisaged that the Special Issue would strongly link on the governance of the commons to the Covid-19 pandemic. The global Covid-19 pandemic is one of the major defining moments for development. In Africa, the syndemic, which the Global Landscape Forum refers to as a ‘synergy of epidemics’ impacted the continent. Whilst Covid-19 started as a health crisis, it has cut across all facets of life. The special issue initially aimed on discussing within this multifaceted crisis and drawing the implications for the common natural resources in Africa such as atmospheric commons (climate), land, water, forests, fisheries, pastoralism, urban and knowledge commons whilst also using a gender lens. The thrust on Covid-19 was later muted as the special issue progressed due to authors not having made a strong linkage with Covid-19 implications for the commons governance. More papers were also anticipated but a number of presenters had presented some materials, which were already being considered for publication elsewhere with some even requiring more time to publish. After the review process, three webinar and paper presenters during the Africa Virtual events were available to provide full papers, which form part of this special issue (Akamani, 2023; Murombedzi and Chikozho, 2023; van Koppen, 2023). The special issue papers neatly links the global themes on gender within the water commons, climatic commons and the co-creation of forestry commons through co-management. In the first paper, van Koppen (2023) engages on scholarship centering on restoring the commons through engendering water tenure within Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper starts by articulating how water resources are a commons resource whose trajectory starts at the local level extending to the global hydrological cycle. The author argues that customary tenure based on the everyday practice has received very little attention on research scholarship, legal frameworks and within the policy arenas. The author endeavors to conceptualize the lived experiences of customary water tenure. The author argues that segmentation of water into silos is an invention of external experts, as the CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Everisto Mapedza International Water Management Institute (IWMI), South Africa E.Mapedza@cgiar.org