This text examines community-based natural resource management in Africa. It looks at how local environmental management may be made more effective by understanding the complexity of local-level organizational processes.

This book reveals a dynamic picture of African rural society in which production patterns change rapidly in response to market opportunities. These changes are driven largely by local farmers' initiatives, and are often associated with an increase in market-based access to land that is evident under both "customary" and private land tenure.

From commons to enclosures? Philip Woodhouse, Henry Bernstein, David Hulme
a very decentralized development - exploiting a new wetland in the Sourou Valley, Mali, Philip Woodhouse, Pippa Chenevix-Trench, Martin Tessougue
uncommon property - the scramble for wetland in Southern Kenya, Christopher Southgate, David Hulme
modernizing communal lands - evolving resource use in the Shoshong Hills, Botswana, Andrew Clayton, Philip Woodhouse
the Mutale River Valley - an apartheid oasis, Edward Lahiff
whose environments? whose livelihoods, Henry Bernstein, Philip Woodhouse, David Hulme.