Customary land allocation,urbanization and land use planning in Ghana: Implications for food systems in the Wa Municipality

Food insecurity remains persistent in the Global South due to constraints in food production capacities and intricate land tenure systems that stifle investment in agriculture. In the urbanized regions, uncontrolled urbanization and non-compliant land use systems have further worsened the potentials for urban food production. This research is based on a case study of the Wa Municipality in order to assess the influences of customary land allocation and peri-urbanization on land use planning and foods systems in Ghana using explorative and narrative research approaches. The study identified that customary stakeholders responsible for allocating such lands in the Wa Municipality were indiscriminately converting large tracts of hitherto agricultural lands to urban land uses. Statutorily prepared land use plans are hardly enforced and the planning priorities are on residential and commercial land uses that command higher land values to the detriment of agricultural lands. Weak institutional linkages also characterize the mandated planning and land administration institutions, with a planning system that is reactive rather than proactive in addressing development control challenges across the country. There is the need for planning authorities to adopt participatory land uses planning together with customary landholders and educating them on the essence of comprehensive land use planning approaches. Based on the findings, local governments need to partner landowners to identify and reserve high potential agricultural land for sustainable urban food production.     

Land use controls and residential land values in the Offinso South municipality,Ghana

Land use controls may have positive, negative or neutral impact on urban land values. The Offinso South Municipality (OSM) employs conventional zoning in its land management practices. This article investigates the land use control regime in and its impact on land values and the living standards of residents of the municipality. Empirical data were obtained from physical developers in the municipality via self-administered questionnaire. It also collected data from occupiers of amenity lands via guided interviews. It finds that there exist large scale violations of planning controls in the municipality. It also finds that amenity lands are generally encroached upon sometimes with connivance of officials from the planning outfit. It suggests that the planning authority should dialogue with developers to ensure voluntary compliance. The planning authority should also build its capacity to enforce its land use plan.     

Registration of private interests in land in a community lands policy setting: An exploratory study in Meru district,Tanzania

Current Tanzanian land law offers registration of private interests in land in the form of Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) within a broader community lands approach. We conducted qualitative research on the issuance of CCROs along a mountain slope transect in Meru district in northeast Tanzania. This area features intensified smallholder agriculture that evolutionary theory suggests is well adapted for registration of private interests in land. It also features strong customary authorities of the sort that legal pluralism theory suggests may lead to property relations that are not singular and evolving but multiple and co-existing. We found that tenure was highly individualized and local demand for CCROs was expressed in a context of both agricultural intensification and nascent urbanisation. Nevertheless, due to high cost and coordination constraints, this demand did not deliver widespread registration. While CCROs were perceived as useful to resolve land conflicts and put up as collateral for loans, they were not essential as a variety of alternative approaches were in place. In this forum shopping, plurality was not in itself a problem and individuals increasingly chose quasi-formal paper authorisations over customary rituals. Based on our findings, we recommend that land administration systems more explicitly build on existing quasi-formal practice, and that community lands approaches include a diversity of national programmes tailored to different local community circumstances.     

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.     

Market-based grazing land transfers and customary institutions in the management of rangelands: Two case studies on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Beginning in the early 1990’s, grazing lands once held in common were contracted to individual households in the rangeland regions of China. The resulting fragmentation of rangelands has led to ecological and social problems. As China seeks to address intractable poverty and rangeland degradation, attention has turned to rental, or transfer, of contracted grazing land as a market-based approach to re-aggregating grazing land into larger units that support economies of scale. However, given that many pastoral regions still maintain community customary institutions, what the relationship between market mechanisms and local customary institutions should be in rangeland management needs further analysis. This paper applies comparative case studies of two types of relationships between market mechanisms and customary institutions: (1) market mechanisms that replace customary institutions in the case of Axi village, and (2) market mechanisms that are embedded within customary institutions in Xiareer village. This allows contrast of the impacts of differing approaches on livelihoods, livestock production, and wealth differentiation among pastoral households. We found that there is a higher level of livestock mortality, lower livestock productivity, and higher livestock production cost in Axi Village compared to Xiareer Village. In addition, household asset levels are higher and there is less income differentiation in Xiareer Village. It is concluded that embedding market mechanisms within customary institutions has had notable benefits for the herders of Xiareer Village, because it is a better fit to the coupled pastoral social-ecological system. Based on these findings, we argue that in pastoral communities where the rangeland transfer system for contracted grazing land has not yet been implemented, it is critical to reconsider China’s current policy approach to pay greater attention to the innovative management systems being developed in local regions. Instead of considering market-based approaches as oppositional to traditional institutions, options that derive from the interaction of market-based and customary institutions should be considered.     

城镇化中集约用地的影响因素研究

从国家(地区)层面研究城镇化集约用地,不同于单个城市,更不同于单宗土地的集约利用,其影响因素发生根本变化。国家城镇化集约用地,是在一定的城镇化目标下,以每个城市的集约用地为基础,并通过科学合理配置建设用地资源,实现社会综合收益和长远利益最大化的过程。其影响因素包括国家城镇化战略、城市(镇)的具体规划和国家土地制度三个根本方面。我国应借鉴世界城镇化发展的基本经验,重视不均衡发展规律的应用,在提高城镇总体发展效率的基础上,为推进城镇化集约用地创造基本的政策平台。     

Natural Resource Contests and Precolonial Institutions in Papua New Guinea

This paper investigates the role that precolonial institutions play in relation to postcolonial natural resource ownership contests. Papua New Guinea provides a unique case study, as it is recorded as having the most decentralized precolonial political institutions of any postcolonial state. After an examination of its precolonial institutions, colonial land policy and three case studies, it is concluded that persistent highly decentralized customary political units, coupled with customary notions of inalienability of land and overlaid with a state property rights regime, lead to resource contests. It is concluded that resource ownership contests can have serious adverse consequences for resource management and that they are not easily overcome.     

提高国土资源管理水平强化宏观经济调控职能

文章指出,国土资源是经济社会发展和全面建设小康社会的重要物质基础,既是宏观调控的对象,更是宏观调控的重要手段。文章进而提出,在全面建设小康社会和实现工业化的进程中,正确处理经济发展与资源保护的关系;以供给为手段,发挥国土资源的宏观调控作用,促进经济社会全面协调发展;加强国土资源管理,提高国土资源有效、可持续供应能力,为发挥国土资源的宏观调控作用奠定基础等项措施建议。     

农民失地的原因分析及对策

农民失地又失业是影响农业发展、农村稳定的重大问题 ,农民失地的原因在于工业化、城市化的发展扩大非农用地 ;各类开发园区过多过滥侵吞土地 ;土地流转行政管理缺位和执法不严流失土地 ;工商企业和专业大户进入农业领域导致农民间接失地 ;征而不用浪费土地。为解决农民失地问题 ,文章提出了加大执法力度、健全土地管理法律制度、完善再就业培训机制、建立健全农民社会保障制度、加快户籍制度改革等措施建议 ,以使失地农民失有所得 ,失而情愿 ,失而有保障。     

论宅基地使用权的空间权塑造

研究目的：通过对宅基地使用权立法历程进行溯源性研究,以及国外相关立法例比较研究,厘清宅基地使用权发展路径,结合现实需要,对宅基地使用权未来塑造指明方向。研究方法：系统分析法、比较分析法。研究结果：对宅基地使用权进行空间权塑造实有必要,这将十分有利于中国的城镇化进程,是破解宅基地使用权“流转”谜题和释放大量农村建设用地存量资产的钥匙。研究结论：应结合社会现实和立法发展方向,进行宅基地使用权空间权塑造。     

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.     

Organizing anarchy: The food security–biodiversity–climate crisis and the genesis of rural land use planning in the developing world

Shortfalls in global food production, coupled with the growing visibility of climate change's disruptive effects, have underlined for many observers the importance of devoting rural lands to their ‘optimal’ use, where they can make maximal contributions to the global imperatives of feeding the human population and maintaining vital environmental services. In this context observers have endorsed rural land use planning as a way to insure that, at least in theory, lands get devoted to their best uses. In practice, land use planning in the developing world has resembled ‘organized anarchy’. Small landholders with insecure land tenure, overseas investors seeking large land deals, NGOs representing indigenous peoples, government officials, and staff from international environmental NGOs and multilateral organizations have come together in strategic action fields to struggle over and sometimes negotiate land use plans for contested landscapes. These plans represent a strategic, spatially explicit response to the climate change–biodiversity–food security crisis.     

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.     

北京农村居民点用地存在问题及其调整措施

分析了北京农村居民点用地存在的主要问题,提出了北京农村居民点用地调整的因地制宜原则、可持续性原则、便利性原则、集约性与适度规模性原则：提出了用地调整的措施：规划先行,综合考虑,合理布局;分类区别;分期分步实施;积极发展生态型村庄。     

Fenced in: Common property struggles in the management of communal rangelands in central Eastern Cape Province,South Africa

This paper takes as its starting point the assertion that current rangeland management in the central Eastern Cape Province (former Ciskei) of South Africa, is characterised primarily by an ‘open-access’ approach. Empirical material drawn from three case-study communities in the region is used to examine the main barriers to management of rangeland as a ‘commons’. The general inability to define and enforce rights to particular grazing resources in the face of competing claims from ‘outsiders’, as well as inadequate local institutions responsible for rangeland management are highlighted as being of key importance. These are often exacerbated by lack of available grazing land, diffuse user groups and local political and ethnic divisions. Many of these problems have a strong legacy in historical apartheid policies such as forced resettlement and betterment planning.     

河池市建设用地变化及其社会驱动力分析

近几年来,随着河池市社会经济稳步发展,耕地减少、建设用地增加,人地矛盾日益突出.采用河池市2001～2007年土地利用变更统计数据,对河池市建设用地变化进行分析,运用SPSS软件主成分分析法探讨建设用地增长的社会驱动力.结果表明:河池市建设用地总体上逐年上升,其中交通运输用地增长最快,水利设施次之,居民点及工矿用地增长...     

北京农村居民点用地存在问题及其调整原则与方法措施

分析了北京农村居民点用地存在的主要问题,提出了北京农村居民点用地调整的四个原则:因地制宜原则;可持续性原则;便利性原则;集约性与适度规模性原则。并在此基础上提出了用地调整的方法措施:规划先行;综合考虑,合理布局;分类区别;分期分步实施;积极发展生态型村庄。     

The role of planning in achieving indigenous land justice and community goals

This paper suggests that the capacity of indigenous groups to engage effectively in a range of planning activities is crucial to achieving land justice and community goals. This argument is relevant in the face of long-standing tensions between indigenous peoples residing in post-settler societies and nation-states such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand over questions of land and natural resource use. The paper argues that effective planning is crucial for (i) protecting indigenous interests by engaging the planning activities of the state, (ii) the successful acquisition of lands through legal land claim processes, and (iii) helping indigenous communities achieve their goals by implementing effective community-based planning processes.     

Integrating decentralised land administration systems with traditional land governance institutions in Ghana: Policy and praxis

The aim of the Land Administration Project (LAP) policy reform for supporting the establishment of the Customary Land Secretariats (CLSs) is to formalise and strengthen customary land administration and management within the context of decentralised land administration. With the prospects of the CLSs becoming the legal local land administrative units, the paper assessed how traditional land governance institutions may have contributed to the decentralisation of land administration in Ghana. The research used case study strategy within the qualitative research paradigm and un-structured questionnaires were used to collect data. The analyses show that, simple land registries exist with traditional local governance institutions through the CLSs. The maintenance and effectiveness of this however depends on continuous improvement of records keeping, quality of office personnel and suitable office accommodation. This should be devoid of local power struggles among current and successive chiefs. Also, collaboration with public land sector agencies especially in areas of sharing information on rights, uses, disputes and preparation of planning layouts is paramount. These registries are mere extension of the state land administration apparatus as service units under the deconcentration of land administration powers. The paper concludes that the current policy focus on strengthening decentralised land administration through the CLSs may fail if attention is not given to the maintenance of the local registries. Revenue generation capacities of the CLSs need to be enhanced in order for them to recruit and maintain quality office staff, and acquire technical logistics. Decentralising land administration to the CLSs under the deconcentration of powers should be maintained in the interim because of the teething problems identified with this current system.