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Collection: Land Tenure and Property Rights
An Assessment of Property Rights in Kosovo
This report assesses how property rights are currently influencing conflict, investment, agriculture, and municipal governance in Kosovo. The report also identifies possible areas where USAID/Kosovo might provide technical assistance to draft laws, strengthen institutions, and/or resolve conflicts which will enhance household property security and business investment, improve economic growth, and lead to more effective local governance.
Better livelihoods for poor people: The Role of Land Policy
Land policy, land rights and land reform have a critical bearing on economic development and poverty reduction in both rural and urban areas of the developing world. But land issues are often complex and politically difficult. For this reason they may be neglected. This draft Issues Paper seeks to promote discussion about the importance of land in poverty reduction strategy processes, in different regions of the word and across different sectors. The draft has been prepared following a series of regional workshops on land policy sponsored by the World Bank, in which DFID participated, and takes account comments received through this process.
Collective Action and Property Rights for Sustainable Development
Millions of rural poor people in developing countries depend on natural resources—farmland and rangeland, fishing waters, forests—for their livelihoods. But whether they can use these resources sustainably to climb out of poverty often depends on the institutions that govern resource use—property rights and collective action. A multiplicity of property rights and collective action arrangements exist around the globe, and researchers have learned numerous lessons about what kinds of arrangements work best under what conditions. Making property rights and collective action work for the poor is not as simple as issuing new land titles or mindlessly applying standards that have worked elsewhere. Instead, it requires a detailed understanding of local resource conditions and social relationships, among other factors. This collection of briefs draws on a wide body of research conducted through the Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It describes the complex issues surrounding property rights and collective action that policymakers and development professionals must understand and address if they are to successfully promote sustainable and pro-poor management of natural resources. We are grateful to editors Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Monica Di Gregorio, as well as all of the contributors, for their insights on this crucial topic.
Ethiopia Land Policy and Administration Assessment
The assessment was created to assist USAID/Ethiopia in clarifying the technical elements and technical assistance needed to implement a program intervention aimed at increasing security of tenure and rights for land. The exercise analyzed land tenure security, land policy, land administration, land management, and related issues, including the transferability of land use rights and land certification programs as they impact food security and agricultural development in Ethiopia.
Final Research Report: An Overview of LLP's Research Activities
An overview of four Applied Research-Based Policy Development Projects conducted by East Timor’s Land Law Program (LLP). These activities were a joint endeavor among ARD, Inc., the East Timor Ministry of Justice, the East Timor Directorate of Land and Property (DNTP) and the National University (UNTL2). Specifically, these reports concerned (1) State Property Administration/Lease of Government and State Property, (2) Land Dispute Mediation, (3) Land Rights and Title Restitution, and (4) Foreign Owner Compliance with the Constitution.
From a Gender perspective: Notions of land tenure security in the Uluguru mountains, Tanzania
Land tenure within customary systems is dynamic and flexible. Whereas in the past communal forms of landholding dominated, individualisation of rights to land within customary systems has occurred for some time now. Privatisation however, i.e. the registration and titling of rights to certain plots of land is a more recent development, apart from freehold titles to land which were introduced during colonialism but intended only for a very limited part of society. Formal titling has long been regarded as the only way to ensure land tenure security to peasants (smallholders), thereby enabling modernisation of the agricultural sector. Experiences from countries such as Kenya showed that certain assumptions concerning the consequences of titling such as higher rates of investment and thus increased productivity do not hold true. (compare e.g. Hilhorst 2000, Yngstrom 2002, Jacobs 2002) Instead land concentration and landlessness have been on the increase and the practice of registering land in the name of the head of household, predominantly men, led to a further erosion of the generally marginal land rights women had held within the respective customary systems. By now even the World Bank acknowledged that private titling might, besides being too costly, not necessary as the customary system can work just as effectively. The Bank now favours to „increase security of property rights within given constraints.” (World Bank 2001:7) In the land laws that were newly created in quite a number of African countries during the 1990s, this realisation is however little reflected. And also its impact on the actual policies of the World Bank, an influential player in the creation of new land legislation, remains to be seen. In this paper notions of security in relation to access and/or ownership to land will be discussed in reference to Tanzania in general and the Uluguru mountains in Morogoro region more specifically. On the basis of more than 40 qualitative interviews some hypothesis will be formulated for discussion. The interviews were held in summer 2002 with women and men from a village, Ruvuma, and a rural part of Morogoro municipality, Nugutu. Both places are situated in the Uluguru Mountains to the south of Morogoro, the regional capital of Morogoro region. The names of all interview partners have been changed.
Land and Resource Rights, Participation, and Conservation of Nature in Southern Africa
This draft paper discusses the relationship between local tenure arrangements and the evolution of resource management institutions at community levels. Analysis of community participation processes focuses on their form and the extent of resource management and benefits sharing by assessing the distribution of benefits among households and the impact of CBNRM on resource management objectives.
Land Policy and Administration: Assessment of the Current Situation and Future Prospects in East Timor
This assessment was conducted to provide general recommendations to USAID for future action that should be considered to strengthen East Timor’s capacity for clarifying property rights and developing a transparent and effective land administrative system. The assessment was also to provide general recommendations to the Government of East Timor, particularly the Ministry of Justice for future interventions which it should consider in the development of its government programs.
Land Privatization and Land Titling in Afghanistan
This mid-term evaluation of the Land Titling and Economic Restructuring in Afghanistan (LTERA) Project, commissioned by USAID, assesses how successfully the contractor Deloite, Touche, Tohmatsu, Emerging Markets Group, LTD, and the subcontractor, Terra Institute, have performed in moving towards the goals of (1) Tenure Regularization; (2) Property Registration; (3) Cadastral Mapping/Parcel Indexing; (4) Land Law Development; and (5) Capacity Building.
Land Tenure and Property Rights Assessment for Angola
This report is an initial assessment of land tenure and property rights in Angola. It was intended to be used to further refine and test land tenure and property rights assessment tools. The assessment tools provide an in-depth rapid land tenure and property rights assessment that would identify and rank important land issues and provide the information needed to design useful interventions. The assessment and the related findings and recommendations are broken down into the following categories: (1) Conflicts and Instability; (2) Insecure Land and Property Rights; (3) Landlessness and Inequitable Land Distribution; (4) Poorly Performing Land Markets; and (5) Unsustainable Natural Resources Management. Each category includes a description of: (1) the team’s on-the-ground assessment; (2) current donor activities in the area; and (3) recommendations for USAID intervention.
Land Tenure and Property Rights, Volume 3: Country Ranking and Issues Maps
This document assists the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in identifying key land tenure and property rights issues and drawing attention to how these issues affect national and USAID development programming. This report describes the country ranking methodologies and important. It concludes with recommendations.
Power dynamics in CBNRM project impemantation
Article examines the power dynamics at play when a community based natural resource management project is at the implementation level, and hw sometimes unintended results may come about when community participation is ignored .
Response and Clarification to Comments of USAID/Afghanistan on the 16 February 2006 Evaluation Report of the Land Privatization and Land Titling in Afghanistan Project
This memo supplements changes to the February 16, 2006 report evaluating the Land Privatization and Land Titling Project in Afghanistan. It will also serve as the mechanism to advise on budget cuts for the final period of the project as requested by USAID/Afghanistan.
Study on Women and Property Rights: Project Best Practices
This study attempts to further the body of work on gender relations and land tenure and property rights (LTPR) by examining successful interventions that have improved and strengthened women’s access to and control over land. In this way, the study seeks to identify best practices and lessons learned with regard to integrating gender concerns and focus in relation to the five land issues identified in USAID’s LTPR framework, which are: conflict and/or instability that impact land rights, insecure tenure rights, landlessness and land redistribution, land markets and their influence on communal and individual ownership, and natural resources (pastures, wetlands, forests) management.
THE MAKULEKE LAND CLAIM: POWER RELATIONS AND COMMUNITY-BASED NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Article examines the power dynamics at play when a community-based natural resource management project is at the implementation level, and how sometimes unintended results may come about when community participation is ignored. The article also describes the results of land claims by the Makuleke community of the Northern Transvaal Province of South Africa.The land the Makuleke community was claiming had been forcibly taken away from them in 1969, and was incorporated into the Kruger National Park. The article looks at the complex relations resulting from the post-apartheid changes in land tenure policy and how negotiations between the community and national park authorities produced unexpected results.
Video Transcript: Diamonds, Development, and Property Rights 24 min
This 24 minute video details the problems faced by diamond miners working with alluvial diamonds in the Central African Republic, and the challenges of affirming property rights at the grass roots level. The video briefly summarizes the 8-step process PRADD developed to translate customary rights into statutory rights. The process combines community development techniques to identify, organize, and motivate miners with GPS devices to precisely locate the mining claims.
