Exploring the evolution of land tenure and land use change in Panama: Linking land policy with development outcomes

In this paper I discuss the linkages between land use management and land use change, as well as the impacts of land use policies at the local level. Specifically, I suggest the current land tenure regime in Panama is the outcome of a path-dependent process that includes a Spanish legacy of land tenure institutions and beliefs, a policy-making process that responds to immediate or short-term development outcomes, and the broader political economic context. First, I introduce theoretical perspectives on land policy and development. These are followed by a narrative of the evolution of land tenure in Panama, in the context of develoment processes and land policies in Latin America. In the final section, with the case of lifestyle migration to Bocas del Toro, Panama, I illustrate how the pathways between land management and land use, in the context of political economic development drivers and outcomes, have significant local outcomes.     

Evolution of land tenure institutions and development of agroforestry: evidence from customary land areas of Sumatra

It is widely believed that land tenure insecurity under a customary tenure system leads to a socially inefficient resource allocation. This article demonstrates that the practice of granting secure individual ownership to tree planters spurs earlier tree planting, which is inefficient from the private point of view but could be efficient from the viewpoint of the global environment. Regression analysis, based on primary data collected in Sumatra, indicates that an expected increase in tenure security in fact led to early tree planting. It is also found that customary land tenure institutions have been evolving towards greater tenure security responding to increasing scarcity of land.     

Dispossession by neglect: Agricultural land sales in Southern India

Active land markets in the periphery of Chennai have resulted in large tracts of agricultural land being bought by non‐agricultural actors seeking returns primarily from speculation. We argue in this paper that the financialization of land and consequent spurt of agricultural land sales are central to what scholars have termed land grab. Recent literature on land grabs has focused primarily on processes of accumulation by dispossession and the coercive role of the state. Our contention is that land grabs more commonly occur due to the state underinvesting in agriculture, resulting in “dispossession by neglect” of especially marginal and small farmers. Dispossession by neglect better captures the fluid boundary between the coercive and voluntary in contemporary land grabs.     

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.     

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.     

Land tenure and land reform: past and present

This article looks at land reform in history and compares it to the present. The primary concern is the relationship between land tenure and economic development, and land reform and the distribution of income, wealth and power. The main finding—that dispersed ownership and management correlate with economic development—is unsurprising. But it is more difficult to assess how conditions which are conducive to maximal production come about, or how a society shifts from concentrated power over land and labour to a dispersed tenure system.     

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.     

Tenure security,land registration and customary tenure in a peri-urban Accra community

The study examines the strategies that people use to secure their interests in land in a peri-urban Accra customary community. In a contested chieftaincy, customary leaders sell agricultural and virgin land to strangers for residential purposes, causing conflict and altering traditional livelihoods, and the proceeds of the sales do not flow to members of the lineage group. Violence and murder, involving land guards hired to defend different land claims or to drive farmers off their land, have occurred. The case confirms theory describing the behavioural patterns to be expected during major social change typically found in peri-urban areas when government is unable or unwilling to enforce the law. The flexible, negotiable rules characteristic of customary systems can be manipulated by individuals seeking power and control over land. Accepting that customary land administration is here to stay, the case supports the view that the customary system needs major reform to incorporate local-level checks and balances on land administration to make customary leaders accountable as fiduciaries. In terms of registration usage theory customary landholders in the study area saw title deeds as marginally useful in their agricultural lands but not in family compounds, whereas for strangers registration is essential.     

Effects of gender and length of land tenure on timber supply in Finland

This study investigated timber supply from Finnish non-industrial private forests (NIPF) using the consistent Tobit model and nationwide micropanel survey data on timber sales of 1299 forest owners during 2004–2008. The effects of forest owners’ gender and length of land tenure on timber supply were studied in particular. Women sold one cubic meter per hectare and per year (about 30%) less than men did. Female owners sold less frequently, but larger quantities at a time than did male owners. Short-tenure (<5 years) owners’ harvests were only affected by price, owner's age, income, timber stock and forest acreage. A group with relatively high harvest levels was young, low-income new forest owners.     

Assessing the relationship between land tenure issues and land cover changes around the Arabuko Sokoke Forest in Kenya

Land as an essential resource is becoming increasingly scarce due to population growth. In the case of the Kenyan coast, population pressure causes land cover changes in the Arabuko Sokoke Forest, which is an important habitat for endangered species. Forest and bushland have been changed to agricultural land in order to provide livelihood for the rural population who are highly dependent on small-scale farming. Unclear land rights and misbalanced access to land cause uncontrolled expansion and insecure livelihoods. Secure land rights are crucial to improve living conditions for the local smallholders. Socio-economic and land tenure conditions were assessed in a study area close to Malindi in south-east Kenya to understand the human-induced changes in land cover. A combination between biophysical and socio-economic methods was used to identify the relationship between land cover change, land tenure and other socio-economic factors. Analyses in Geographic Information System (GIS) were chosen to examine in historical photographs and recent satellite imagery land cover changes between 1954 and 2017. This analysis was combined with quantitative questionnaires conducted on-site in 2017 and 2018 to identify factors influencing the land cover changes and especially to analyze the effects of land tenure on sustainable land use to reduce further land conversion. Moreover, this study statistically investigated the impact of land tenure issues on the tree population of the respective land plots using non-parametric tests as well as dependency analyses. We found significant relationships between the income of the interviewees and the tree population on land plots. It also appears that the fragmentation of land cover on a plot differs between respondents who have inherited their land and respondents who have purchased their land.     

From male to joint land ownership: Women's experiences of the land tenure reform programme in Rwanda

During the post‐genocide period, the Government of Rwanda embarked on a land tenure reform programme that culminated in a land registration and titling process in 2009. This paper intends to capture women's experiences in relation to this programme. The empirical data were collected in Musanze District using a household survey, semi‐structured interviews, and focus group discussions. The main findings reveal that there is support of the general idea that women should benefit from the land tenure reform in Rwanda. However, there is some criticism towards parts of the land laws, and women have limited actual knowledge about land‐related laws. With land titles, women mostly have a say on the land use decisions requiring each of the spounses' legal consents but not on the daily management of land and its produce. Finally, the paper reports the persistence of social norms and culturally biased gender ideologies affecting the effective implementation of land‐related laws and policies. Therefore, the paper underscores the need to build the implementation of new laws and policies on a good understanding of customary practices to strengthen women's land rights in Rwanda.     

Deforestation and land tenure in Mexico: A response to Bonilla-Moheno et al.

Bonilla-Moheno et al. published an interesting paper on land tenure as a determinant of deforestation in Mexico, in Land Use Policy in 2013. In this review, we focus critically on the methodology used by the authors to reach two key conclusions. Firstly, we suggest that their use of coarse resolution MODIS EVI data to assess deforestation rates may have resulted in an erroneous conclusion, that forest area in Mexico is increasing rather than decreasing. This finding is contrary to official data and to other recent scientific assessments. Secondly, we question their conclusion that territories under the tenure of ‘comunidades indigenas’ are less likely to experience deforestation, and more likely to experience expansion of forest area, than those under ‘ejidal’ tenure. We believe that the sampling method, which involved the selection of municipalities with high concentrations of one particular type of tenure, and which eliminated the 60% of municipalities which contain mixed forms of tenure, biased the sample, particularly for the case of comunidades. The comunidades included in the sample are almost all found in a single region of the country, which may represent a special case. In reality comunidades are much more widespread through the country. Moreover we find that the explanation given by the authors for the relative success of comunidades in conserving their forests is not founded in data from any study of process at the local level.     

Are urban land tenure regulations in Namibia the solution or the problem?

Land tenure in Namibia is regulated by a variety of Acts, some of which date back to as far as 1937, and some of which are yet to be approved by Cabinet. This variety of Acts makes it difficult to evaluate the performance of land administration as a whole, and the appropriateness of coercive instruments with regards to urban land tenure in particular. In this article we evaluate how urban land tenure regularization practices are conducted in Namibia, and to compare new formal procedures, designed to address problems of efficiency and efficacy, to older existing procedures, supposedly not efficient or effective. This evaluation uses a theoretical framework of Pritchett and Woolcock [Pritchett, L., Woolcock, M., 2004. Solutions when the solution is the problem: arraying the disarray in development. World Development 32 (2), 191–212], which deals with public service delivery and transaction-intensive services. Applying this framework for a comparative analysis of 5 different land subdivision practices – each relying on a different land-related act – we conclude that the degree of regulation and regularization is perhaps not so much a solution for urban land tenure problems but more of a problem in itself.     

Agricultural land use in Asian cities

This article argues that urban agriculture must play a major part in feeding the ever-growing populations of Asian cities. In China, Hong Kong and Singapore there has been large-scale and systematic planning for food production within the urban area; consequently Shanghai, for example, is self-sufficient in vegetables and most grains, and produces significant proportions of its pork, poultry and other foods. Unfortunately, in most other countries food production is relegated to the countryside. There is an urgent need to overcome the practical and psychological obstacles to promoting urban agriculture.     

An innovative means of urban land development: A case study of Trichur in India

Summary

For more than seven decades, several Indian states have used the plot reconstitution technique in managing urban land development. Recently, Kerala, a small southern state, has experimented with this technique for the first time in a scheme in Trichur. The Trichur experience is unique in that it incorporates significant innovations over a somewhat similar method of land readjustment which is widely practiced in the Asian‐Pacific region. Formulated for complete cost‐recovery, the Trichur project incorporates the active cooperation of the landowners and officials, and is a time‐bound programme to complete all land development and building construction works within six years of the finalization of the scheme proposals.

This paper attempts to explore the use of this innovative means of land development in Trichur with a view to assessing the potentiality and constraints in its use, and identifying critical areas where further refinements would be desirable. Based on fieldwork in the state and intensive interviews, the paper finds the Trichur experience to be of great importance as a viable strategy of urban land development and management. The paper concludes with some recommendations on legal and institutional aspects, and stresses the need for refinements in the scheme preparation and information dissemination for transferability and wider application of the technique.     

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.     

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.     

Drivers of perceived land tenure (in)security: Empirical evidence from Ghana

Tenure security is believed to be critical in spurring agricultural investment and productivity. Yet what improves or impedes tenure security is still poorly understood. Using household- and plot-level data from Ghana, this study analyses the main factors associated with farmers’ perceived tenure security. Individually, farmers perceive greater tenure security on plots acquired via inheritance than on land allocated by traditional authorities. Collectively, however, perceived tenure security lessens in communities with more active land markets and economic vibrancy. Plots held by migrant households and women in polygamous households are perceived as less tenure secure, while farmers with political connections are more confident about their tenure security.     

To reallocate or not: Reconsidering the dilemma in China's agricultural land tenure policy

In China, rural land is collectively owned at the village level. Village officials usually have the power to reallocate land property across families on an ongoing basis due to demographic changes in the village. Realizing that frequent land reallocation and abusive land requisition will undermine economic productivity as well as social stability, the “Rural Land Contract Law” passed in 2002 explicitly reads that farmland tenure security must be maintained for at least 30 years since the last nationwide reallocation in 1998. The frequency and magnitude of land reallocation in Chinese villages have decreased as a result. However, failure to allocate land to the newly increased population often induced conflicts among village members if the security of land tenure for 30 years was strictly implemented. Administrative land reallocations then still continued in some villages to accommodate demographic changes in these places. Based on an almost nationally representative rural dataset collected in 119 villages of 6 provinces across China in 2008, this paper lays out some stylized facts about the administrative land reallocation after 1998. By analyzing the opinions of over 2200 farmers on the central policy of maintaining farmland tenure security, we are able to rationalize why some farmers support the policy while others oppose it. This analysis helps us to better understand the dilemma between efficiency and equity embedded in the current agricultural land system in China. It is further shown that social conflicts among village members may easily arise either due to administrative land reallocation or due to lack of it. We argue that this dilemma cannot be resolved effectively without coordinated reforms in household registration system which can help hundreds of millions of Chinese rural migrant workers to permanently settle in cities and release their farmland to those who stay in the countryside.