New publications on land tenure

State and public land tenure arrangements define rules for the distribution, use and protection of publicly vested lands. Authorities or customary owners may act as custodians of common property resources or of environmentally or culturally sensitive sites on behalf of society. Despite the growing recognition of the importance of state lands and their proper management, public land and property assets are generally weakly managed. Considered as “free” and available, state lands are commonly encroached upon, over utilized and inappropriately acquired. Undefined tenure arrangements and poor recording of land rights contribute to the ineffective management of public lands, providing fertile ground for corrupt practices. There are no simple solutions for improvement. However, progress has been made by improving transparency, consistency, impartiality and equity in land administration institutions and by enhancing their technical competences and clarifying their management objectives, i.e. by improving the governance of state and public lands.

Land Tenure Working Paper 14. Growing land scarcity and concern about land-related conflicts and rising levels of rural impoverishment have brought land to the fore once more. The main difference with the recent past is the wide spectrum of actors who want to take part in the elaboration of the land policies, as well as the more and more recognized need to root the proposals in the particular context of each specific country. The paper, focused on African experiences, starts by discussing the importance of Land Policy Issues at Regional Level. It reviews the evolution in thinking regarding land policy ending up with the identification of the critical issues being faced by Africa today whilst remembering the role that FAO can play in promoting a sound partnership between governments and their citizens in the twenty-first century. The core of the document is represented by three different case studies (Sudan, Burkina-Faso and Mozambique) which serve to draw some lessons which can be applied for future interventions in similar contexts. In particular the diversity of policy objectives and the need to embed policy development in other processes are analyzed. The land question in post-conflict situations is also treated in detail as well as how to secure land rights in both customary and statutory regimes. Specific attention is given to the rights of women, which is becoming anincreasingly important issue in Africa and not only there, and specific lessons in land conflict management.

Land Tenure Working Paper 13. Secure land rights are crucial if local populations are to engage actively as stakeholders in rural development. The task of identifying and protecting local rights in most African countries faces several major challenges like incorporating many different local land management systems within a single land management framework; devising a system that can adequately record dynamic and shifting patterns of land use that incorporate a range of de facto private, individualised customary rights and areas of common use and, finally, coming up with a technical approach that is cost effective yet still accurate enough to establish borders and other features on official maps. In this context conventional western concepts of discrete, fixed land holding units – ‘the farm’ - are entirely inappropriate. They work for the relatively small number of private investor land holdings, but are of little use for registering customary rights rooted in shifting agriculture systems and the use of a wide range of resources through the year. The community delimitation model which is the subject of this volume has grown out of the experience of Mozambique and its widely acclaimed 1997 Land Law. The policy and legal development process has been supported by FAO from its inception in the pre-policy research stage, through to policy and legal development, and now implementation. It offers an excellent example of how to create the policy and legal environment within which effective rights delimitation can take place.

Land Tenure Working Paper 12. The Participatory and Negotiated Territorial Development (PNTD) methodology is a facilitative process developed by FAO that strives for rural development through negotiation, participation and dialogue. In view of the growing competition over limited resources among actors and territories and the decreasing credibility of public administrations, this approach focuses on establishing and maintaining social dialogue within the territory and restructuring and/or strengthening territorial institutions. Intermediary level institutions have an important role in integrating the territory and its actors in the existing governance framework. The ultimate goal, and thus the emphasis of the approach, is not the preparation of a development plan or a territorial pact in itself, but, rather, facilitating the process and dynamics that lead to such agreements. In this respect, consultation and openness towards a social dialogue between different stakeholders who have differing interests represent a fundamental step in the process. The proposed approach assumes an inherent learning process with the objective of increasing social cohesion, strengthening the bargaining power of the marginalized, increasing people’s and institutions’ organizational capacities and improving their access to information and channels of communication, and their abilities to use these for their own development.

A joint IIED- FAO- IFAD publication. The first detailed study of large scale land acquisitions in Africa analyses the modalities and likely impacts. The study highlights the possible opportunities (investments, rising agricultural productivity and rural incomes), if things are managed well and warns about the risks (uncompensated loss of land rights for the rural poor) if contracts are not properly negotiated and enforced. It makes recommendations to the main stakeholders to make this new trend useful for food security and rural development.