Tenure legislation also is often blind or hostile to the traditional claims of indigenous communities and disregards their natural resource management systems and rights. Policies fostering the colonisation of indigenous areas – sometimes to divert pressure for land reform effectively encourage colonists to treat land occupied by indigenous communities as “open-access”. 7 State policies have also had a significant impact on the property regimes governing large- scale grazing lands, and consequently on pastoralists’ livelihoods. Many countries’ state policies and land legislation have supported the conversion of grazing land operated under CPR regimes to privatised and generally large-scale ranches. In part this has been due to the mistaken diagnosis.
