A combination of factors, including privatization, agricultural intensification, population growth, and ecosystem degradation have caused common property areas to dwindle in size, quality, and availability to the poor in much of the world (Beck and Nesmith 2001:123). In some areas, common lands are converted to private parcels as a form of land reform or decentralization, or to spur development. Or common property resources may be leased out to private enterprises in the form of fishing or timber concessions. In either case, the poor may lose access to resources they once relied on.

Jodha estimates that in the areas covered by his study the extent of common lands has declined by 31 to 55 percent since the 1950s, mainly because of privatization through land reform (Jodha 1995:23). He estimates that in 1951 the average number of persons per 10 hectares of CPRs ranged from 13 to 101; by 1982, that number had risen to over 47,000 per 10 hectares in some villages. The increased pressure this has put on the remaining commons has led to overexploitation and a decline in the quality and quantity of services they yield (Jodha 1995:23). Degraded common lands undoubtedly make up a large part of the 75-130 million hectares of India's land that has been classed as “wasteland”—land that is both unproductive and ecologically depleted (Chopra 2001:25, 29).

Such declines in the ecosystem quality of public-domain lands are increasingly hard on rural livelihoods. A recent study in Ethiopia found most of the commons there in a state of either exhaustion or stress. Depleted grazing lands there have led to ethnic clashes and a decline in total livestock numbers, while the growing scarcity of woodfuel from common areas has forced more households to depend on purchased fuel (Kebede 2002:133-134). (See Box 2.1 Findings of the Millennium Ecosytem Assessment: How Do The Poor Fare?>.)

Degradation from overuse is not inevitable, however, and examples of collective action to manage the commons are growing in number. In Caprivi, Namibia, good management and sustainable harvesting techniques of palm fronds from common areas have enabled local women to supplement household incomes by selling woven palm baskets to tourists. As one of the few sources of cash income for women, the market has grown from 70 producers in the 1980s to more than 650 by the end of 2001, a jump that the resource has been able to sustain thus far (Murphy and Suich 2004:8-9). In another example, rural harvesters of marula fruits in Bushbuckridge district of South Africa have planted marula trees in their home gardens and fields and selected for those with greater yields in the face of the dwindling number of marula trees in the communal lands (Shackleton et al. 2003:12, 13). (For more examples of sustainable use of the commons by poor households, see Chapters 4 and 5.)