21. Many cooperative livestock and grazing schemes flounder because of incorrect assumptions made about the social, political and legal status of the cooperative organization, especially with respect to its ability to control the behavior of its members. Whether it be a group ranch, a marketing cooperative, or a grazing association, it is often assumed that the cooperative organization will possess more social authority than is in fact realistic to expect.
22. In Lesotho, the social and economic conditions for effective local cooperative action in range management are not usually present. Diverse livestock and range management strategies make widespread adoption of a communal management scheme problematic. Grazing associations lack the social authority to enforce even modest controls.
23. The relative success of the Sehlabathebe program has been the result of a collaborative effort between the grazing association and the project range officers. While the project's presence has been decisive in keeping the association committed to the enforcement of regulations, project personnel, had they had the sole direct responsibility for implementing the program, would not have been able to achieve equivalent levels of rule adoption through directly administered range controls. This suggests, in situations characterized by weak local organizations combined with the need to adjust the program objectives and regulations to local conditions, collaborative local organization-government management models may provide a better way of coping with the limitations inherent in the separate approaches.
24. Range management projects that anticipate a role for a cooperative organization of livestock holders should make a particular effort to understand the social setting for cooperative resource management. A critical issue will be the ability of the group to regulate the behavior of its members - in this ease to enforce grazing rules.
25. It is not possible to provide a checklist of the necessary ingredients for successful cooperative action. Any new, unfamiliar set of circumstances will require evaluation with an appropriate input from social scientists. The experience in Lesotho, however, suggests that some of the following factors be borne in mind.
(i) At the household level, the variety of range use and management strategies should be identified. Greater heterogeneity may complicate implementation of the plan, but prior knowledge of the variety of management strategies can help in designing plans that account for the constraints to adoption faced by certain categories of producers. For instance, new grazing regimes will often involve adjustments in herding patterns, and may increase herding costs for some stockowner groups. It might be appropriate for the local organization to supply herding services to those adversely affected. Likewise, it may be appropriate to exempt disadvantaged categories of producers from certain plan provisions, where this would not detract from the overall viability of the plan. Questions of the distribution of costs and benefits among groups will continually present themselves, and will challenge the cohesiveness of the organization. Outside staff can be of assistance in offering disinterested solutions perceived as fair by the affected groups.(ii) As a rule, no plan should impose a radical new grazing scheme. Rather, improvements should be made to what exists through incremental adjustments. Information should be gathered on existing grazing patterns, and existing patterns should, wherever possible, be preserved or improved upon in the new plan. In many communal systems, grazing is "partitioned" between, for instance, more intensive dairy and draft operations near settlements and more extensive grazing at outposts in distant open pastures (Oakerson, 1984). The economic and management logic of partitioning rules should be accounted for, and should provide the point of departure for new plans. Herd sharing or entrustment arrangements (such as mafisa in Lesotho and Botswana) might act to get stock into the hands of those who can provide more intensive management, thereby easing adoption of the plan. The continuing effectiveness of such arrangements needs to be considered.
(iii) If success of the plan rests on adoption of new rules, the ability of the group, association, or the government to enforce the rules realistically must be carefully assessed. Rules that impose costs on stockholders without the promise of clear, immediate benefits will be resisted. This, of course, applies to all aspects of range and livestock programs. But there is a very real danger that communal range management programs, with their preeminent emphasis on range and vegetation condition lose sight of the production goals and constraints of livestock owners, which are principally social and economic in character.
