Participatory Land Research Articles

The role of Village Land Forest Reserves in the implementation of Land Use Plans: experience from the REDD+ initiative, Tanzania

The role of Village Participatory Land Use Plans (VPLUPs) and associated Village Land Forest Reserves (VLFRs) under the REDD initiative is a fairly new concept with limited information on the success of its implementation. This study examined community perceptions of VPLUPs as well as their perceptions of the inclusion of VLFRs in these plans in the Kilosa district of Tanzania. A mixed method research design, which integrates participatory community mapping (PCM), focus group discussions (FGDs), key informant interviews (KIIs), direct observations and household interviews were applied. Results indicated a significant involvement of the respondents (84%) in the process of implementation of VPLUPs, especially in meetings (95%). A significant majority (91%) favoured the inclusion of VLFRs in VPLUPs. Most of the respondents (85%) were satisfied with the implementation process of VPLUPs and most (94%) were willing to adhere to VPLUPs initiatives. Both challenges to and supportive factors for the implementation of VPLUPs were identified by the respondents. Due to the current high levels of participation in the initiative and potentially agreeable outcomes, it is concluded that VPLUPs and VLFRs might contribute to sustainable implementation of the REDD initiative.

Land Consolidation for Sub-Saharan Africa’s Customary Lands: The Need for Responsible Approaches

This paper explores the potential of land consolidation for dealing with land fragmentation in Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) rural customary lands – where the intention is to increase food productivity. In SSA’s customary lands, the use of mechanized farming technology and intensive farming techniques have largely failed to increase food productivity. This is despite foreign investment and the interest of the farmers to do so. In many cases, neither the farm parcel structure nor the land tenure arrangements support the use of, or investment in, mechanized equipment. This implies a strong need to deal with the land fragmentation situation. Although land consolidation is argued as an effective response to land fragmentation; its application in SSA’s customary lands has either not been successful, or it has ended up breaking down the customary land tenure arrangements. We argue that past attempts at land consolidation in SSA’s customary lands have failed mainly due to the transfer of European strategies without adequate consideration for the local factors in the planning and implementation, as well as inadequate land information. Land consolidation strategies in Europe have shown that responsible approaches continually considered the changing local factors. There has been a recent push for more responsible approaches to land reform and planning activities that consider social, cultural, and economic factors that were previously not considered. In this paper, the nature and causes of land fragmentation in customary lands will first be explored, then current approaches seeking to increase farm productivity are reviewed. Analysing the problems of land fragmentation in customary lands, the failure to adapt land consolidation approaches in customary lands in the past, and the potential of participatory land administration as an enabling tool, we conclude that responsible approaches are an important component of increasing food productivity in sub-Saharan Africa.

Participatory scenario development process in addressing potential impacts of anthropogenic activities on the ecosystem services of Mt. Marsabit forest, Kenya

The Marsabit Forest Reserve (MFR), a green island in an arid environmental setting, generates multiple ecosystem goods and services (ES) to the local community critical for their livelihoods. The forest has been experiencing substantial land conversion for town expansion, agriculture production and settlements threatening long-term ES provision. Sustaining the forest ES under increasing anthropogenic pressures is one of the great challenges of the Marsabit forest community. We used focus group discussions in the thirteen locations around the forest and individual key informant's interviews in the identification of drivers of change and their potential impacts on ES in MFR. We used the scenario development process (SDP) in coming up with four divergent but plausible exploratory scenarios. The study established that the main ES provided by the forest was, water, fuelwood, forage (dry season grazing resource), medicinal plants and timber for construction. Stakeholders identified population pressure, unsustainable utilisation of forest resources, institutional barriers to effective resource management, land use and climate change as the main drivers impacting ES provision in the forest. Land use change and climate change were considered the most significant drivers yet the most uncertain in the future impacting ES provision in the MFR. The SDP identified four alternative future scenarios for the MFR by the year 2044 with the Marsabit we want scenario identified as the most desirable future for the sustainable supply of ES with adequate adaptation to observed changes. Stakeholders came up with a joint action plan implementation matrix for the identified scenario while mitigating the negative aspects of the alternative scenarios. The results support the need for participatory land use planning that takes into to account the growing threat of climate change to natural forest systems.

Participation of Informal Settlers in Participatory Land Use Planning Project in Pursuit of Tenure Security

A majority of the urban population in Dar es Salaam City in Tanzania lives in informal (unplanned) settlements. The living conditions in these settlements lack among other things, security of tenure. In response to the growing need for tenure security, the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania adopted participatory land use planning (PLUP) approaches to help local people secure rights over land and to strengthen the local management of institutions. However, the PLUP approaches often are subverted by inadequate participation of the local community. By way of a methodology, the study evaluates PLUP project under the Business and Property Formalization Programme (MKURABITA) towards enhancing tenure security of informal settlers in Baruti informal settlement in Dar es Salaam City. The research examines the perception of informal settlers in PLUP project and their level of participation in the PLUP process. Based on research findings, the researchers suggest a strategic and collaborative framework to have a lasting and sustainable impact of PLUP approach towards improving land tenure security. This research will help scholars and practitioners to understand the current state of the literature in participatory land use planning for improving tenure security. This case study as an example will shed the light on means that can be utilized in improving the level of participation of informal settlers in PLUP process.

Volunteered geographic information quality assessment using trust and reputation modelling in land administration systems in developing countries

ABSTRACTThis article presents an innovative approach to establish the quality and credibility of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) such that it can be considered in Land Administration Systems (LAS) on a Fit for Purpose (FFP) basis. A participatory land information system can provide affordable and timely FFP information about land and its resources. However, the establishment of such a system involves more than just technical solutions and administrative procedures: many social, economic and political aspects must be considered. Innovative approaches like VGI can help address the lack of accurate, reliable and FFP land information for LAS, but integration of such sources relies on the quality and credibility of VGI. Verifying volunteer efforts can be difficult without reference to ground truth: a novel Trust and Reputation Modelling methodology is proposed as a suitable technique to effect such VGI data set validation. This method has been applied to successfully demonstrate that VGI can produce accurate and reliable data sets which can be used to conduct regular systematic updates of geographic information in official systems. It relies on a view that the public can police themselves in establishing proxy measures of VGI quality thus facilitating VGI to be used on a FFP basis in LAS.

Integrating indigenous knowledge for participatory land use planning (PLUP) in Tra Hat hamlet, a climate-smart village in the Mekong River Delta, Vietnam

Agriculture is a primary source of livelihood in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta with different land use activities. There are different potential conflicts in agricultural land use, including: water resources use and interests. Therefore, establishing feasible land use planning (LUP) in an area needs an in-depth participation and discussion among stakeholders (including: governments at different levels, local farmers, and national and international scientists). Indigenous knowledge of local farmers plays an important role in making land use decision, which can support solving land-use conflicts to achieve the most sustainable management of land resources. In this study, we integrated local knowledge into a land use planning process to assess the suitability of land use types and to project potential impacts of climate change conditions on land use decisions in the Tra Hat hamlet, one of the climate-smart village (CSV) sites in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta. A total of two consultation meetings, using simple tools (resources mapping, timeline, seasonal calendar, wealth ranking, Venn diagram, pair wise ranking, and key informants’ interviews), were conducted, and 130 households were interviewed during a field visit in 2015. As a result, a participatory land use planning (PLUP) was implemented with active participation of the concerned communities to establish a suitable land use planning and identify the potential adaptation techniques in the near future (2020). Land use planning at the hamlet was discussed to get the agreement and the coordination among local governments, farmers and scientists on adaptation practices.

Participatory Land Administration on Customary Lands: A Practical VGI Experiment in Nanton, Ghana

Land information is one of the basic requirements for land management activities such as land consolidation. However, the dearth of land information on customary lands limits the development and application of land consolidation. This paper presents and discusses the results of an experiment carried out to test the potential of participatory land administration applied on customary lands in support of land consolidation. A brief overview of the evolution of crowdsourced, voluntary, and participatory approaches is provided alongside newly related insights into neogeography and neo-cadastre, and fit-for-purpose and pro-poor land administration. The concept of participatory land administration is then developed in this context. The area of the experiment is in Northern Ghana where the process was developed together with the local farming community. The study involved collecting land information relating to farms over a two-week period, using a mobile app and a satellite image, based on participatory land administration. The results show that Participatory Land Administration can potentially support land consolidation, though further investigation is needed on how it can be integrated into the formal land registration system, into an actual land consolidation project.

Rangeland forage availability and management in times of drought – A case study of pastoralists in Afar, Ethiopia

Many Eastern African rangelands comprise marginal land, where climatic conditions are poor, access rights are increasingly limited, and land degradation is progressing. We conducted participatory land use mapping and vegetation assessment to identify the most important rangeland locations and their condition in Afar, Ethiopia. Further, we conducted 79 interviews across six villages to assess pastoralist adaptation strategies during drought times. In the dry season, livestock feed resources represented rangelands far away from the village (in 76% of the cases) while 50% and 40% of pastoralists also used cake concentrates and crop residues, respectively. During the wet season, rangeland resources close to villages, albeit with rather low herbaceous cover (<25%), contributed 80% to livestock forage. In times of severe drought, migrating with livestock was the most common (70%) adaptation, in combination with purchasing feed (50%) while <40% of the pastoralists sold or slaughtered animals. Afar pastoralists applied little conservation and mitigation methods, most commonly they removed livestock pressure to allow the pasture to recover. Overall, pastoralists in Afar still strongly depended on natural rangelands and their resources. Hence, to manage these sustainably a monitoring scheme must urgently be established for investigating rangeland quality and resilience to drought and grazing pressure.

After the consent: Re-imagining participatory land governance in Massingir, Mozambique

Massingir district is located in southern Mozambique, bordering South Africa. From the mid-2000s onwards, foreign private and domestic investments in the district have been on the rise in the agribusiness, tourism, and conservation sectors. This has resulted in events that scholars and activists have come to describe as land, water, and green grabs. The on-going discussions have urged the government to fully implement the policy and legal frameworks that oblige investors to undertake community consultations based on the principle of Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) and to safeguard the communities’ land right acquisition. However, little has been clarified about how the consulted communities actually have experienced the consequences of their consent after they agreed to resettle or to concede parts of their communally managed land to investors. This article elaborates on a case study of a community resettled from the Limpopo National Park in Massingir and the neighboring community, which, after struggling to secure land and to improve their livelihood, began to reflect on their initial consent, interact with various actors, and craft strategies for expressing dissent and re-negotiating the deal they had struck. The article argues that the current emphasis on consultation for the purposes of building consent overlooks the importance of paying systemic attention to these strategies that are emerging from the community’s everyday experiences with the consequences of their act of giving consent. Inclusive land governance entails an institutional mechanism that closely responds to people’s experiences with policy practices.

What Kind of Thing Is Land? Hannah Arendt’s Object Relations, or

Informed by D. W. Winnicott’s object relations theory, and focused on the role of Things in constituting the world that is the object of Arendtian care, this essay examines Hannah Arendt’s treatment in The Human Condition of two liminal examples, cultivated land and poetry, that hover on the borders of Labor, Work, and/or Action. Cultivated land could belong to Work because cultivation leaves a lasting mark on the land, but it is assigned to Labor because land, once it is left uncultivated, returns to nature, Arendt says. Poetry could belong to Action, which is the realm of meaning-making speech, but it is assigned to Work because, Arendt argues, poetry’s memorability ultimately depends on its writtenness and, once it is written, it becomes a Thing possessed of the object permanence characteristic of Work’s objects. But (un)cultivated land also has a textualized form; it, too, can be written down as, for example, in the form of mapping. Why does Arendt not consider this? What possibilities of political thought or action (beyond the mere reassignment of land cultivation from Labor to Work) might have been opened had she done so? Working through these questions with particular reference to colonial cartography (in which uncultivated land, deemed “fallow,” has a particularly political resonance), and reading Kafka’s The Castle (cited by Arendt elsewhere) alongside Brian Friel’s Translations, this essay explores practices of participatory mapping and land sabbatical that might make of land a “Thing” in Arendt’s sense. Noting the Biblical origins of land sabbatical and that Arendt’s move in the Work section from cultivated land to text/poem retraces George Steiner’s diasporic journey “From Homeland to Text,” I suggest that The Human Condition, commonly called Arendt’s most Greek text, may have a Jewish unconscious.

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.

Stakeholder Interaction in Participatory Land Restoration in Iceland: Environmental Officers’ Challenges and Strategies

Participatory approaches involve stakeholder interaction but environmental agency employees engaged in participatory undertakings often lack training for interaction tasks. This study explored how district officers at the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland (SCSI) experienced and dealt with stakeholder interaction in participatory land restoration. We made semi-structured interviews with all district officers with at least 1-year experience; seven in total. A thematic content analysis revealed five challenges facing the officers in their interaction activities and seven strategies that they used to deal with these challenges. The core challenge was to establish and maintain contacts with farmers and other stakeholders as it enabled the SCSI to support and influence their land restoration practices. Other challenges were to: accomplish SCSI's objectives; represent the SCSI and the government; have adequate skills, knowledge, and background; and deal with one's own emotions. Four of the strategies seemed to promote collaboration: create win-win scenarios; "go local"; direct and positive communication; and motivation and knowledge sharing. The other strategies: supportive district officer team; self-reliance and personal background; and self-control supported the officers in their interaction tasks. Factors undermining their collaboration efforts included insufficient time and other resources, an unsupportive organizational culture and a legal duty to assess the condition of vegetation cover on farmland. Increased resource allocation to the SCSI's local operations, more attention to emotional issues, and efforts to develop a more flexible and learning organizational culture that supports collaboration could counteract these factors.

Land readjustment as an alternative land development tool for peri-urban areas of Ethiopia

Purpose– The rapid urban population growth in Ethiopia is causing an increasing demand for urban land, which primarily tends to be supplied by expropriation of peri-urban land. The process of urban development in Ethiopia is largely criticized for forced displacement and disruption of the peri-urban local community. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to introduce how Ethiopia’s urban development system could be built on the participatory and inclusive approaches of land acquisition.Design/methodology/approach– The study has employed questionnaire survey results, focus group discussion with panel of experts and previous research reports to examine the peri-urban situations and then to show why an alternative land development approach is needed to be introduced in the urban land development system of Ethiopia. Desk review on land readjustment was also made to explore best lessons from other countries applicable to the peri-urban contexts of Ethiopia.Findings– This study has explored that land readjustment is potentially an appropriate land development tool to alleviate peri-urban land development limitations in Ethiopia.Practical implications– Researchers, policy makers and government bodies that are interested in peri-urban land would appreciate and consider implementing the adapted land readjustment model as an alternative land development tool. Consequently, the local peri-urban landholders’ rights would be protected and maintained in the process of urbanization.Originality/value– Although land readjustment has the potential to achieve participatory peri-urban land development, awareness of the method in the Ethiopian urban land development system is inadequate. This study contributes to fill this gap and create an insight into the basic conditions for the adaption of the tool.

Land use planning issues in management of common property resources in a backward tribal area

Shrinking natural resources and high population growth over last 60 years have been a matter of concern for the Indian planners. The situation is getting especially critical for communities solely dependent on common property resources (CPRs) associated with marginal lands, leading to major problems of impoverishment. The present study was carried out in a cluster of three villages in Deori taluka (administrative unit) of Gondia district of Maharashtra state, India, listed as a backward district by Planning Commission of India. Livelihood in these villages is characterized by their dependence on declining non-timber forest produce (NTFP), shrinking CPRs, low agricultural productivity, lack of soil and water conservation measures, low productivity of livestock, high rate of migration, and lack of infrastructure and credit institutions. Based on information obtained through a baseline survey, participatory land use plan (PLUP) aimed at improved management of available resources for sustainable tribal livelihood and conserve forests was formulated and implemented. Interventions like optimal rainwater management thorough community action, pisciculture, and diversified cropping were introduced. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of NTFP was done. As a result of scientific interventions, significant improvement in land productivity and consequently economic development was noted. Two years of implementation of the plan has indicated that sustainable land use plan could not be implemented effectively without mobilization of a proactive community. The ideal way to ensure a proactive participation is to create an impact by starting with interventions where economic benefits are quickly realized and their potentials could be easily perceptible.

A tale of two villages: An investigation of conservation-driven land tenure reform in a Cambodian Protection Forest

In this paper, we present an analysis of the change in household land use following a conservation-driven process of indigenous land titling reform in a Cambodian protected area. In each of the two study villages, we investigated how household land use had changed and the extent of compliance with both legal boundaries of titled areas and community regulations created to govern land use within these areas. A comparison of current household land holdings in each village with those at the start of the tenure reform process indicated a significant increase in household land holdings. Changing land use practices were also revealed, as households shift away from traditional subsistence based land use towards more commercialised agriculture. Household compliance was observed to be strongly correlated with total land holdings and participation in the tenure reform process, with compliance levels significantly higher in the village that had experienced lower levels of external land grabbing and immigration. Similarly, understanding and perceptions of the tenure reform process was found to differ dramatically between the two study villages. The importance of supporting local resource management institutions created through tenure reform, particularly in the face of strong external drivers of change, and of engaging with immigrant households are highlighted as key to the continuing effectiveness of participatory land use planning approaches.

An Inclusionary Strategy Reaching Empowering Outcomes Ten Years after a Two-Year Participatory Land Uses Management

A participatory experiment conducted in Senegal in 1998 resulted in large scale lasting empowerment thanks to the use of a time-limited support but focused on tackling hurdles inherent in contextualised social and power practices in order to launch an enduring endogenous momentum. An evaluation conducted 12 years after showed that some progresses in empowerment were made at both local and national scales. This paper is a detailed analysis of the way in which the approach achieved its impacts, thanks to a specific strategic framework, called Rainbow Spiral, which enabled the creation of an empowering contextualized process of scaling up.

Evaluating the role of ecosystem services in participatory land use planning: proposing a balanced score card

The application of the ecosystem services (ES) concept in land use planning has great potential to enhance the awareness of planning actors on their interactions. At the same time it can contribute to improve the linkage between the role of land use patterns and the understanding of land system functioning and its contribution to human well-being. The concept should be developed in a way that can be applicable in socio-ecological systems where nature and society are capable of enhancing their roles mutually. The objective of this paper is to suggest a standardized scheme and generalizable criteria to assess how successful the application of the ES concept contributed to facilitate participatory planning. We consider three potential advantages and three critical aspects for how to improve the applicability and relevance of the ES concept in planning. Hereon based, we present a balanced score card tool for which we broke down to advantages and risks into concrete questions. We illustrate the application of this approach with two case studies, representatives of two major governance schemes in relation to land use planning. We demonstrate that the balanced score card approach helps to reveal potential imbalances regarding the consideration of different ES groups. It supports testing the potential of the ES concept to enhance or not interactions of local and regional actors. We conclude that the framework should be reconsidered after a set of case studies to be developed into a monitoring tool for supporting planning practices.

Participatory land use modelling, pathways to an integrated approach

The increasing adoption of land use models in planning and policy development highlights the need for an integrated approach that combines analytical modelling techniques with discursive ‘soft-science’ methodologies. Recent scientific contributions to the discipline have tended to focus on analytical problems such as statistical assessment of model goodness of fit through map comparison techniques, while the problem of integrating stakeholder information into land use models has received little attention. Using the example of a land use model developed for the Guadiamar basin in South West Spain, location of the emblematic Doñana natural area, an integrated methodology for participatory calibration and evaluation of model results is presented which combines information from key stakeholders across a range of sectors with analytical model calibration techniques. Both discursive and analytical techniques are presented side by side to demonstrate that including participatory approaches is likely to improve both calibration results and model applicability. Integration of participatory methods into land use models is more likely to be successful if stakeholders are selected carefully so as to make best possible use of their time and knowledge, and are involved in the modelling process from the beginning of the project cycle.

Landscape Characterization Integrating Expert and Local Spatial Knowledge of Land and Forest Resources

In many developing countries, political documentation acknowledges the crucial elements of participation and spatiality for effective land use planning. However, operative approaches to spatial data inclusion and representation in participatory land management are often lacking. In this paper, we apply and develop an integrated landscape characterization approach to enhance spatial knowledge generation about the complex human-nature interactions in landscapes in the context of Zanzibar, Tanzania. We apply an integrated landscape conceptualization as a theoretical framework where the expert and local knowledge can meet in spatial context. The characterization is based on combining multiple data sources in GIS, and involves local communities and their local spatial knowledge since the beginning into the process. Focusing on the expected information needs for community forest management, our characterization integrates physical landscape features and retrospective landscape change data with place-specific community knowledge collected through participatory GIS techniques. The characterization is established in a map form consisting of four themes and their synthesis. The characterization maps are designed to support intuitive interpretation, express the inherently uncertain nature of the data, and accompanied by photographs to enhance communication. Visual interpretation of the characterization mediates information about the character of areas and places in the studied local landscape, depicting the role of forest resources as part of the landscape entity. We conclude that landscape characterization applied in GIS is a highly potential tool for participatory land and resource management, where spatial argumentation, stakeholder communication, and empowerment are critical issues.

How physical and social factors affect village-level irrigation: An institutional analysis of water governance in northern China

The paper analyzes village-level irrigation management in water scarce northern China in which farmers’ livelihood is highly dependent on the appropriation of water due to limited livelihood alternatives and demographic structure with the elderly as the majority. Most scholarly works have focus on the organizational dimension of irrigation systems in China, while empirical researches relating to irrigation management so far have not paid enough attention to its institutional arrangements. We examine two cases studies – one with both surface and groundwater irrigation, and the other only with groundwater irrigation – to explore how sets of rules, physical attributes of irrigation systems, and social characteristics of communities jointly shape village-level irrigation management. Institutions of Sustainability framework is employed to facilitate the institutional analysis, through which we further discuss the emergency of self-organizing behaviors and origination of specific irrigation forms. We draw the conclusion that the organization of irrigation should fit not only the physical environment but also the institutional context and there is no one-for-all solution for governing irrigation in the field. In addition, we highlight the importance of the participation of locals in irrigation management as the research indicates the capability of locals to organize them for better use of natural resources on which their livelihoods are highly dependent. Finally, we suggest that irrigation management could be improved in future by introducing water users associations into surface irrigation management and devolving this management directly to water users along with participatory land planning.