Policy Discourses on Women's Land Rights in Sub–Saharan Africa: The Implications of the Re–turn to the Customary

This article examines some contemporary policy discourses on land tenure reform in sub–Saharan Africa and their implications for women's interests in land. It demonstrates an emerging consensus among a range of influential policy institutions, lawyers and academics about the potential of so–called customary systems of land tenure to meet the needs of all land users and claimants. This consensus, which has arisen out of critiques of past attempts at land titling and registration, particularly in Kenya, is rooted in modernizing discourses and/or evolutionary theories of land tenure and embraces particular and contested understandings of customary law and legal pluralism. It has also fed into a wide–ranging critique of the failures of the post–colonial state in Africa, which has been important in the current retreat of the state under structural adjustment programmes. African women lawyers, a minority dissenting voice, are much more equivocal about trusting the customary, preferring instead to look to the State for laws to protect women's interests. We agree that there are considerable problems with so–called customary systems of land tenure and administration for achieving gender justice with respect to women's land claims. Insufficient attention is being paid to power relations in the countryside and their implications for social groups, such as women, who are not well positioned and represented in local level power structures. But considerable changes to political and legal practices and cultures will be needed before African states can begin to deliver gender justice with respect to land.     

3D cadastres for densely occupied informal situations: Necessity and possibility

Much of 3D cadastre research and development targets high valued urban land, including condominiums, apartment buildings, and office complexes. The value of the land and the economic activity generated from transactions in this urban space potentially support the cost and time spent on establishing and maintaining a 3D cadastre. Methods for data acquisition and for construction and maintenance of the 3D cadastre are also simpler in the regular and formally planned and surveyed structures of the high value urban environment. Low-income, urban areas of informal tenure and informal development, however, also need and can benefit from a land administration system supported by a 3D cadastre but are neglected in the 3D cadastre research. Mechanisms are required for quick and cost effective construction of a 3D cadastre in this type of area to support land management and regularisation procedures, and to provide security of tenure. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is one technology that may be examined to differentiate structures in densely occupied environments where limited information and limited resources must be able to be used for managing the land and also protecting informal rights.This paper initially posits the need for 3D cadastres in low-income but densely structured urban settlements. It then tests the ability of an existing LiDAR dataset together with orthoimagery, derived to be low cost so therefore having limited specifications, for capturing sufficient definition of 3D occupation in the low-income, densely structured case study area of Laventille in Trinidad and Tobago.The difficulties of manually or automatically discriminating between close and overlapping structures and boundaries are highlighted and it is found that there is still a need for adjudication and verification of boundaries on the ground, even when physical features can be discerned from the software.     

Application of LADM for disaster prone areas and communities

Disaster prevention, response and recovery require information about land tenure. Though, in many high-risk contexts, such records are non-existent or not up to date. As a result, vulnerable groups are often passed over by the government during risk management activities. At present there exists no dedicated tool for supporting land tenure recordation of all people-to-land relationships for the purposes of disaster risk management. More specifically, the required supportive data models and standards that could enable integration of concepts from the respective domains of land administration and disaster risk management are also lacking. Standardized data models could support software and service designs. This paper introduces a model linking the domains of land administration and disaster risk management – with the goal of supporting resilience against natural disasters and providing an approach for collecting data once, and using it multiple times. A design approach was used to develop the model – with adaption of the international Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) standard acting as a basis. Key features of the model include the support of interoperability through standardisation, the inclusion of all people-to-land relationships including those specific to disaster contexts, and the potential of the model to contribute to each of the disaster phases. The model is suggested to be highly applicable in natural disaster contexts where no land tenure information exists or the national mapping authority already uses a land administration system compatible with LADM. Overall, the model is considered as a step toward an implementable strategy for applying responsible land administration in the context of disaster risk management.     

Fragmented Territories: Incomplete Enclosures and Agrarian Change on the Agricultural Frontier of Samlaut District,North‐West Cambodia

In Cambodia, the interactions between large‐scale land investment and land titling gathered particular momentum in 2012–13, when the government initiated an unprecedented upland land titling programme in an attempt to address land tenure insecurity where large‐scale land investment overlaps with land appropriated by peasants. This paper is based on a spatially explicit ethnography of land rights conducted in the Samlaut district of north‐west Cambodia – a former Khmer Rouge resistance stronghold – in a context where the enclosures are both incomplete and entangled with post‐war, socially embedded land tenure systems. We discuss how this new pattern of fragmentation affects the prevailing dynamics of agrarian change. We argue that it has introduced new forms of exclusion and a generalized perception of land tenure uncertainty that is managed by peasants through the actualization of hybrid land tenure arrangements borrowing from state rules and local consensus. In contrast with common expectations about land formalization, the process reinforces the patterns of social differentiation initiated by land rent capture practices of early migrants and pushes more vulnerable peasants into seeking wage labour and resorting to job migration.     

Formal and informal contract farming in Mozambique: Socially embedded relations of agricultural intensification

This paper explores the role of contract farming arrangements in agricultural intensification in sub-Saharan Africa, combining secondary literature and original case material from Mozambique. The paper extends the scope of “contract farming” beyond the formal contracts between large companies and small-scale producers to include less formal credit agreements between farmers and traders. It argues that such informal contract arrangements are evidence of farmers' agency in “real markets.” In the studied cases, farmers use contract farming opportunities to intensify agricultural production by investing in irrigation and inputs. While informal contracts typically concern locally consumed crops, thus with more possibilities for side selling than formal contracts for export crops with company-controlled markets, informal contract compliance reflects closely knit social ties between the contracting parties. In both formal and informal contracts, purchasers tend to seek out producers who are already irrigating, thus obtaining gains from farmers' earlier investments. This also implies contract farming as a mechanism for accelerating social differentiation arising from unequal access to irrigation. The paper argues that the significance of informal contracts in the studied cases raises the possibility that informal contract farming by local traders plays a more important role in agrarian transformation in Africa than formal contract farming by large companies.     

A conceptual framework for utilising VGI in land administration

Land administration systems assist citizens in identifying their rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRRs) associated with land and property. However, delineating the spatial extent of all RRRs regulated in legislation remains a challenge. Approaches that have been used so far are mainly based on accurate surveying processes, which are untimely and too expensive. Previous studies proposed Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) as a practical and low-cost method for fast acquisition of spatial data from volunteered contributions, mostly for countries where a limited number of land rights records exist. However, VGI could be beneficial for advanced and developing land administration systems in terms of collecting a range of RRRs which are not spatially well recorded and represented. A multidisciplinary review of the literature on VGI and land administration reveals the lack of a comprehensive conceptual framework for utilising VGI in land administration for the purpose of collecting a range of RRRs related to land and property. This paper investigates the main aspects of utilising VGI in land administration based on qualitative content analysis of available resources. The outcome of this research suggests that using VGI in land administration requires a comprehensive understanding of the complexities and interconnections of legal, institutional, technical and social aspects within each jurisdiction. These findings are merged to formulate a generic and innovative conceptual framework which serves as a basis for the process of collecting land and property RRRs from volunteer contributions.     

Local support among arctic residents to a land tenure reform in Finnmark,Norway

Claims for indigenous rights to land and resources are influencing land use policies worldwide. The public’s support for such land tenure arrangements has rarely been investigated. We present a unique case from the Norwegian Arctic, where land claims made by the indigenous Sami people have resulted in the transfer of land tenure and resource management from the government to the residents of Finnmark in 2005. Based on indigenous land claims, a management agency was established, the Finnmark Estate (FeFo), which on the operational level provides Sami and non-Sami users the same services. Public debates and conflicts among politicians and the public framed the political process leading up to this establishment. Based on a survey and interviews in Finnmark, we explored the public’s support for the new land tenure arrangements. We use the term diffuse support to investigate whether residents conform to FeFo’s basic ideas, values and principles, while specific support refers to the supportive attitudes for management actions carried out by the institution. We conclude that there is a general low diffuse support for FeFo among the residents in Finnmark, but a relatively high specific support for the policies and management actions implemented by the estate among those who have experiences with FeFo. We explain the gap between diffuse- and specific support by the historical, social and political processes which led up to the establishment of the land tenure arrangements.     

Participation in property formation: Insights from land-use planning in an informal urban settlement in Tanzania

This study argues that where land-use planning of any kind is conducted, it plays a supporting role that enables the property formation process to be effective. It uses evidence from Makongo Juu Settlement (in Tanzania) to reveal that the participation of actors with various levels of tenure awareness is necessary for property formation (land parceling). As the study is case-study focused, it uses data collected through a mix of procedures—including in-depth interviews, survey questionnaires, and documentary processes—analyzed qualitatively. Findings confirm that land-use planning introduces or embeds formal rules and regulations that govern the use of land. Furthermore, the study presents the affected persons’ narratives of their involvement in the property formation process. This medium allowed for an understanding of their perspectives of the property formation in the context of land-use planning. Apart from these empirical revelations (among other findings), the study contributes to land administration and land management literature in three ways. First, it outlines a typical outlook of formal and informal land development processes. Second, it deconstructs property formation in the context of land-use planning in an informal settlement. Thirdly, it presents the typical categories of actors (including their roles and viewpoints) in the participatory property formation process in an informal settlement. The study recommends that cadastral surveying (Property formation) and land-use planning should be better integrated for the formalization of property rights. This recommendation is considered necessary because there is evidence that land-use planning assigns rights (including restrictions and obligations or responsibilities) that owners and users of land have to follow in the property formation process.     

A Note on the Adoption of Soil Conservation Measures in the Northern Province of South Africa

This study attempts to expand the range of explanatory variables used in adoption studies. The results suggest that awareness of soil erosion problems and increases in long-term profit are significant indicators of the probability of adopting silt traps and contour ploughing as methods of soil conservation. Factors such as age, security of land tenure, informal communication, size of land holding and difficulty of adopting a particular technology, do not appear to be significant determinants of the adoption of soil conservation measures.     

Planning for social inclusion: The impact of socioeconomic inequities on the informal development of farmland in suburban Beijing

Informal development on farmland is not only a major problem facing thousands of people, but also a major challenge to land use planning. In the rapidly growing literature on informal land development in China, most authors claim that ambiguous property rights and the dual land tenure system are the primary factors involved. As a result, existing state-led land use planning responses to informal development are solely focused on strengthening the legal regulation of land development. This paper challenges this approach, on the basis of the theory of urban informality. By examining many illegal gated communities in suburban Beijing, the paper argues that the informal development of farmland on the urban fringe is the result of local grassroots groups spontaneously responding to socioeconomic inequities in the context of transition to a market economy. These inequities mainly concern distributive inequity, procedural inequity and contextual inequity in relation to land use. It appears that the ongoing market-oriented initiatives of the state government could worsen informal land development unless these socioeconomic inequalities at the local level are tackled. The growing civil society is another change to the state's control of informal land development in China's cities. A new land use planning system which has more concern for social inclusion rather than focusing on centralized control is imperative in China.     

Unravelling the dynamics of access to farmland in Tigray,Ethiopia: The ‘emerging land market’ revisited

This article uses ethnographic evidence from Tigray to revisit the debate on informal rural land markets in present-day Ethiopia. It explores informal farmland rental from a historico-anthropological, micro-analytical perspective in relation to the formal allocation of land use rights and to other informal land transfer practices. It shows how different rationales for land rental give rise to different socially embedded tenancy configurations. On the basis of this empirical evidence, the paper questions the appropriateness of the common idea that in Ethiopia ‘the land rental market is expanding’. It argues that research and policy thinking on land in Ethiopia could gain analytical power and relevance by adopting a less monolithic and abstract view on people's informal land transfer practices.     

Securing Women's Interests within Land Tenure Reforms: Recent Debates in Tanzania

This article is an account of the debates around the recent land tenure reforms in Tanzania. It focuses on the discourses of Government officials, academic researchers and NGO activists on the implications of the reforms for women's interests in land and the most fruitful approaches to the issues of discriminatory customary law rules and male–dominated land management and adjudication institutions at national and village levels. The article argues that from being marginal to the debates, women's interests became one of the most contentious issues, showing up divisions within NGO ranks and generating accusations of State co–optation and class bias. It illustrates the implications of the recent positive reappraisal of African customary laws and local–level land management institutions for a specific national context, that of Tanzania.     

An evaluation framework for earthquake-responsive land administration

In recent years earthquakes and their secondary hazards have claimed the largest number of lives of all large natural disasters. Some of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones are also areas of high population density. The impact is magnified by vulnerability factors including non-enforcement of building codes, knowledge gaps, urban poverty and poor governance capacity to manage and reduce earthquake risks. Poor security of land tenure and property rights increases the vulnerability of people and affects their ability to respond to natural disasters.Earthquake recovery and reconstruction provides very significant challenges for land agencies, with these challenges differing from one country to the next due to differences in the local context. Drawing on contrasting case studies in Haiti, Nepal and New Zealand this paper identifies the common post-earthquake land administration functions and challenges that may apply to many contexts. These lessons provide land agencies and other key stakeholders with a summary of the challenges an earthquake poses for land administration at different post-disaster stages. We also discuss the policy and regulatory, institutional, operational and preparedness lessons for land administration. From these lessons we propose a framework for evaluating the earthquake-responsiveness of a land administration system. This framework can be used by a land agency in an earthquake prone region, or where an earthquake has recently occurred, to assess what challenges to land administration might occur in the event of an earthquake, and the preparedness of their land administration system.     

Land administration for housing production: An approach for assessment

The integration of land administration processes and the collaboration of land agencies are considered essential for the effective delivery of developable land for housing production. The research upon which this paper is based investigates the interrelationship across land administration functions and between different levels of government in the management and delivery of land for housing production. It focuses on land management policies, land administration processes, and spatial data infrastructure, as they are related to housing production. The study starts from the premise that inadequate integration across land administration functions and between different levels of government impedes land delivery for housing production. Against this background, an assessment framework is proposed as a tool to assess the levels of integration. The parameters for the development of the framework are based on the extensive literature of past and present initiatives which focused on enhancing inter-agency collaboration. It is also supported by interviews with land agencies in the case study areas – Australia and Nigeria – to aggregate the common themes as observed in the literature. The assessment framework was evaluated through selected government departments and agencies. With this approach, the assessment framework develops into the land administration integration assessment matrix. The key consideration of the matrix is to assess the depth of inter-agency relationship ranging from information sharing to consultation, coordination of activities, joint management, partnership arrangement and formal merger of organisations.     

Does land lease tenure insecurity cause decreased productivity and investment in the sugar industry? Evidence from Fiji

Does land lease tenure insecurity cause decreased productivity and investment in the sugar industry? To answer this question, this study examined the impact of weak formal tenure lease arrangements on tenants’ investment and the productivity of sugarcane in Ba province, Fiji. After controlling for potential endogeneity in the choice of lease tenure using instrumental variables (IV), it was shown that tenants under insecure lease tenure (expiring in 0–5 years) achieve significantly lower yields of sugarcane, by 6.5–11 tonnes per hectare, and plant smaller areas of new sugarcane, by 0.14–0.25 hectares on average, than do tenants under secure lease tenure. Insecure lease tenure also negatively affects chemical fertiliser use, although this impact is not statistically significant. An intervention to improve tenure security would likely enhance the production efficiency of and investment in the Fijian sugarcane industry.     

Key challenges and outcomes of piloting the STDM in the Caribbean

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) was assisted by the Australian government's aid agency, AusAID, with technical input from UNHabitat and the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, in the developing of regional land policy guidelines that will address the most critical land issues being faced by the countries. A key aspect of this project was to evaluate pro-poor land tools that would provide comprehensive land administration and thus facilitate the equitable use and allocation of the limited land resource in the sub-region. This initiative provided for and included an opportunity for introducing the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) to support economic, social or environmental land policy goals. The individual member states of the OECS committed to participate in the project notwithstanding existing institutional shortcomings that may affect implementation.This paper reviews the major characteristics in land administration shared by most of the OECS countries that will affect the implementation of the STDM which is based on the LADM international standard ISO 19152:2012. It then presents a proposed STDM profile that will address the land issues common to most of the OECS states. Lastly, it presents the preliminary results of pilot testing of an implementation of the STDM, software version 0.9.5, developed by the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN). The pilot was conducted in Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The primary aim was to examine the practical and social implications of implementing the recording process for informal tenures using the STDM software developed by the GLTN. It was found that some of the technical process went smoothly but middle and lower middle income groups are resistant to the idea of recognising informality because they perceive difficulties in differentiating between legitimate land tenure rights and illegal occupation and use, and because they anticipate impacts on their own legal tenure.     

Land tenure security and its implications for investments to urban agriculture in Soweto,South Africa

Land tenure regime is considered one of the most crucial assets determining viability of urban agriculture, especially in terms of investments. Many authors have built on traditional agricultural theory that only land ownership and (formal) secure land tenure can incite investments into farming, thus stressing the need of secure land tenure for more prosperous urban agriculture. However, these statements are often built on weak or nonexistent empirical evidence. This research aims to contribute to the discussion on land tenure for urban agriculture by mixed-method exploration of the above-mentioned theory. Additionally, we propose a farming investment index which measures the level of investments by using non-monetary information obtained from respondents. The results of our study show that land tenure security for urban farmers is often seen as a rather narrow concept, focusing only on legal tenure security but omitting its other dimensions such as perceived and de facto tenure security. Nevertheless, all three dimensions of tenure security positively influence investments to urban agriculture.     

Land tenure security for women: A conceptual framework

While strengthening women’s land rights is increasingly on national and international agendas, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s tenure security. Analyses of women’s land rights often use very different definitions of land rights, from formal ownership to women’s management of plots allocated to them by their husbands. This paper identifies aspects of women’s tenure that should be included in indicators. It then provides a conceptual framework to identify the various dimensions of women’s land tenure security and the myriad factors that may influence it. To be able to compare women’s tenure security in different places, we need information on the context, the threats and opportunities facing tenure security, and the action arena that includes both the people who play a role in promoting or limiting women’s tenure security and the resources used in doing so.     

An assessment of the implications of alternative scales of communal land tenure formalization in pastoral systems

Pastoralism faces diverse challenges, that include, among others, land tenure insecurity, that has necessitated the need to formalize land rights. Some governments have started regularizing rights for privately owned land, but this is complex to implement in pastoral areas where resources are used and managed collectively. Our aim was to assess how the scale of communal land tenure recognition in pastoralist systems may affect tradeoffs among objectives such as tenure security, flexibility, mobility, and reduction of conflicts. We used a participatory scenario-building approach to investigate alternative scenarios of land tenure recognition in southern Ethiopia where a new communal land tenure system is in the early stages of implementation. Through key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and a workshop, respondents analyzed the likely outcomes of communal land tenure recognition at different scales. Our findings suggest that there is a good chance of success when the tenure policy is embedded onto customary structures. All scales have some shortcomings, but Reera seems best, yet pastoralists preferred the Dheeda which despite its challenges, is the best for maintaining flexible mobility. There are multiple uncertainties and complexities, which suggest the for multi-pronged approaches and various support mechanisms when implementing a formal land tenure system in these areas.