Land Management Institutions Research Articles

Impact of land tenure security through customary law on agricultural productivity in Burkina Faso: Propensity score matching approaches

Land tenure security plays an important role in agricultural production systems. The objective of this paper is to empirically assess the impact of land tenure security through customary law on agricultural productivity in Burkina Faso. We use panel data from 15,627 agricultural households over the period 2019–2021. Four propensity score matching methods are used: the nearest neighbor method, the stratification method, the radius method and the kernel method. The instrumental variables technique was used to control for endogeneity. Overall, the results indicate that household land security improves agricultural productivity. The minimum gain in agricultural productivity is estimated to be USD 86.4 per agricultural asset per season for households with customary land tenure. In terms of economic policy implications, the results call on the authorities in charge of conducting agricultural policies to promote comprehensive land policies by adapting them to local contexts through the recognition of customary institutions for rural land management.

Urban land use eco-efficiency and improvement in the western region of China

This paper quantifies urban land use eco-efficiency (ULUEE) and explores its improvement in the context of western China. We propose a hybrid model that includes the Super-slack-based measure model (Super-SBM) and a varying co-efficient panel model using data from 11 provincial cities in the western regions of China from 2000 to 2018. The results show that overall ULUEE, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency were ecologically inefficient. Meanwhile, ULUEE differences between cities mainly reflect different levels of pure technical efficiency. Further, the linkage between urban population density and ULUEE can be expressed in inverted-U and U-shape curves, and most cities' industrial development positively affects ULUEE, while most cities’ fixed asset investments negatively affect ULUEE. Moreover, land management institutions (LMIs) play a moderator role, shaping the main impacts of industrial development on ULUEE. Therefore, the findings suggest that improving ULUEE in the western region of China should focus on attracting inflows of highly skilled people, optimizing resource allocation, and guiding/regulating local government actions.

Комплексная организация намывных территорий в Санкт-Петербурге

The features of the creation artificial land plots are indicated by legislation in the field of urban planning and cadastre in the Russian Federation at the present stage. However, in the Earth sciences there are no methodological provisions for the integrated organization of alluvial territories. Based on the legal activities and works of scientists on the designated research topic, the authors proposed an approach and a scheme for the integrated organization of alluvial territories. This scheme ensures the integration of urban planning, land management and cadastre institutions. According to the authors, the creation of artificial land plots on a water body should be based on an assessment of the rationality for creating such a plot using multicriteria analysis, which includes three groups of criteria: social, economic, environmental. In addition, the article tests the author's methodological approach to the integrated organization of alluvial territories in St. Petersburg. According to the results of testing, two projects ("New Coast", "Bay of Islands") were recognized as irrational. Thus, it is necessary to approve an integrated approach for the organization of alluvial territories.

Integrated management of water and land resources of the Kyrgyz Republic and characteristics of their use at the present stage

This article discusses topical issues of the current state of water and land resources of the republic and their integrated management. They are one of the main natural resources that ensure the sustainable development of agricultural production and environmental safety in general. At the same time, they have their own characteristics in organizing the rational use and protection of resources. The main feature is that land and water function as single interdependent means of production in the agricultural production process in the foothill and highland relief of Kyrgyzstan. In this regard, the considered issues require a more detailed study and a scientific approach. The country is in dire need of modernization of land and water management. It is necessary to change toward culture and philosophy of attitude to land, to strengthen local land management institutions, complete the formation of the land market, and to treat water resources with care and rationality.

Place in legal geography: Agency and application in agriculture research

AbstractSystemic failure of our land management, legal, and regulatory institutions is revealed by the serious and adverse social and environmental impacts of land use practices in private agriculture, evident in severe land and water degradation, precipitous decline in biodiversity, and reduced resilience to natural hazards and climate change. The efficacy of the standard treatment of environmental law and regulation is often hampered by the cultural and legal priority of property rights. We take a different approach, using legal geography to refocus attention on the salience and agency of place and responses to degradation, such as conservation farming and regenerative agriculture, which are reforming dominant land management cultures and institutions from within. By recognising the role of place in leading geographically responsive land use decision‐making and more sustainable, resilient, and productive agricultural practices, an alternative model of private land ownership may be possible, as well as greater environmental sustainability. For researchers, our approaches too must be sensitive and responsive to place agency and our methodologies must evolve to acknowledge the agency of place. Place agency in legal geography has great potential for application in reforming suboptimal industrial agricultural practices and legal models of property ownership, and also for revitalising our scholarship.

Agricultural land tenure system in Iran: An overview

Increased demand for fertile lands has resulted from the exponential growth of the world's population in the twenty-first century. This mechanism results in widespread land tenure adjustments in a specific arrangement of rights, partnerships, and structures, which is in direct opposition to the existence of land as a small and necessary asset. While several attempts have been made to clarify land tenure conflicts, and scholars have studied them from different perspectives, there is still a significant gap in our knowledge of land tenure-related conflicts in the agricultural system and their production. As a result, this paper examined 85 pieces of literature (from 2013 to 2021) on the impact of land registration on the link between land tenure and agricultural productivity in Iran and throughout the world. Land tenure arrangements in Iran are evolving as a result of land demand and improvements in agricultural techniques, according to the results. Furthermore, each land tenure scheme can include a variety of land types, each with its own set of rules and patterns for use. The findings showed that further research with a combined locally-set methodology is required to better understand any relationship(s) between land tenure system (LTS) and agricultural production (AP), in addition to highlighting the value of land knowledge updating and the efficiency of local land management institutions. This study concluded that explaining land-related conflicts, mechanisms of power, and legal actions are important steps toward guiding the consequences of the growth of agricultural LTS in Iran, which leads to effective solutions at the area level.

Effects of the Systematic Cluster Approach (SCA) and Rural Land Plans (RLPs) on Land Tenure Security for Agricultural Household: Insight from Benin (West Africa)

Rural land plans (RLP) and the systematic cluster approach (SCA) are the two main approaches used in Benin to secure rural land tenure. However, the contributions of these approaches to land tenure security in rural communities are mixed. This paper firstly identifies the main factors to be considered in conceptualizing rural land tenure security and secondly assesses the contributions of the two approaches in achieving rural land tenure security. The study is conducted in four communes of Borgou (a district in North Benin) that have benefited from both approaches to land tenure security. The dimensions of land tenure security were identified during focus group discussions and unstructured interviews with key informants. The contribution of the approaches is assessed using individual surveys from 742 beneficiaries of the approaches randomly selected, based on actors’ perceptions measured on the Likert scale. The nonparametric Friedman test was used to determine the average rank of each factor according to the RLP or SCA context. As a result, land tenure security must integrate nine factors, leading to two forms of land tenure security. Legal and institutional security includes land tenure norms, property rights, local land management institutions, and the land information system. Socioenvironmental security involves access and use rights, social peace, gender mainstreaming, and land conservation. According to stakeholders’ perceptions, RLPs mainly lead to legal-institutional security, whereas SCA combines and contributes to both forms of land tenure security. Rural smallholders will enjoy high levels of land security when these elements are in dynamic balance.

In between rights and power: Women’s land rights and the gendered politics of land ownership, use, and management in Mexican ejidos

• Analysis of the assertion of previously secured women’s land rights and the effects on empowerment. • Study in two Mexican ejidos reveals that women struggle to translate legal land rights into practical land ownership, use, and control. • Local social norms and everyday gendered politics marginalize women from ejido community land governance and household level resource management. • Cases of women’s leadership indicate potential to build critical mass for collective women’s political participation and land control. • Case study from Mexico addresses an over-representation of studies on women’s land rights based on cases from Africa. We explore how gender relations structure the assertion of formal women’s land rights (WLRs), highlighting community-level land governance dynamics under individual and collective tenure arrangements. Contrary to a predominant focus on legal reforms, we document the everyday gendered politics in two Mexican ejidos – a globally renowned land tenure regime, which unifies customary and statutory systems and legally affords women and men equal rights as landowners, land users, and decision-makers. Findings explain when, how, and why female landowners practice their rights and exercise their political powers over their land. Women struggle to translate legal land rights into practical land use and control due to masculinized ejido land management; women continue to be marginalized from masculinist spaces of ejido governance and collective decision-making scenarios. Yet increasing cases of women’s leadership in local land management institutions indicates the potential to build critical mass for collective participation in land politics. We encourage further attention to these issues so that the legal attainment of WLRs might be reinforced by more equitable distributions of decision-making, power, and land control. Our contribution addresses a lack of attention to the gendered politics of land control after WLRs have been legally formalized.

Deriving scalable measures for restoration of communal grazing lands

Participatory action research in communal grazing lands can inform end users on cost-effective methods for restoring land to improve local livelihoods and environmental quality in terms of reduced degradation and enhanced ecosystem services. A multi-stakeholder process involving producers, development practitioners, and researchers is demonstrated for conducting action research to restore degraded communal grazing lands in East Africa. Producer-managed trials provided actionable evidence on brief resting durations and reseeding in pastoral rangelands in Kenya, and on improved forages and weeding in grazing exclosures in the Ethiopian highlands. The usefulness of this evidence is demonstrated through quantitative data and stated or revealed preferences of livestock producers. Local land management institutions and government and civil society practitioners confirmed the utility of the results to land management practice and policy, while spontaneous local up-scaling of improved forages in exclosures affirmed their scalability. These results are attributable to elements of the action research process, including prioritization of practical producer needs, close involvement of local institutions able to take action, collaborative design of producer-managed trials, and generation of evidence applicable in scaling. Among the restoration options tested, those more successful in trials and preferred by producers tended to have moderate (or low) costs, complexity, time to returns, and risk, suggesting possible optimization of trade-offs among options, such as between the potential performance of an option and its risk. Robust options that balance consistency with effectiveness may be good candidates for scaling. In communal grazing lands facing varied constraints to restoration, using research methodology responsive to institutional stakeholders at and above local level is an effective strategy for deriving scalable restoration approaches for win-win gains in livelihoods and the environment.

Community-Based Importance and Quantification of Ecosystem Services, Disservices, Drivers, and Neotropical Dry Forests in a Rural Colombian Municipality

Few studies analyze people’s preferences for ecosystem services (ES), disservices (ED) and drivers of change in less populated, tropical municipalities. Understanding such preferences and needs by the community and stakeholder groups before actually assessing, modelling, and measuring the supply of ES is key for decision-making and planning in municipalities, as well as for the conservation of nearby neotropical dry forests. We studied these dynamics in a small rural municipality in Colombia with limited data availability using semi-structured interviews and surveys, as well as ES-proxies and geospatial analyses. We then analyzed the supply and importance of two community identified ES and one ED from adjacent neotropical dry forests during 2005–2017. We found that respondents recognized air purification and food production as the most important ES. Increased temperatures and fires were the most important ED, while fires were also identified as an important driver of change. Air purification, via pollutant deposition to forest cover, remained approximately constant (116 ton/year), while food production (49 ton/ha) and fire occurrence, an ED, increased. Findings show how transdisciplinary research and participatory knowledge co-production among local communities, researchers and land management institutions can improve governance, decision making, policy uptake and planning efforts.

Global application of an unoccupied aerial vehicle photogrammetry protocol for predicting aboveground biomass in non-forest ecosystems.

Non‐forest ecosystems, dominated by shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants, provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and forage for grazing, and are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Yet these ecosystems are poorly represented in remotely sensed biomass products and are undersampled by in situ monitoring. Current global change threats emphasize the need for new tools to capture biomass change in non‐forest ecosystems at appropriate scales. Here we developed and deployed a new protocol for photogrammetric height using unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) images to test its capability for delivering standardized measurements of biomass across a globally distributed field experiment. We assessed whether canopy height inferred from UAV photogrammetry allows the prediction of aboveground biomass (AGB) across low‐stature plant species by conducting 38 photogrammetric surveys over 741 harvested plots to sample 50 species. We found mean canopy height was strongly predictive of AGB across species, with a median adjusted R 2 of 0.87 (ranging from 0.46 to 0.99) and median prediction error from leave‐one‐out cross‐validation of 3.9%. Biomass per‐unit‐of‐height was similar within but different among, plant functional types. We found that photogrammetric reconstructions of canopy height were sensitive to wind speed but not sun elevation during surveys. We demonstrated that our photogrammetric approach produced generalizable measurements across growth forms and environmental settings and yielded accuracies as good as those obtained from in situ approaches. We demonstrate that using a standardized approach for UAV photogrammetry can deliver accurate AGB estimates across a wide range of dynamic and heterogeneous ecosystems. Many academic and land management institutions have the technical capacity to deploy these approaches over extents of 1–10 ha−1. Photogrammetric approaches could provide much‐needed information required to calibrate and validate the vegetation models and satellite‐derived biomass products that are essential to understand vulnerable and understudied non‐forested ecosystems around the globe.

Customary governance of artisanal and small-scale mining in Guinea: Social and environmental practices and outcomes⋆

In Guinea, attempts are underway by international donors, development practitioners, and the national government to bring artisanal and small-scale diamond mining in line with a formal regulation and parcel allocation system. This formalization initiative in Guinea—along with similar reforms aimed at land tenure regularization across Africa—attempt to superimpose modern legal institutions onto community institutions. Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Guinea’s Forécariah and Kindia regions is currently governed by customary governance structures and deeply rooted customary institutions for land and property rights management. Thus far, formal structures have failed to replace or integrate with customary institutions. Identifying how to achieve complementarity between informal and formal systems that are defined by deep cultural and structural tensions requires a solid understanding of customary institutions (Ensminger, 1997). This paper analyzes social and environmental practices and ASM outcomes in an area with a history of strong informal customary governance. The study has three research objectives. First, the study seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the customary institutions and systems governing ASM in Guinea’s Forécariah and Kindia regions. Second, the paper draws on empirical analysis of village level quantitative and qualitative data to identify whether and how customary governance and institutional factors affect social and environmental outcomes in the context of ASM. Based on these findings, the paper closes with concrete policy recommendations for promoting greater complementarity between the formal and informal systems. Given the scale and scope of quantitative and qualitative data sources applied to the analysis, this study utilizes the most comprehensive empirical data to-date on ASM in a customary context. As such, this paper presents a unique contribution to the literature around customary governance, resource contestations, and land governance for mining communities and the ASM sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

Relations between Land Tenure Security and Agricultural Productivity: Exploring the Effect of Land Registration

This paper reviews the scholarly literature discussing the effect(s) of land registration on the relations between land tenure security and agricultural productivity. Using 85 studies, the paper focuses on the regular claim that land registration’s facilitation of formal documents-based land dealings leads to investment in a more productive agriculture. The paper shows that this claim is problematic for three reasons. First, most studies offer no empirical evidence to support the claim on the above-mentioned effect. Second, there are suggestions that land registration can actually threaten ‘de facto’ tenure security or even lead to insecurity of tenure. Third, the gendered realization of land registration and security may lead to uneven distribution of costs and benefits, but these effects are often ignored. Next to suggesting the importance of land information updating and the efficiency of local land management institutions, this paper also finds that more research with a combined locally-set approach is needed to better understand any relation(s) between land tenure security and agricultural productivity.

Forged in flames: indigeneity, forest fire and geographies of blame in the Philippines

ABSTRACT The forests of Southeast Asia are represented as increasingly ‘at-risk' to fire, constituting a regional fire politics concerned with the management and organisation of environmental blame. State governments often place culpability for this increasing flammability on histories of deforestation that disproportionately blame Indigenous peoples who now face a correspondingly large burden in conservation schemes. By tracing the history of fire management from the colonial period to the 1980s, this paper explores how the management of forests and fire in the Philippines has been shaped over time with imperatives to govern and economically exploit upland spaces. While these histories clearly point to a political economy of knowledge production, they also show how forest governance in the Philippines has worked to construct ethnic difference through policies and practices that naturalise livelihoods, spaces and qualities to essentialised ‘tribal' uplanders. To understand the contemporary geography of blame that surrounds forest fires and deforestation in the Philippines and Southeast Asia more broadly, we argue for a more nuanced examination of ‘the uplands’ as a post-colonial geography co-constituted with the historical production of indigeneity and environmental knowledge. We conclude by emphasising the historical role of colonial forest and land management institutions in fashioning lasting socio-spatial differences.

Changes in institutional and social–ecological system robustness due to the adoption of large‐scale irrigation technology in Navarre (Spain)

AbstractMany regional and national organisations promote the modernisation of agriculture by supporting new technologies to increase their territory's competitiveness in a free‐market context. Such technologies and their associated intensive land management practices are geared towards obtaining higher yields. However, their application also entails changes in water and land management institutions, which could alter interactions among multiple components of the agrarian social–ecological system and potentially weaken the system. Here, we assess how these components and their relations change in a village situated in Navarre (Spain) after the uptake of large‐scale irrigation infrastructure. Specifically, we analyse such changes by comparing how the design principles for robust social–ecological systems manifest before and after the adoption of large‐scale irrigation. Our findings indicate that an unequal distribution of water and land induces some farmers to abandon their agrarian activities. Our case study also shows how irrigation communities have partially lost their autonomy to self‐organise and make agrarian management‐related decisions. We suggest that the adoption of large‐scale irrigation in this region contributes to a decrease in cooperation among resource users, and between users and infrastructure providers. This is due to a decline in the capacity to achieve collective‐choice arrangements and higher external control and monitoring of water use. We argue that the current agrarian management changes may damage social–ecological system robustness and affect the sustainable use of common‐pool resources, leading farmers to maladaptation to climate and market variability.

Assessment of building behavior in slow-moving landslide-affected areas through DInSAR data and structural analysis

Slow-moving landslides are a natural hazard which affects wide areas in the world and often are cause of significant damage to structures and infrastructures. Analysis of landslide evolution and of their interaction with existing man-made structures plays a key role in risk prevention and mitigation activities. To this purpose, a considerable interest towards innovative approaches has grown among the scientific community and land management institutions. In this work, Synthetic Aperture Radar data acquired by C-band and X-band sensors, combined with numerical analyses, have been successfully applied as a tool to detect spatial and temporal landslide-induced effects, in terms of deformations and structural behavior of a building affected by ground instability. Such approach has been applied to Moio della Civitella urban settlement (Salerno province, Italy), whose whole territory is interested by several slow-moving landslides. In detail, performance of a masonry building aggregate and the efficacy of restoration works have been investigated through an integrated assessment of displacement time-series pre- and post-repair intervention, and structural analysis performed with numerical code.Historical DInSAR data have permitted firstly the interpretation of building displacement time-series corresponding to pre- and post-works configurations; subsequently, the analysis of interpolated interferometric products has allowed to define gradient maps of vertical and horizontal displacements and to identify part of aggregate which can suffer a greater susceptibility to damage as a consequence of deformation gradients. Finally, the comparison of satellite and numerical data showed a substantial agreement with local failures and damage surveyed, thus confirming the capability of DInSAR technique to investigate building performance where no in situ displacement measurements were available.

Towards a taxonomic understanding of informality

The discussion on informality has become considerably more complex since its inception in development planning in the early 1970s. Independent discourses exist on the informal economy, informal housing, informal planning practices, informal land management, legal informality and informal institutions. Although these discussions have directly informed development policies, they have remained fragmented and narrowly focused. This is unfortunate, as the complex interplay of formal-informal practices requires a more comprehensive understanding to become useful development policy targets. In order to break with the initial pathologies of subject fragmentation inherited from past sector-based approaches, the authors propose a cross-sector investigation. A selective literature review was carried out for academic discourses relevant to urban development scholars. The authors developed a visual tool, a taxonomic table to capture and systematise thematic dimensions and associated meanings of informality, as well as its relation to formality. This taxonomy may serve as a communicative interface between different schools of thought and structure more comprehensive and interdisciplinary research agendas. For scholars, the relevance of the study lies in the proposed use of bibliometrics and the taxonomic table to encourage mutual learning experiences. For praxis, by highlighting the different elements within the conceptualization of informality, the taxonomy can be used to tackle ‘the informal’ by improving communication across sectors, including often excluded voices and different on-the-ground understandings of the same phenomena.

Land use transitions and land management: A mutual feedback perspective

This paper develops a theoretical model of regional land use transitions based on expanding and deepening the concept and connotations of land use transition. With the socio-economic development, transformations between different land use types during a certain period of time cause the change of the conflicts resulted from regional land use morphology pattern from strong to weak. These transformations will lead to a new balance of regional land use morphology pattern consists of different land use types corresponding to related economic departments, respectively, and will finally realize the qualitative transformation of urban-rural land use system. Then, the mechanism of mutual feedback between land use transition and land management was probed based on a three-fold framework of natural system-economic system-managerial system. Generally, land use transitions are affected by land management via economic measures, land engineering, policy and institution. Land use transitions can also contribute to the adjustment of land management measures via socio-ecological feedback. The authors argue that the formulation of land management policies and institutions needs to take into account the land use transition phase of targeted region, not only current land use transition phase but also its subsequent phase corresponding to regional socio-economic development transformation.

DIFFERENTIAL SAR INTERFEROMETRY TECHNIQUE FOR CONTROL OF LINEAR INFRASTRUCTURES AFFECTED BY GROUND INSTABILITY PHENOMENA

Abstract. The Italian territory is strongly affected by ground instability phenomena and the occurrence of geological events, such as landslides and subsidence, is one of the main causes of damage to linear infrastructures, such as roads, bridges, railways and retaining walls, resulting in important socio-economic and human losses. To this aim, the frequent and accurate monitoring of surface displacements plays a key role in risk prevention and mitigation activities. In the last decade, a considerable interest towards innovative approaches has grown among the scientific community and land management institutions. In particular, Differential Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) technique represents a useful tool to provide information on temporal and spatial evolution both of ground instability phenomena and of their interaction with man-made facilities, thanks to its accuracy, high spatial resolution, non-invasiveness and long-term temporal coverage, at reasonable costs. In this work, a GIS-semiautomatic approach, using Synthetic Aperture Radar data acquired by COSMO-SkyMed sensor, has been successfully applied to detect landslide-induced effects in terms of deformations of a linear infrastructure interested by slow-moving landslides in Campania Region (Italy).

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE OF SWIDDEN FARMERS AND CHALLENGES FOR SUSTAINABLE LAND USE: LESSONS FROM A WATERSHED MANAGEMENT PROJECT IN NORTHERN LAOS

In Laos, located in mainland Southeast Asia, shifting cultivation has been one of the important means of livelihood, in terms of food security as well as religious and cultural anchorage, for local communities in a number of areas, especially in upland areas in the country. In Pakbeng District, Oudomxay Province, northern Laos, due to the implementation of various land and forest management policies and a village relocation and consolidation program, local communities were restricted from access to the forests and faced a shortage of agricultural lands. After facing difficulties in securing sufficient lands, the local farmers used the forests in a destructive manner. The author of this article was engaged with the Community-based Watershed Management Project, as a program director of an environmental NGO and tackled challenges to achieve a land and forest management system suitable for land use by local communities. The NGO attempted to apply an alternative approach to incorporate swidden farmers’ land use system into official land and forest management institutions.