From Private to Common: Coevolution of Land-Use Practices and Property Rights

• Main Authors: Larsson, Jesper, Päiviö Sjaunja, Eva-Lotta
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Springer International Publishing 2021
• Subjects: Fennoscandia; sami
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87498-8_9; https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-87498-8_9

Abstract In the concluding chapter, we synthesize the results and discuss how changing land-use regimes among Sami in interior northwest Fennoscandia interrelated with the development of property rights between 1550 and 1780. During this period, a new tenure system, reindeer pastoralism, developed. For households that had amassed large reindeer herds, it became crucial to access both large pastures in the mountains and in the boreal forest to have enough grazing. This led to the establishment of common-property regimes in both the mountains and the boreal forest, where grazing became a CPR. The emergence of this kind of common-property regime is best described as a bottom-up process as it assumes that local users design and implement institutions for common use that all or most users adhere to.