II. Legal Status of communal lands in Ethiopia: Past and Present

This section considers land laws, concepts, policies, and the available literature regarding the commons to show the attitudes of past and present governments towards such common resources. It first examines the legal status of the commons from the perspective of the present government followed by an examination of the way the imperial government and the Derg saw the commons. The section closes with a consideration of the underlying shared attributes of the three successive governments with regard to the commons.