Hardin’s classic paper “Tragedy of the Commons” continues to remind us how individually rational decisions might not necessarily be for the collective good. The central problem posed by Hardin was about institutional arrangements for access to common pool resources.

For the more than three quarters of people in southern Africa whose livelihoods depend on utilisation of natural resources, issues of access, sustainable use and institutional arrangements are a daily reality.

This is what the special issue ( Development Southern Africa, Vol 25, No. 4 of October 2009) on the Cross Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa (CROSCOG) project is about. It is a contribution to scholarship and policy debates about how knowledge, political economy and power relations influence and determine institutional arrangements for access to resources in southern Africa. The papers in this special issue draw on lessons from a variety of commons (fisheries, floodplains, grasslands and forests) across southern Africa. The papers take up and take on Hardin’s thesis from the variety of commons sharing situations in southern Africa.