Agrarian Change and Privatization of Ejido Land in Northern Mexico

This paper uses the findings of a 1999 case study of ejidos (collective landholdings) in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, a prominent agricultural region of northwest Mexico, to examine responses to a series of economic and legal reforms enacted as part of Mexico's 'Reform of the Countryside', which began in the late 1980s. In particular, it analyses reactions to the 1992 amendment to Article 27 of Mexico's Constitution, which legalized the rental and sale of previously inalienable ejido land and created programmes and institutions to officially certify ejido members' land rights. The paper concludes that the complex of economic and legal reforms – combined with the specificities of Sonoran agriculture – has generated a visible change in ejidos with respect to land operation, setting the stage for an accelerated shift towards the privatization of agricultural land in northern Mexico.     

Changes in land use, land tenure, and landscape fragmentation in the Tijuana River Watershed following reform of the ejido sector

Changes in land use and land tenure can influence both physical fragmentation and ownership fragmentation of landscapes, with implications for biodiversity. In this study, we evaluated changes in land use and land tenure in the Tijuana River Watershed, a region of high biodiversity and endemism, following the implementation of a new Agrarian Law which allowed for privatization and sales of communal land (ejidos) beginning in 1992. In order to understand changes in land use and cover, we constructed maps from aerial photographs and Aster images and measured changes between 1994 and 2005. In order to understand changes in land tenure, we collected data from Mexican government sources on ejido land size, ownership, and sales, and we conducted 55 structured interviews with ejidatarios in the watershed. Our results demonstrate that land-use/cover change between 1994 and 2005 was dominated by an increase in urban area and grasslands, and a decrease in coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and, to a lesser degree, agriculture. In particular, the conversion of coastal sage scrub has left a far more fragmented landscape than existed in 1994. In addition, most of the ejidos in the watershed, as well as individuals interviewed, had participated in some stage of the land certification and titling process allowed by the new Agrarian Law, resulting in substantial changes in land tenure. However, land tenure security appeared to play a larger role than a desire to sell land and, contrary to studies from other regions, full title to the land was obtained in a range of urban and rural settings, rather than primarily on land closest to urban zones. Our results suggest that past predictions regarding future urban growth and fragmentation of native vegetation in the region have proven accurate and highlights regions of change that merit further study.     

Dispossession through land titling: Legal loopholes and shadow procedures to urbanized forestlands in the Yucatán Peninsula

Under certain circumstances, land titling, property regime changes, and land-use conversions yield substantial profits. Yet few people possess the wealth, knowledge, and networks to benefit from these procedures. In the Yucatán Peninsula, a region recently targeted as a prominent investment location by the Mexican national government (mainly with the “Tren Maya” megaproject) and the private capital, forestlands collectively owned as ejidos by Mayan peasants are on the trend to complete privatization. Against the arguments of neo-institutional economists that in the 1990s promoted legal reforms and justified land-titling programmes worldwide to make available credit for uncapitalized peasants, individual land titling of commonly held lands in Mexico increased the overall economic value of the land, but not the investment in economic activities related to farmland and indigenous communities. Instead, those policies enabled land grabbing, dispossession, and urbanization. In this article, I describe recent private-led initiatives of ejido land titling that have redefined agricultural land's uses, meanings, and values for capitalist accumulation. In doing so, I explain how and why Mayan ejidatarios have been excluded from the monetary benefits of land titling, a top-bottom dispossession process only accomplished through shadow procedures and former privatization of ejidos' common lands.     

Land Tenure and Tenure Regimes in Mexico: An Overview

This article provides an overview of the evolution of land tenure and tenure regimes in rural Mexico from colonial times to the present. It shows how, by the late nineteenth century, the dual system of indigenous communal tenure and Spanish and criollo landholdings was undermined by liberal legislation that sought to privatize community lands. This resulted in a process of disappropriation and concentration of land in a few hands, which created the setting for rural upheaval during the Mexican revolution and for the subsequent redistributive land reform and the creation of a 'social sector' consisting of ejidos and agrarian communities. By the 1960s, however, the reform sector began to enter into crisis. A reform of the Constitution and new agrarian legislation of 1992 opened the way to privatization of land in the social sector, expecting that this would dynamize production. It is shown that this has not been the case. In a context of globalization and asymmetric free-trade relations the crisis has only deepened.     

Private property and Mennonites are major drivers of forest cover loss in central Yucatan Peninsula,Mexico

The role of land tenure and Mennonites as drivers of deforestation in the Central Yucatan Peninsula has not been empirically assessed. We evaluate different drivers and their relationship to forest cover change between 1986 and 2015 and assess how land tenure and Mennonite communities impact forest cover loss in the Municipality of Hopelchen, Campeche, Mexico. This study shows that forest cover loss has increased in the last decade (2005–2015), and that land tenure regime type is associated with this loss. Throughout the study period, statistical comparisons show rates of forest cover loss were significantly higher in private and federal property compared to forests in ejidos (communal property). Forest cover loss in Mennonite private property was also significantly higher than in non-Mennonite owned private property. The role of land tenure and the expansion of the agroindustrial production model as major drivers of forest cover loss in the region provide important insight into developing municipal land use plans and conservation strategies to reduce deforestation. Programs, incentives and policy directed towards forest conservation in the region that typically target ejido communities, will need to consider the growing trend of private property expansion within federal lands and work more closely with private property owners including Mennonite communities if deforestation reduction programs are to be successful.     

The fertility incentive of land tenure in Mexico

Ejidos are communal holding groups of redistributed land expropriated (generally without compensation) from large private landowners during Mexico's post-1910 land reform. The model in this study of the "ejidal" system's influence on fertility differs from DeVany and Sanchez in providing more current data and including the following more detailed variables: the land area of ejidos and the number of ejidos, the need for children, male income, female income share, and social security coverage. The data pertains to states rather than municipalities. DeVany and Sanchez found that the ejidal system encouraged fertility, because having more children helped an ejido family retain land rights, increased its chances of gaining additional productive land, and gave it increased political power. Children also provided a means of intergenerational transfer of resources. The estimation results of this study revealed that the total proportion of land held as ejidos had a positive, significant effect on fertility. The ratio of ejidos to total number of farms was negative and significant. There was support for the hypothesis that the impact of ejidos land holdings and area was diminished when ejidos were dominant in the state. Fertility declined with the increase in unpaid workers per hectare of land. Elasticity functions were small: 0.075 on ejidal land, -0.222 on ejidal farms, and -0.045 on workers. A positive significant demographic effect on fertility was illiteracy. Infant mortality and female income share each had a negative, significant effect on fertility. Insignificant variables were male income, social security coverage, and the dummy for northern states. There have been changes in the Mexican ejidal system. These changes and the availability of farm labor are expected to reduce urban and rural fertility differentials.     

Encountering the state through legal tenure security: Perspectives from a low income resettlement scheme in urban India

Tenure security systems—which determine who lives where and under what terms and conditions—are processes of governance that make and effect the relationship between those who confer tenure security and those on who tenure security is conferred. Yet, in dominant analyses of land and housing tenure security, and in policy recommendations for property rights and legal tenure security in developing countries, governance implications are overlooked in favour of analyses of the relative merits of different tenure systems mainly in terms of security, livelihood and economic impact. Using interview data and observations from a resettlement scheme in Ahmedabad, India, this paper empirically examines citizen-state relations in the context of a major shift from de facto (in practice) to legal tenure security and asks how do citizens who have recently come to live under legal tenure security encounter the state and make sense of it. I find a bureaucracy of tenure security that exerts control over low income citizens largely through fear. However, such control is incomplete and acts of resistance suggest an emerging ‘paralegal’ space to renegotiate tenure rules. I conclude by examining the findings through a conceptual framework that explains the relationship between state power and legal tenure security. I also discuss the need for greater scrutiny of the political effects of urban land and housing tenure systems on poor people.     

Lineage and land reforms in Malawi: Do matrilineal and patrilineal landholding systems represent a problem for land reforms in Malawi?

Based on government statistics and interviews with villagers across Malawi this article argues that customary matrilineal and patrilineal land tenure systems serve to weaken security of land tenure for some family members as well as obstructing the creation of gender-neutral inheritance of lands. Data from the National Census of Agriculture and Livestock 2007and the 2008 Population and Housing Census are used to characterize marriage systems and landholding patterns of local communities. Marriage systems correspond to customary land-tenure patterns of matrilineal or patrilineal cultures. The differences between the two ways of land holding represent a challenge for land reforms aimed at unifying rules for land tenure and land devolution. Drawing on an analogy of the resilience of the patrilineal land holding system in Norway, we argue that it will be difficult to remove the preferential rights of lineage members directly. We recommend that, instead of creating a unified national system, existing land rights should be formally recognized and circumscribed by fair procedures. A well-designed landholding system should aim to ease the transitions of diverse customary tenure systems towards the requirements of a modern large-scale society.     

The Legacy of Mexico's Agrarian Counter‐Reforms: Reinforcing Social Hierarchies in Calakmul,Campeche

In this paper, we examine how Mexico's 1992 counter‐reforms reinforced social hierarchies between two ‘classes’ of residents within three ejidos in an agricultural frontier in Campeche. We carried out qualitative research with 94 ejidatarios, 92 pobladores and 13 government officials. Our research shows that the reforms cemented the second‐class status of pobladores, as their access to land, natural resources such as firewood and governmental subsidies is now even more contested. Ejidal residents have responded to these tensions by invoking various conceptions of citizenship to press for different forms of justice. Ejidatarios seek to enforce their legal prerogatives by advocating a tiered citizenship, inflected with aspects of ‘market citizenship’, in which pobladores have less access to resources and voice. Pobladores seek inclusion in the ejido via a cultural model of citizenship built around a ‘civil sociality’. Despite this generalization, both groups also selectively move between and combine these citizenship frameworks to advance their claims.     

Land tenure and management reforms in East and Southern Africa – the case of Botswana

Since attainment of independence, almost every country in East and Southern Africa has introduced some kind of land reform aimed at reconciling indigenous land tenure practices and those introduced by colonial regimes. The reforms have centred on modification of tenurial rules on access, ownership, administration and transfer of land rights coupled with land redistribution and/or restitution in some countries. With the exception of a few countries, such as Botswana, land reforms have largely remained on statute books with little to show on the ground. The paper gives an overview of land reforms in East and Southern Africa, taking Botswana as a case study. It notes that although Botswana has largely been successful in implementing land reforms, it is currently experiencing land tenure problems, especially in peri-urban settlements and inner city low-income areas, despite government's enhanced control over local land administrative structures. The paper ends with suggestions on how to contain the current problems.     

Registration and release of customary-land for private enterprise: Lessons from Papua New Guinea

Land held under customary tenure has proven difficult to register and release for private enterprise globally. This is because the costs of developing secure rights to land held under communal ownership is high given that such ownership rules out a ‘pay-to-use-the-property’ system while punitive negotiation and policing costs make a ‘pay-him-not-to-use-the-property’ system ineffective (Demsetz, 1967, p. 355). Here I document reforms to institutions governing access to land held under customary title in Papua New Guinea that has imbedded collective ownership whilst allowing for a ‘pay-to-use-the-land’ for private enterprise. Reforms put in place over the past decade have allowed for voluntary incorporation of landowning clans, the registration of their land, and the leasing of this land for up to 99 years. The ongoing reforms provide lessons both for Papua New Guinea and for others wrestling with the challenges of making available land held by customary groups for individual enterprise.     

Land and Social Change in a Tanzanian Village 1: Kinyanambo, 1920s–1990

This article (in two parts) traces the historical development of land tenure in Kinyanambo village, Mufindi District, Tanzania. It suggests a gradual commoditization of land and the evolution of a predominantly individualized land market, processes influenced by the long-term commoditization of agriculture and social reproduction more generally. Local land tenure practices evolved more or less independently of national land tenure policy until 1974, when villagization altered the evolutionary path of local land tenure, marking a fundamental turning point in people's understandings of their land rights. Together with the simultaneous establishment of Mafinga town, it created conditions for the rapid and more spatially concentrated growth of the local population, for urbanization, and for associated changes in livelihoods, land use, and relations between people and land. As a result, and following the economic reforms of the current period of structural adjustment and liberalization, by 2000 Kinyanambo had a deep-rooted, widespread and socially legitimate market in land.     

Systems approach to pro-poor land reforms: A concept paper

There has been renewed interest in the academic discourse on land reforms due to recent high profile works suggesting a positive correlation between reforms and poverty reduction. Land is held under different tenure regimes in different regions, countries and communities. These are often in the form of community tenure, state tenure, individual tenure or a mixture of two or three of them. However, land reformers are in constant debate as to which of the three offers the most appropriate pathway to poverty reduction. The policy outcomes of such debates have been to superimpose one tenure option over the other in differing situations. This article conceptualises a metaphorical approach to land reforms grounded on general systems theory. It advocates for contextualised methodological rigour and an approach to land reforms reliant on the influencing variables of alternative land tenure regimes as opposed to wanton superimposition of one form of tenure over the other.     

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.     

Localizing Land Governance,Strengthening the State: Decentralization and Land Tenure Security in Uganda

Decentralization of land governance is expected to significantly improve land tenure security of small‐scale farmers in Africa, through ensuring better protection of their assets and reducing land‐related conflicts. This paper, however, cautions not to have too high expectations of transferring responsibilities for land administration and dispute resolution to local government bodies. Field research in Mbarara District in south‐western Uganda brings out how decentralization has limited impacts in terms of localizing land services provision. Nonetheless, local land governance has transformed in important ways, as decentralization adds to institutional multiplicity, and fuels competition among state and non‐state authorities, and about the rules they apply. Rather than strengthening local mechanisms for securing tenure, the reforms introduce new forms of tenure insecurity, fail to transform local conventions of dealing with land disputes and delegitimize local mechanisms for securing tenure. In practice, decentralization has had limited effects in securing tenure for the rural poor, yet reinforces the presence of the state at the local level in diverse ways.     

Land restitution and communal property associations: The Elandskloof case

Elandskloof was the first land restitution case in post-apartheid South Africa in which the government returned land to a community. The communal property association became dysfunctional, and the courts placed it under government administration. In its haste to return land to the community in the aftermath of the apartheid system the state did not set up comprehensive planning and consultative processes within government institutions, the beneficiary community and NGOs before returning the land. Consequently, the beneficiaries entertained expectations of resources that have not been met due to regulatory and institutional constraints, which have fuelled intense anger. In addition, internal community conflicts over membership eligibility and access to power and resources have bedevilled the project. The advantage of communal property associations is that they offer great flexibility in how a community can set up its land tenure system and the associated rules. However, lack of regulatory structure at the outset places great strain on a governing committee which has to create the rules, police them, judge them and administer sanctions. In Elandskloof, this occurred while the community was being reconstructed and the legitimacy of the governing committee itself was challenged. A major lesson is that the administrative structure, membership boundaries, and the land tenure rules should be established prior to land being returned to a community, and administrative powers need to be separated, at least until the community has settled. The case also raises policy questions about government administration of dysfunctional communal property associations.     

中国农村集体建设用地使用权流转政策的梳理与展望

研究目的：梳理并展望当前中国农村集体建设用地使用权流转政策。研究方法：理论评述与现状分析结合。研究结果：在分析中国农村集体建设用地使用权流转政策背景的基础上，从流转的限制条件、价格确定、收益分配以及宅基地、商品房开放及直接入市6方面综合归纳了中国农村集体建设用地使用权流转的基本政策，并分析得出当前存在所有权主体悬空且归属不清、使用主体限制严格且权能残缺不全、法制建设滞后且现行法规规定相互矛盾这三个主要问题。研究结论：为进一步促进、完善中国的农村集体建设用地使用权流转提出明确集体土地所有权主体和集体建设用地使用权的权能、做好征地制度改革工作、建立集体建设用地评估制度、做好用途管制和土地集中统一供应工作、建立农村土地金融制度、建立集体建设用土地流转登记制度等多项相关政策建议。     

Urban land administration and planning in China: Opportunities and constraints of spatial data models

China's economic reforms over the past decades have given rise to the development of a rudimentary urban land market. Although one cannot speak of a land “market” in the strict sense of the word, there is an urban land allocation system in which land lease rights can be acquired through the payment of a land-use fee. If the urban land market is to develop in a sustainable manner, new credible institutions need to be established that can safeguard greater legal security and transparency. For these purposes, it is necessary to establish a management system that can support the legal (tenure security), economic (leases, taxes) and broader aspects (spatial and environmental land use policies) of land administration. To make an urban land administration system socially credible and functional, land-related information should be registered and structured at a detailed spatial level, such as parcels. There is no parcel-based information system in China, but the country has developed a population registration system at a detailed spatial level that could be a starting point to develop integrated information systems, or a so-called “local spatial data infrastructure”. This paper reviews China's population registration system and their spatial units and presents a proposal for an information system that can be expanded or adapted to meet the requirements of an effective land administration system.     

Land rights in postwar Liberia: The volatile part of the peace process

The end to the war in Liberia, along with quality leadership and a large UN presence has laid the foundation for a successful peace process. Now the delicate part of the process is underway—building viable, equitable, and durable social relations, institutions and legal constructs. A potentially volatile part of any postwar scenario is the inability of land rights institutions to perform in an effective, legitimate, equitable manner. Reform of land tenure via policies, laws, institutions, and capacity, needs to happen in a manner that is able to attend to both the land rights related causes of conflict, and the tangle of land problems brought on by the war itself. This article reports on the current situation in Liberia, and examines the primary set of land tenure problems in the country. The article concludes with a series of suggestions for dealing with the unique circumstances of postwar land tenure, and the Liberian case.     

Intermediate levels of property rights and the emerging housing market in Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam

Vietnam introduced a Policy of Renovation (‘Doi Moi’ Policy) to restructure the economy in 1986. Under this policy, the Land Use Right Certificate was introduced as a form of tenure for agricultural land and urban land, according to the Land Laws of 1987 and 1993, respectively. However, by 2001, most properties and/or land in Vietnam still did not have a legal title. Although Vietnam's land reforms in the 1990s provided some of the weakest private rights among the transition countries, big cities like Ho Chi Minh City are presently homes to thriving housing markets. Transactions of ‘property without a physical entity and legal title’ in the real estate market show how property ownership can be formed in order to operate within different institutional contexts. This paper highlights that ‘intermediate levels of property rights’ are the driving forces behind the thriving housing market in Ho Chi Minh City.