Customary vs Private Property Rights? Dynamics and Trajectories of Vernacular Land Markets in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Contemporary discourse on land in Africa is polarized between advocates of tenure reform through state registration of individual titles to land and others who claim that customary or 'communal' tenure is the only check against landlessness among the poor in the African countryside, and that 'pro-poor' land policy should therefore strengthen customary rights to land. This paper draws on a growing body of evidence on the emergence of vernacular rural land sales and rental markets to question assumptions that underlie the non-market 'ideal type' communal tenure model that has historically dominated policy thinking in Africa, and continues to be shared by both sides of the current land tenure reform debate. The paper argues that recognition of the specific characteristics of 'vernacular land markets'– commoditized transfers of land within the framework of customary tenure – is essential if state land policies are to succeed in promoting the interests of the poor.     

Pastoralism within land administration in Kenya—The missing link

In land administration (LA), the right to exercising property/ownership rights on land is based on cadastral processes of adjudication, survey and rights registration. Private ownership rights are now being taken up in pastoral areas, where they must contend with pastoralists’ land rights. Pastoral land use requires seasonal migrations determined by climatic conditions. This study aimed to find out how well the existing land laws and property rights in LA are able to serve the requirements of pastoralists land use, identify mismatches and put forward possible solutions. A case study was carried out in the Samburu–Laikipia–Isiolo–Meru landscape in Kenya. Data on the degree of livestock dependency among pastoralist communities, the spatial extent and patterns of dry season migrations, the resulting encounters between herders’ and non-pastoralist land use actors, and the perceptions of land rights held by actors were collected through a variety of methods and analysed. The results show that pastoralism is still active. The migration corridors reveal that herders maintain extensive dry season mobility, even though some of the corridors currently overlap with areas where land is privately owned by non-pastoralist land use actors. Moreover, the results show that most non-pastoralist land use actors have their land rights registered, but seasonal encounters with migrating pastoralists persist as pastoralists continue to exercise customary rights of communal use. We conclude that existing land laws and property rights in LA are suitable for sedentary land use, but do not address how to serve pastoralists land rights in time and space. The pastoralist's migration routes and patterns obtained indicated that it is possible to predict where pastoralists will be at a given time/drought period. This information could be used by decision makers and land administrators to identify where and when pastoralists’ land rights apply. This could provide the foundation for including pastoralists’ spatiotemporal land rights in LA. Arguments emphasize that adjudication, surveys and registration of rights should focus not only on ownership and full control of land, but also on defined periods when spatiotemporal mobility and access rights could be granted to pastoralists.     

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.     

When collective action and tenure allocations collide: Outcomes from community forests in Quintana Roo,Mexico and Petén,Guatemala

Based on a comparative case study of four community forestry enterprises in Guatemala and Mexico, we examine the relationship between user group characteristics and state allocation of tenure bundles. Using Schlager and Ostrom's four levels of tenure bundles and collective action theory, we illustrate how tenure bundles and collective action costs interact to either promote or create disincentives for conservation and communal economic benefits. We suggest that in communities with high costs for collective action, a tenure bundle that includes management, withdrawal and exclusion rights yet omits alienation rights may be optimal for community forestry. We also demonstrate how unclear allocation of rights can result in local interpretations of land rights that do support collective action.     

Tenure,land rights,and farmer investment incentives in China

The goal of this paper is to understand the nature of the property rights associated with China's land tenure systems and to study the impact of these property rights on agricultural production efficiency. The results show that land tenure and associated property rights in rural China affect the production behavior of farmers. The most robust finding is that the right to use land for long periods of time encourages the use of land-saving investments. While the results show that land tenure affects agricultural production decisions, the difference between collective and private plots, however, is small compared to the private plot - communal productivity gap that existed in the pre-reform period.     

Using participatory mapping and a participatory geographic information system in pastoral land use investigation: Impacts of rangeland policy in Botswana

Since the 1980s, the spatial extent of communal grazing lands in Botswana has been diminishing due to rangeland privatisation and fencing associated with animal health policies. Spatial comparisons of pastoral land use transformations are particularly important where accessibility to grazing and water resources remains at the core of sustainable pastoralism policies. Achieving success in pastoral development research requires a sound understanding of traditional pastoralists’ information systems, including the nature of local spatial knowledge. This study explores local spatial knowledge through participatory mapping and a Participatory Geographic Information System to understand and analyse pastoralists’ grazing patterns, spatial mobility and the impacts of subdivisions and privatisation policies in Botswana’s Ngamiland rangelands. The study uses focus group discussions, historical analysis through key informant interviews, and participatory mapping exercises along with community guided transect walks. The resulting maps provide insights into the traditional tenure patterns of land use and the impacts of rangeland policy on traditional livestock spatial mobility and access to grazing lands. Privatisation and rangeland enclosures have resulted in the restricted movement of livestock and overstocking of floodplains and riparian rangelands, with some natural water pans becoming inaccessible to local communities. We conclude that the integration of local spatial knowledge can be used to foster better articulation and understanding of pastoralists’ tenures, which are often lacking in communal land administration systems. Such integrated analysis can contribute to sustainable pastoral land management policy toolkits in semi-arid rangeland environments and enable better land tenure and management decision making for sustainable land management.     

The application of the social tenure domain model (STDM) to family land in Trinidad and Tobago

Family land is a form of communal tenure found in some of the countries of the English-speaking Caribbean inclusive of Trinidad and Tobago. It has been problematic to administer, is sometimes the source of land conflict and litigation, it has been seen as the cause of many land-related problems such as land degradation and fragmentation, and has therefore been targeted for eradication by land title registration programmes. Informal occupation of many years standing on state and private land is also widespread in Trinidad and Tobago. Recording the existence of these extant extralegal but legitimate rights would go a long way to improving the land administration and the security of tenure on these lands.     

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.     

Configuring land tenure caused by fixed residence according to the societal control system of North Korea: Focus on forestry carbon trading

The failure in addressing tenure rights in North Korea could be a severe obstacle to introducing forestry carbon trading since it becomes difficult for the land occupant to serve as a supporter to maintain the carbon pool. North Korea is one of the few countries in the world, holding a people’s registration system. North Korean citizens use lands allocated by the State for their entire life because they are not free to move their residences. The article indicates that the people’s registration card is solid evidence for fixed residence and stable land tenure. The card could be used as evidential documents to compensate carbon credit owners in compliance with the international standards for land tenure recognition. This article established a solid evidential foundation to introduce land tenure in North Korea.     

Land Tenure,Tenure Security and Farm Efficiency: Panel Evidence from the Philippines

This article tests the relationships among formalised property rights, land tenure contracts and productive efficiency in farming. Using four rounds of panel data from 230 rice farms in the Philippines, we measure the effects of land tenure arrangements on farm efficiency using a stochastic production frontier model. We test for the allocative efficiency of observed land rental markets. We also test how land tenure security affects farmers' investment decisions. Results suggest that, despite the presence of formalised titles, the rental market remains inefficient at allocating land. In contrast, the unformalised tenure contracts used by farmers appear to provide tenure security.     

A communities Eden – grazing Exclosure success in Ethiopia

The traditional significance of livestock to rural communities in Ethiopia has resulted in intense pressures on available grazing areas, resulting in vegetation loss, reduced infiltration and increased runoff, greater erosion and land degradation. Unfortunately, the uptake of sustainable land management (SLM) practices in communal grazing land is constrained by a lack of land tenure security. Recently the International Fund for Agricultural Development, working with the Government of Ethiopia, has invested in the capacity of local administrations, to improve land demarcation and the issuance of both individual and community land certificates. This is concurrent with the promotion of improved SLM, particularly zero grazing of communal lands, known by communities as Exclosures. This pilot study reports the biophysical changes observed in four different Exclosures in the Amhara region compared to adjacent communal lands. Irrespective of age, it was found that vegetative cover, biodiversity levels and infiltration rates, all increased in Exclosures, enhancing ecosystem services and function. Results suggest that Exclosures are most effective for large sites with effective cut and carry forage systems. It is evident that the issuance of land titles increases the adoption of SLM practices. Further studies are required to assess the economic and social impacts of Exclosures.     

Land occupations and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Researchers are increasingly interested in understanding the impact of contentious social processes on land change. In the Brazilian Amazon, there are often contentious interactions between landholders defending private property rights and squatters who have the right to occupy land that is deemed unproductive. Previous studies suggest that the contentious social processes inherent in the Brazilian land tenure and land reform system cause a significant amount of deforestation. An environment of insecure land title, and policies that value deforested land over forested land, among other factors, encourage both landholders and squatters to deforest more land than is necessary for pasture or crop production. This paper examines the impact that land occupations have on deforestation at the municipal scale across the Brazilian Legal Amazon, from 2000 to 2009. We show that land occupations have a direct influence on deforestation. We use spatial analysis as well to show that land occupations have a spatial component in the effect on deforestation: occupations in one municipality affect deforestation in adjacent areas.     

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.     

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.     

The Closing Frontier: Agrarian Change, Immigrants and the 'Squatter Menace' in Gokwe, 1980-1990s

‘Squatting’ in the communal areas of Zimbabwe has been largely ignored in the literature because it is assumed that it does not exist in a ‘communal’ land tenure system. This article argues that ‘squatting’ in Gokwe villages has become a common strategy by landless immigrants to access land. Gokwe has been a frontier region for many immigrants in search of land since the 1950s with intense pressure on land by the 1990s. As the frontier closed, the question of citizenship in Gokwe villages became more signi?cant than ever before. Those who are not formally registered as residents are de?ned by local government authorities and established villagers as ‘squatters’ who should be evicted. The article traces how local authorities and established villagers have responded to what they perceive as the ‘squatter menace’. It further examines the means used by ‘squatters’ to lay claims to land and to defend those claims in Gokwe villages.     

Impact of land tenure on land use in low-income countries

The role of land tenure in agricultural development has been a subject of intensive research, particularly within the context of land and agrarian reform. The complexity of the world's major land tenure systems is well recognized and no attempt is made here to go beyond an overview as this paper limits itself to the impact of land tenure on land use in low income situations. Present land use is determined by a host of factors, of a physical/biological and socioeconomic nature. In applying land evaluation, the question it is necessary to ask is to what extent, when and where land tenure conditions act as a considerable constraining factor impeding a more optimal use of land resources. Even in what used to be low-population density areas (such as Sub-Saharan Africa) it appears that the frontier phase is becoming exhausted and the intensification of agriculture proceeds; it becomes imperative to examine land tenure in relation to land use implications. It is shown that so far a multi-disciplinary approach has often been lacking in treating land tenure and related issues.     

Land tenure (in)security and crop-tree intercropping in rural Xinjiang,China

The relationship between land tenure security and long-term land-related investment is of great importance especially given the current flux in property rights systems of agricultural land in China. This paper empirically examines the role of land tenure security in farmers’ crop-tree intercropping decisions, and is based on a comparative analysis between contract land and wasteland holders in rural Xinjiang, China. Data from a survey, carried out in 2008 among 352 households in Awati County in Xinjiang, is used to estimate the factors that affect the adoption of crop-tree intercropping. The results indicate that, for those households that only have contract land, land tenure security positively affects their adoption of crop-tree intercropping. However, for those that hold both contract land and wasteland, land tenure security negatively impacts upon their adoption of crop-tree intercropping on wasteland, as the crop-tree intercropping on wasteland can increase the perceived tenure security of wasteland. The results also suggest that the comprehensive effect of labor organization on intercropping is moderate as a result of the presence of counteracting effects.     

The evolution and resilience of community-based land tenure in rural Mexico

This paper examines the evolution of ejido tenure in Mexico since the 1992 constitutional and legal reforms in that country. Prior to the Mexican Revolution, communal tenure had all but disappeared, but since 1920 community-based tenure re-emerged to become the dominant tenure form in Mexico. The paper investigates ejido land tenure through an examination of ejido governance structures and the tenure rules relating to the acquisition, transfer and extinction of land and resource rights. It draws on community-level research and numerous published case studies, relevant laws, and on data describing the status of ejidos countrywide. This reveals a diverse set of practices, which in many instances depart from the rules as defined in the Agrarian Law and even in internal community regulations. Land tenure plays a critical mediating role in the inter-relationship between humans and the environment. Using the framework of resilience I examine the persistence of ejido tenure and its dynamics in the aftermath of major land policy and legal reforms. Three major ‘shocks’ are identified which are seriously challenging the resilience of ejidos. These are the 1992 legal reforms, NAFTA and the resulting out-migration from rural Mexico, and urbanization. I conclude that ejidos have generally been resilient enough to accommodate the 1992 reforms, but problems with cross-generational transfers that stem in part from labor migration, and urbanization have set ejidos on a course that could ultimately overcome all but the most resilient communities.     

从现代产权制度着眼 深入推进国有林权改革

在论述国有林区建立现代产权制度重要意义的基础上,对伊春的林权制度改革目标和内容进行了阐述。认为伊春林区实行的以职工家庭对国有林地进行承包经营为主要内容的产权形式,是国有林区的一种优越的经济制度选择;其核心目标是在国有森林资源领域真正建立起归属清晰、责权明确、保护严格、流转顺畅的现代产权制度。