Risk and tenure in arid lands: the political ecology of development in the Senegal River Basin

The primary focus of this collection of 10 papers is on the linkages between flood recession agriculture in arid lands, common property, and economic development. It highlights this form of agriculture as fundamentally shaped by risk management and draws out the implications this management has for economic stratification, land tenure and development. It is argued that the flood recession case challenges some of the received wisdom in common property theory and perceived relationships between population density, intensification and stratification. The chapters are divided into three sections, the two largest focussing on general questions of political ecology in the basin and on case studies. They include papers on indigenous soil classification, food security, nationalism, land tenure, agricultural projects, and the role of the ideology of privatisation in planning such projects. -M.Amos