Date of Submission

Spring 2017

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Economics; Human Rights

Project Advisor 1

Sanjay DeSilva

Project Advisor 2

Peter Rosenblum

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This paper investigates two types of water and land resource systems—pastoral systems and irrigation schemes—in the Sahelian region. By examining the traditional management systems in Niger, Mali and Senegal, this paper intends to offer a comparative analysis to determine the factors that characterize successful collective actions with regard to common pool resources, and the external factors that would disrupt preexisting systems. Building on the model provided by Elinor Ostrom (1990), this paper will also propose a solution for development efforts, government agencies and other external forces to intervene. The human right to water has the potential to monitor states’ performance and to guide states to build better water governance regimes. Yet, in the future more efforts are still needed to form a clear water rights framework to accommodate different objectives and strategies that can be found in the human rights discourse, development economists, and international water and environmental law discourse. More importantly, human rights language needs to be able to accommodate the communality and collectivity that is deeply rooted in African communities.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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