Secure Land Rights Research Articles

Development Alternatives for a Post-Crisis World: An African perspective

Dzodzi Tsikata explains that debates about development are cyclical and coincide with various economic crises that have punctuated Africa's post-colonial history. While there is no shortage of Africa-generated responses that have also included the voices of African feminists, these have lacked traction. In a new world order where economic liberalization is losing its legitimacy as the most commonsensical approach to development, African states and civil societies have to redouble their efforts to gain policy sovereignty to secure land rights, decent work and sustainable livelihoods for all.

Minding the gaps: Property, geography, and Indigenous peoples in Canada

Indigenous peoples’ property rights are hotly debated in legal, policy, and academic circles across Canada. This article explores three such debates in which Indigenous peoples and lands are centrally implicated: debates over implementing fee simple ownership on Indigenous lands, over securing land rights through modern treaty making, and over matrimonial real property rights on Indian reserves. Each of these debates, we argue, revolves around a perceived “property gap”, a term we use to denote conflicting understandings of what property is (or should be), what it should accomplish, and a perceived absence or failure in property law. While such gaps are commonly identified as sites where Indigenous and Western ideas about property come into conflict, creating absences or discontinuities that need mending, they can also be understood as openings where taken-for-granted conceptions of property are “up for grabs”. The property debates examined here reflect ongoing struggles over geography, highlighting contention over who can legitimately claim “ownership” over certain spaces and who can control how lands are used and governed. More broadly, they reflect efforts to “locate” Indigenous peoples vis-á-vis the modern settler state of Canada. Rather than working to “fix” these property gaps through imposition of dominant Western property ideas and structures, we stress the need to explore a broader range of property options at these sites, including those shaped by Indigenous understandings of property and geography.

Tourism and the politics of the global land grab in Tanzania: markets, appropriation and recognition

This paper examines how tourism as a form of land use and economic development is a critical site of struggle over the meaning of neoliberalism, landscape and land rights in northern Tanzania. I examine two tourism arrangements in Loliondo: joint ventures between expatriate-owned ecotourism companies and predominately Maasai villages; and the leasing of a hunting concession on village lands by the central government to a powerful foreign investor from the United Arab Emirates. Despite the fundamental role of foreign investors in appropriating resources and surplus value from regional landscapes in each of these cases, I argue that the Maasai in Loliondo see contemporary land grabbing as firmly situated in state claims to property and territory. The Maasai in Loliondo have come to think of the market, expressed through their direct relationships with ecotourism investors, as the most promising space to legitimize and secure land rights and access to resources. Loliondo, an area in northern Tanzania bordering the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, has become one of the most important sites for tourism development in Tanzania. This region is home to the iconic Maasai people, who practice pastoralism and are part of what attracts tourists to Tanzania. These Maasai face increased pressure to assert their local vision of a landscape and their ability to commoditize it. I situate current land struggles within the political economy of tourism in Loliondo and show how different articulations of market–state–community become both materially and symbolically meaningful. Ultimately, I argue that the Maasai retain faith in market-based relationships in spite of increasingly limited room to maneuver.

Tenure reformed

This article explores the contradictory and contested but closely inter- locking efforts of NGOs and the state in planning for land reform in South Africa. As government policy has come increasingly to favor the better-off who are potential commercial farmers, so NGO efforts have been directed, correspondingly, to safeguarding the interests of those conceptualized as poor and dispossessed. The article explores the claim that planned “tenure reform” is the best way to provide secure land rights, especially for laborers residing on white farms; illustrates the complex disputes over this claim arising between state and NGO sectors; and argues that we need to go beyond the concept of “neoliberal governmentality” to understand the relationship between these sectors.

Growing inequality: agricultural revolutions and the political ecology of rural development

This article argues that the case studies to be published in a special issue together with this article make three arguments about the deployment of Green Revolution technologies in development strategies. These arguments identify the importance of context in understanding sustainable outcomes, and the claim that technical fixes such as the increasing use of synthetic fertilizers and increased yields do not necessarily alleviate hunger and poverty over the long term. The third argument is that interventions built upon existing social, political and economic inequalities will only deepen unequal access, distribution and control of food and food-producing resources for rural people. In the second half of this essay, these arguments frame responses to the world food crisis of 2007–2008 as exemplified in the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development report. These responses are overshadowed by the large-scale foreign land acquisitions currently underway in many countries where hunger and malnutrition are pressing social and moral issues. Working towards sustainable futures in food and agriculture involves the construction and development of food networks that are contextualized, reliant on agro-ecological paradigms, the provision of dignified and decent livelihoods for food producers, democratically controlled provisioning for surrounding communities and regions as well as secure land rights for small-scale farmers. This is the vision of political ecology of rural development that moves beyond technical fixes and market regulation to considerations of justice and equity in resource access and control.

How do trust and property security influence household contributions to public goods?

Trust and property rights are generally considered to influence farmers' behavior regarding resource use and environmental management. Previous studies show that higher trust levels may enhance contributions to public goods. This paper investigates how trust and (land) property rights security influence the provision of one concrete public good: land protection through the Sloping Land Conservation Program in China. The analysis is based on household survey data from Ningxia Autonomous Region in China. From our questionnaire two trust factors are derived and distinguished, using factor analysis: general trust and kinship trust. Farm households are less likely to contribute to public goods when they perceive more secure land rights, but trust has mixed effects on public goods. The results show that general trust and kinship trust may rely on two opposite effects for influencing public goods provision. On the one hand, high levels of general trust may directly enhance people's willingness to provide contributions to public goods (by reduced likelihood to reconvert forest land) when farmers are aware of the positive environmental effects of the program, that's the public goods effect. On the other hand, general trust may also make it more likely that people invest more in their own private goods to pursue their own welfare (a more likely reconversion of forest land to arable land), that's the private goods effect. The final outcome depends on the size and direction of both effects. Compared to general trust, kinship trust is more inward-looking and self- or group-interested compared to more reciprocal general trust. Thus, unlike general trust, kinship trust may have no significant public goods effect on the provisioning of public goods.

Playing the Indian Princess?: Sarah Winnemucca's Newspaper Career and Performance of American Indian Identities

Playing the Indian Princess?:Sarah Winnemucca's Newspaper Career and Performance of American Indian Identities Carolyn Sorisio (bio) On May 2, 1883, the Northern Paiute educator, translator, author, and activist Sarah Winnemucca lectured at Boston's Hotel Winthrop, declaring: I can tell you how few of the Government supplies reach the Indians; how one little blanket was provided to shelter a family of six from the cold; how three blankets were supposed to be enough for fifteen Indians, when each of them should by right have had one; how, indeed they often have to buy the very supplies that the Government has promised to give them in exchange for their land. I have asked the agents why they did these wrong things. They have told me it was necessary for them to do so in order to get money enough to send to the Great Father at Washington to keep their position. I assure you that there is an Indian ring; that it is a corrupt ring, and that it has its head and shoulders in the treasury at Washington. ("Princess Winnemucca on the Treatment of Indians") Winnemucca had been lecturing for two months at the start of a northeastern lecture tour, speaking on behalf of "all the Indians who [were] afflicted with that terrible pest—the Indian Agent" ("Indian Agents"). Winnemucca commented that most people did not "know much about Indians," and thus many of her lectures promoted cultural as well as political awareness. Her immediate goals were to secure land rights for Northern Paiutes and to persuade the US government [End Page 1] to allow for the return of Northern Paiutes who had been unjustly removed to Yakima, Washington, after the Bannock War. She told audiences: I want to test the right of the Government to make and break treaties at pleasure. They gave my people that place of land, and I want to ask whether it is legal for them to sell it or not. And in this work I want your help. Will you give me your influence? My work must be done through Congress. Talk for me and help me talk, and all will be well. ("Appeal for Justice") To these ends, by fall 1883, Winnemucca published the book for which she is best known today, Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims.1 Winnemucca's increased prominence—resulting from the news media's coverage of her lectures and book and assisted by the indefatigable promotional efforts of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—earned her access to many influential reformers and politicians. By spring 1884, she testified before the US House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs. When she returned to Nevada, funds donated by eastern reformers allowed her to challenge US boarding school and English-only policies. Winnemucca's campaign would have been much harder, if not impossible, had she failed to garner newspaper coverage. In an age when American newspapers reported on US-Indian Relations in a sporadic and biased manner, Winnemucca produced sustained, specific, and often sympathetic coverage. She was well aware of newspapers' power, as demonstrated by the more than four hundred newspaper items by or about Winnemucca from her first public appearance in 1864 to her death in 1891 that form the basis of this essay. As the first section of this essay details, Winnemucca understood that newspapers had the power to shape public opinion locally and nationally. She struggled—and was often able—to control newspaper representations about herself, Northern Paiutes, and American Indians. Creating and controlling news coverage was key to her political strategy; she recognized that newspapers were sites wherein resistance had to take place. She was politically astute and rhetorically sophisticated, a savvy negotiator of the news media. [End Page 2] Yet the critical stories we hear most about Winnemucca's lecture in the Hotel Winthrop that May evening and in general emphasize not her media savvy but rather her performance as an Indian princess. Certainly, on that night and on other occasions, she presented herself as such. For example, the Evening Transcript reported: The princess . . . was richly and fantastically attired, her dress of buckskin, short-sleeved and of moderate length, being trimmed with an abundance of sparkling beads...

Playing the Indian Princess? Sarah Winnemucca's Newspaper Career and Performance of American Indian Identities

Playing the Indian Princess?:Sarah Winnemucca's Newspaper Career and Performance of American Indian Identities Carolyn Sorisio (bio) On May 2, 1883, the Northern Paiute educator, translator, author, and activist Sarah Winnemucca lectured at Boston's Hotel Winthrop, declaring: I can tell you how few of the Government supplies reach the Indians; how one little blanket was provided to shelter a family of six from the cold; how three blankets were supposed to be enough for fifteen Indians, when each of them should by right have had one; how, indeed they often have to buy the very supplies that the Government has promised to give them in exchange for their land. I have asked the agents why they did these wrong things. They have told me it was necessary for them to do so in order to get money enough to send to the Great Father at Washington to keep their position. I assure you that there is an Indian ring; that it is a corrupt ring, and that it has its head and shoulders in the treasury at Washington. ("Princess Winnemucca on the Treatment of Indians") Winnemucca had been lecturing for two months at the start of a northeastern lecture tour, speaking on behalf of "all the Indians who [were] afflicted with that terrible pest—the Indian Agent" ("Indian Agents"). Winnemucca commented that most people did not "know much about Indians," and thus many of her lectures promoted cultural as well as political awareness. Her immediate goals were to secure land rights for Northern Paiutes and to persuade the US government [End Page 1] to allow for the return of Northern Paiutes who had been unjustly removed to Yakima, Washington, after the Bannock War. She told audiences: I want to test the right of the Government to make and break treaties at pleasure. They gave my people that place of land, and I want to ask whether it is legal for them to sell it or not. And in this work I want your help. Will you give me your influence? My work must be done through Congress. Talk for me and help me talk, and all will be well. ("Appeal for Justice") To these ends, by fall 1883, Winnemucca published the book for which she is best known today, Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims.1 Winnemucca's increased prominence—resulting from the news media's coverage of her lectures and book and assisted by the indefatigable promotional efforts of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—earned her access to many influential reformers and politicians. By spring 1884, she testified before the US House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs. When she returned to Nevada, funds donated by eastern reformers allowed her to challenge US boarding school and English-only policies. Winnemucca's campaign would have been much harder, if not impossible, had she failed to garner newspaper coverage. In an age when American newspapers reported on US-Indian Relations in a sporadic and biased manner, Winnemucca produced sustained, specific, and often sympathetic coverage. She was well aware of newspapers' power, as demonstrated by the more than four hundred newspaper items by or about Winnemucca from her first public appearance in 1864 to her death in 1891 that form the basis of this essay. As the first section of this essay details, Winnemucca understood that newspapers had the power to shape public opinion locally and nationally. She struggled—and was often able—to control newspaper representations about herself, Northern Paiutes, and American Indians. Creating and controlling news coverage was key to her political strategy; she recognized that newspapers were sites wherein resistance had to take place. She was politically astute and rhetorically sophisticated, a savvy negotiator of the news media. [End Page 2] Yet the critical stories we hear most about Winnemucca's lecture in the Hotel Winthrop that May evening and in general emphasize not her media savvy but rather her performance as an Indian princess. Certainly, on that night and on other occasions, she presented herself as such. For example, the Evening Transcript reported: The princess . . . was richly and fantastically attired, her dress of buckskin, short-sleeved and of moderate length, being trimmed with an abundance of sparkling beads...

Post‐Conflict Ambon: Forced Migration and the Ethno‐Territorial Effects of Customary Tenure

ABSTRACTIn post‐conflict contexts characterized by large‐scale migration and increasing levels of legal pluralism, customary land tenure risks being deployed as a tool of ethno‐territorialization in which displaced communities are denied return and secure land rights. This thesis will be illustrated through a case study of the Indonesian island of Ambon where a recognition of customary tenure — also called adat — was initiated in 2005 at the end of a high‐intensity conflict between Christians and Muslims. Although a system of land tenure providing multiple forms of social security for the indigenous in‐group, adat in Ambon also constitutes an arena of power in which populations considered as non‐indigenous to a fixed historical territory are pushed into an inferior legal position. The legal registration of customary tenure therefore tends to be deployed to settle long‐standing land contests with a growing migrant community, hereby legally enforcing some of the forced expulsions that were brought about by the recent communal violence.

Securing land rights for women

This collection of papers on Securing Women's Land Rights presents five articles relating to eastern Africa. Four of these illustrate practical approaches to securing land rights for women in distinct situations: law-making for women's land rights (Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda); land tenure reform in practice (Rwanda); women's rights under pastoral land tenure (Ethiopia); and women's rights in areas of matrilineal-matrilocal land tenure (Malawi). This article serves as an overall introduction to the subject, reviewing past issues and highlighting new ones, and setting out the shape of a positive, pragmatic approach to securing women's land rights in eastern Africa. Five key themes emerge: the role of customary institutions; the continuing central role of legislation as a foundation for changing custom; issues of gender equity and equitability, and underlying goals; the challenges of reform implementation and of growing women's confidence to claim their rights; and the importance of encouraging effective collaboration among all those working in the field of women's land rights. The article calls for a stronger focus on gender equity – on securing equal land rights for both women and men – in order to achieve sustainable positive change in broader social and political relations.

The experience of Madagascar. Decentralising land management

Version française de l'articleProjects to take control of vast areas of arable land in Southern countries have revived interest in public policies to improve land tenure security. Often based on principles inherited from colonial times and focusing on the issue of land titling by government departments, these policies are now unsuited to the growing social demand for improving land tenure security in Southern countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the advance of the market economy, the growth of cities, the decline of customary authorities and forms of regulation and the progressive commodification of land are all at the root of a growing need to secure land rights in writing. This need is all the greater because rural societies are faced with the land acquisition strategies pursued by major economic operators. Between the preservation of long-standing land policy instruments that have shown their limits, and the promotion of community regulations, some Southern land tenure policies are exploring the middle ground combining the recognition of social land management practices and the formalisation of land rights by the public authorities. This is the case in Madagascar, which launched a land policy

Securing Land Rights through Indigenousness: A Case from the Philippine Cordillera Highlands

AbstractThe Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (1997) offers indigenous peoples in the Philippines the opportunity to obtain title to an ‘ancestral domain’. This article discusses how leaders of the Bakun Indigenous Tribes Organization (BITO) in the Cordillera Highlands strategically used the state-sponsored indigenous-peoples discourse and political-administrative structure to acquire land rights for the inhabitants of the municipality of Bakun. Though the inhabitants did not necessarily identify themselves as indigenous, they welcomed land rights as a protection against unwelcome incursions by mining companies and other extractive projects. However, the discourse of indigenous peoples’ rights tends to essentialise the difference between indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Being indigenous has become a politicised identity whose bearers are expected to prefer the ‘traditional’ over the ‘modern’, the ‘collective’ over the ‘individual’. In Bakun, moreover, the discourse of indigenous peoples’ rights eventually became an arena in which a power struggle was played out between BITO and the municipal council, both belonging to the indigenous community.

Wild Yankees: The Struggle for Independence Along Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier (review)

Reviewed by: Wild Yankees: The Struggle for Independence Along Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier Patrick Spero (bio) Wild Yankees: The Struggle for Independence along Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier. By Paul B. Moyer. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Pp. 216. Cloth, $39.95.) In Wild Yankees: The Struggle for Independence along Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier, Paul B. Moyer explores the history of Connecticut [End Page 369] land claimants in what became northeastern Pennsylvania. Beginning in the 1750s, when Connecticut colonists first settled the Wyoming Valley, as the Upper Susquehanna River was known, alongside —and often at odds with—the native peoples inhabiting the region, Moyer follows that history into the 1820s, long after Indians had been pushed westward and the region had come to be inhabited by tribes calling themselves Democratic-Republicans and Federalists. Taking a long view of the revolutionary era, Moyer finds a region wracked by violence, hatred, and war, a region that was “unique . . . in that it experienced just about every variety of violence the revolutionary frontier had to offer: violence between whites and Indians, between white settlers, and between ordinary back-country inhabitants and powerful gentlemen” (6). Moyer frames his analysis around the concept of independence, and convincingly shows that for white settlers in an agrarian society, achieving landed independence was essential to their identity and for understanding their actions during this long struggle for secure land rights. Moyer’s organization is chronological. At the same time, each chapter tends to focus on a particular theme to highlight the concept of independence at the heart of the book. Moyer begins by exploring the nature and legacy of native–white interactions, with a particular emphasis on violence. Native peoples, particularly the Delawares under the leadership of Teedyuscung, tried to stop white settlers in the region through both peaceful negotiation and resistance, fighting “their own struggle for independence” (19). Moyer makes a provocative and compelling argument that the racialized violence between natives and whites that defined the Wyoming Valley during the 1760s shaped the future of white-on-white violence in the region. “[T]hat a legacy of interracial contention added to the intensity of the Wyoming controversy,” he concludes, “can be deduced from the fact that other regions which experienced conflicts over land and jurisdiction . . . saw much lower levels of bloodshed and death” (24). Moyer focuses the rest of his work on the clash between Connecticut claimants, dubbed “Wild Yankees,” and Pennsylvanians, known as “Pennamites.” The nature of this clash changed significantly over time. During the American Revolution, Connecticut settlers used the political division of the empire to their advantage, labeling Pennsylvanians Loyalists and entering into a series of bloody battles with them (39). Through [End Page 370] these and other tactics, Connecticut essentially controlled the region throughout the 1770s, establishing towns and a county. But this was a short-lived victory. Although Connecticut settlers were devout patriots, the nation they fought for granted the contested land to the state of Pennsylvania in the Trenton Decree of 1782. The political change wrought by the revolutionary settlement fundamentally altered the conflict, shifting it “from a relatively clear cut jurisdictional fight between colonies and states to a far more complex battle for political legitimacy” (42). Now Pennsylvania had to firmly establish its authority and win settler allegiance, a task Moyer demonstrates is much harder than winning legal arguments. Moyer finds that at every turn, individuals—whether Pennamite or Wild Yankee—worked to undercut Pennsylvania’s state authority in an attempt to secure land and power through the assertion of local autonomy throughout the 1780s and 1790s. The emphasis on acquiring landed independence shaped the experience of Connecticut settlers from the colony’s first venture into the area through the period of the early republic. Moyer links Connecticut’s westward expansion to New England cultural traditions emphasizing land ownership as essential to individual autonomy, and he shows that the sustained foray into Pennsylvania was tied to land shortages in New England. After the Revolution, Connecticut no longer asserted its authority, but the Connecticut-based Susquehanna Land Company continued to assert its rights to the land and encouraged continued immigration in the early republic. To entice settlers, the company offered 300-acre...

Who is credit constrained? evidence from rural Malawi

Using data from Malawi, this paper examines factors that influence a household’s likelihood of facing credit constraints. Households with larger land holdings have a higher probability of reporting credit constraints, apparently due to lack of secure land rights which could enable households to use land as collateral when borrowing. Households with a greater number of active male adults are also more likely to report credit constraints.

Women struggle to secure land rights

Felitus Kures is a widow living in Kapchorwa, northeastern Uganda. Her husband’s death left her solely responsible for their children. To meet their needs, she depended on the small piece of land she and her husband had farmed together. But just months after his funeral, her in-laws sold her husband’s land without her knowledge. “We only realized this when the buyer came to evict us,” Ms. Kures explains. She was able to regain use of the land after she got legal assistance with the help of the Uganda Land Alliance, a civil society group that campaigns for land rights.

Who Gains From Community Conservation? Intended and Unintended Costs and Benefits of Participative Approaches in Peru and Tanzania

Who are the beneficiaries from participative approaches in conservation? The authors compare two protected areas Amarakaeri Communal Reserve in Peru and Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania and show how in similar institutional settings local interest groups react very differently to the possibility of participation. The difference, however, does not regard economic benefits. In the case of Peru, local groups defining themselves as indigenous peoples see a political gain in participatory conservation, which seems to offer the possibility for securing land rights in their area. In Tanzania, however, local actors oppose participative conservation strategies or passively resist those forced on them because they cause high-economic costs and no political gains. By comparing both cases based on a new institutionalism analysis, the article reveals how intended and unintended costs and benefits can explain different attitudes of local groups to participative conservation.

Securing access to drylands resources for multiple users in Africa: A review of recent research

This review discusses persistent tensions in efforts to secure land rights in Africa's drylands. Some researchers and practitioners advocate for formal, legal recognition of group rights as a way to secure access for drylands resource users. Others, on the other hand, speak against formal, legal protections. They argue that much of Africa's drylands are collectively held, often under customary tenures. Statutory law may undermine the dynamism, flexibility and inclusiveness of such tenures. By reviewing innovative efforts at securing access in different parts of Africa, the paper shows that any attempt to secure access for multiple users in drylands environments needs to identify frameworks for negotiated conflict resolution, crafting rules from the ground upwards, in addition to a more generic identification of rights. Policy-makers can thus focus on process, as well as the content of tenure arrangements, reconciling statutory rights with customary rights. For rights to be meaningfully secured, however, there is need to identify the nature and sources of threats that create insecurities and tailor policy solutions to threats. Elite capture and exclusion of women and young people continue to pose significant challenges in such decentralized processes.

Land Sales and Rental Markets in Transition: Evidence from Rural Vietnam*

AbstractImpact and desirability of land transfers in post‐socialist‐transition economies have been subject of considerable debate. We use data from Vietnam to identify factors conducive to the development of land markets and to assess potentially differential impacts of rental and sales. Results show that both rental and sales transfer land to more productive producers but that rental is more important for the poor to access land that becomes available as the non‐farm economy develops. The fact that secure land rights significantly increase supply of land to the rental market suggests that government has a key role in facilitating emergence and functioning of efficiency‐enhancing land markets.

Implications of changing national policies on land use in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh

Land use in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh had undergone changes over the past several centuries. The landscape, which was mostly covered with forest with interspersed shifting cultivation plots until the beginning of the colonial period, has gradually changed into a landscape with a blend of land uses. Overall, the forest area has gradually declined, while the area under shifting cultivation and sedentary agriculture has expanded. The process of the change was multi-directional. National forestry, land use, land taxation, population migration polices, and development activities, such as construction of a hydroelectric dam and roads, played an important role in this process. Shifting cultivation had inflicted little damage on the forest until the beginning of the colonial period. The pace of deforestation accelerated with the nationalization of forests which abolished tribal people's customary use and management rights to the forest, and allowed large-scale commercial logging both legally and illegally. The pace was further intensified by the policy encouraging population migration to CHT and construction of a reservoir on the Karnafuli River. Efforts were made to replace shifting cultivation with more productive types of sedentary agriculture. However, much change could not take place in the absence of secure land rights, supportive trade policies, and the required support services and facilities, including infrastructure. Locationally suitable land use evolved in areas where transportation facilities were available and farmers were granted land title with the necessary extension services and credit facilities. These findings have important policy implications for the promotion of environmentally and economically sound land use in CHT.

Land tenure, agroforestry adoption, and reduction of fire hazard in a forest zone: A case study from Lampung, Sumatra, Indonesia

Clear land ownership and community involvement in managing forests are key determinants in securing sustainable land management. A recent study in Lampung in the province of Sumatra, Indonesia revealed that, even with the use of military force, forest policy and management has largely failed to protect forest resources when local communities were not involved. In contrast, with less government intervention but more secure land rights (as perceived by farmers), local communities have successfully rehabilitated degraded land, including that designated as state forest area, through establishment of coffee based agroforestry. The main incentive for local communities to manage land more sustainably was the expectation of secure land rights on state forest land through which livelihood and income could be realized. The study indicated that under such circumstances there is room for negotiation between the government forestry department and local communities to better manage state forest land. This not only can generate income for local communities but can also improve the overall environment through reduction of fire incidence. This indicates that legal land use rights for local communities on state forest land could be used as a ‘reward’ for upland farmers for their role in maintaining environmental services of forest land.