In the first phase IIED’s Evaluating Eden initiative, desk-based reviews of the status of CWM were commissioned in eight regions: West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, Central America and South America. In addition two country reviews were carried out in Australia and Canada, providing an additional and valuable perspective to the project. The regional teams then went on to explore some of the issues raised in these reviews in a series of case studies based on original fieldwork. Some of the case studies are included in the various regional reports that have been published in this series. Others have been published as discussion papers by IIED or research partners. More remain unpublished and available only as “grey” literature. The purpose of this volume is to provide the reader with detailed summaries of all the Evaluating Eden case studies and to point them in the direction of further information.

Market-based approaches to environmental management are all the rage. Claims that market mechanisms can encourage environmental protection and promote greater economic efficiency, whilst saving taxpayers money, are tantalising. In the forestry sector, policymakers are widely heeding this advice and shrinking command and control systems in favour of incentive mechanisms that seek to align private enthusiasm with the public good. In some cases, governments are even promoting the creation of markets where none existed before. In others, markets are evolving of their own accord.

This report examines the diverse arrangements by which people gain access to land and trees, through a system of rental, loans, sharecropping, mortgage and guardianship contracts. The terms and conditions are subject to negotiation according to people and place. Shortage of credit, the withdrawal of government support to agriculture, and absence of legal framework are important factors in generating such institutional innovation. High levels of population pressure, peri-urban growth and shortage of productive soils have generated demand for land and palm tree stands have also become subject to market transactions. People combine several contracts to assure their subsistence needs, and diversification of incomes. Such arrangements are linked to the broader web of relations of kinship and patronage. There is, nevertheless, a move towards greater individualisation of land relations, with increasing tensions between those who control land, and those seeking land. Written ‘contracts’ between parties to such arrangements are becoming common as a means of increasing security, despite such informal local practices having no legal recognition. This paper forms part of a broader programme of research work undertaken jointly by the UK and French governments on Land Tenure and Resource Access in West Africa.