Search Results (58)

The making of a land patrimony for the benefit of religious missions is profoundly linked to territorial construction in the colonies but is rarely examined from the angle of ecclesiastical governmentality over the ceded lands. This analysis highlights three complementary processes for understanding the role of religious mission land heritage in territorial reconfigurations. First, this article examines the process of “land sanctuarization”, which materializes territorial anchoring through the crystallization of land rights granted to religious missions over customary lands previously presumed to be “vacant”. Next, it explores the formation of an “ecclesiastical dominium”, manifested in the dismantling of state missions and their free transfer, explicit or tacit, to religious missions under concession or agreement regimes. This reveals the exercise of state power over the land heritage of religious missions, positioning them as structuring axes and administrative intermediaries for public services, thus giving rise to an ecclesiastical governmentality that drives territorial production and reconfiguration. Finally, postcolonial dynamics reveal the resurgence of new spatial polarities shaped by the complexity of evolving religious actors along the center–periphery axis of a recomposing territorialization. This study underscores the importance of a transversal approach to better govern the land legacies of religious missions, fostering a pluralistic reterritorialization of postcolonial societies in central Africa. Full article

In the socio-institutional framework of the Minangkabau society in West Sumatra, Indonesia—where women are typically assumed to have full power over land due to the matrilineal system of land ownership—this study asks: To what extent do women actually exercise power over land ownership and decision-making, and what factors influence this power? Comprising 212 households, a methodical household survey carried out in 2024 across the regencies of Lima Puluh Kota and Padang Pariaman employed quantitative approaches and comparative analysis across rural and peri-urban areas. The survey results confirm the initial hypothesis, showing high rates of land ownership among women in West Sumatra, largely attributed to the matrilineal system. Land ownership by itself, though, does not significantly increase women’s influence in households. Rather, women’s decision-making in Lima Puluh Kota is strongly influenced by other assets such as ownership of cattle, poultry, and electronic items; in Padang Pariaman, time allocated to farming and social events has more influence. These findings underline the complex reality behind nominal land rights and practical empowerment, thereby stressing the need to consider broader socioeconomic factors. The report advises more research on how religious interpretations and modernization are altering West Sumatra’s customary matrilineal customs and women’s empowerment. Full article

Uganda is gradually transitioning from communal to private land tenure systems. However, establishing privatized land rights has faced ongoing criticism, particularly concerning their impact on vulnerable groups. Despite the enactment of a national land policy, its benefits have not fully reached rural populations. Issues of land tenure insecurity and unclear ownership continue to generate confusion and have reportedly weakened traditional communal land systems, undermining sustainable agricultural production and long-term investment. This paper examines rural land rights, land markets, and the broader structural transformation of Uganda’s land sector, drawing on the existing literature and published reports. This review reveals that land tenure and administrative challenges persist, largely due to the dominance of customary tenure systems. Although land markets are active, they remain imperfect due to tenure insecurity and legal ambiguities. The findings highlight the need for increased public sensitization regarding land policy, gender-sensitive policies that promote joint ownership, continuous incentives for formalization, the acquisition of land documents, and the harmonization and strengthening of relevant land governance institutions. Full article

This article is based on a review of the governance of land tenure in 18 countries—16 in Africa and 2 in Asia—carried out from 2021 to 2023. It uses international guidelines on land policy and tenure governance as benchmarks to assess progress in each country through reviewing policy documents and literature, and obtaining inputs from key informants. This paper shows that, during the last decade, there has been significant progress in land tenure policies that have improved the recognition of customary and other communal land rights and improved women’s land rights. The formal registration of individual rights to customary and community land has now been achieved cost-effectively, with more rights going to women in a number of settings, and without leading to widespread commoditisation or land dispossession. There is a mixed picture, with countries trying different ways to grapple with common challenges such as securing customary tenure rights, unlocking development potential, improving women’s land rights, and managing the contesting interests in land. There are important examples of best practices in some countries that can be learnt from, such as the legislation of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) requirements and processes of large-scale land rights registration. Despite progress achieved in several countries, too many people are not enjoying the benefits of improved land tenure security; some countries still need to adopt new legislation, while others need to improve their implementation of existing legislation. More needs to be learnt from the range of different approaches to dealing with land tenure as national governments attempt to find solutions that accommodate contesting interests. The lessons and trends identified will be of value to country-level and international work on improving land tenure governance. Full article

Forest tenure reforms through community-based forest management programs have gained popularity in the Global South. Agricultural land use and local forest encroachment have caused the global decline of natural forests. Most community forestry (CF) studies have considered local communities as a state intervention target, underestimating their agency in local forest management. Therefore, this study aims to scrutinize land-related and counter techniques employed by the forest department and local communities in Myanmar to determine the incongruent and insufficient arrangement of de jure procedures in state CF programs. The findings reveal that although the CF program is deployed as a land control tool to regain the “reserved forest” status, realizing its institutional goals is difficult owing to local communities’ land utilization practices. Additionally, CF’s rigid institutional approach cannot manage changing, diverse, and minute local land control techniques. Meanwhile, local communities lack the indispensable, customary arrangements, leading to unequal land use, owing to which the state has to become a guarantor of common forest resources. Thus, this nature of contesting encroached forests reveals the need to critically reconsider land rights and invoke more profound steps beyond the framing of the contemporary “bundle of rights”. Full article

In July 2009, African leaders adopted the Declaration on Land Issues in Africa, reaffirming the commitment of African Union member states to effective land management. The declaration emphasizes the protection of land rights for all, with particular attention to women and marginalized groups. Land governance in Africa, which spans various aspects of society, remains a critical issue and is often a source of conflict and instability across the continent. This study examines the legal and institutional reforms of land governance in Francophone Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, and Senegal), analyzing their objectives, outcomes, and the challenges associated with their implementation. In addition, this study highlights examples of both effective and ineffective reform implementations based on case studies from countries with notable successes (Ethiopia, Rwanda, Mauritius, Ghana, and Madagascar) and failures (South Africa and Zimbabwe). Finally, this study offers recommendations for improving sustainable land management while considering social, economic, political, and environmental dimensions. The methodology employed is based exclusively on a systematic review guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) approach, applied to the ROSES (Reporting Standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses) protocol. This approach facilitated the selection of 57 relevant documents retrieved from databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar. Land governance in Francophone Africa varies significantly from country to country and cannot be comprehensively addressed in a study of this scope. Nevertheless, this research study identifies common challenges, opportunities, and measures that could inspire reflection in other countries. In several cases, administrative and customary authorities play central roles in land management. However, their overlapping responsibilities, often marked by corruption, extend procedures and exacerbate local conflicts. Full article

The growing divide between the capitalist mode of development promoted by the state and the participative development model suggested by the people has brought ecology, environment, and existence to the core of all contemporary debates. The Adivasi (indigenes) who constitute 8.6 percent of the entire population of India are engaged in a constant battle to save their ecology and landscape. Represented as communities whose existence is intertwined with ‘Jal, Jungle, Jameen’ (water, forest, and land), Adivasis are the most prominent communities facing dispossession and displacement from their roots to further the ideology of development in which they have no stake. The notion of Adivasis as ‘savage’, ‘primitive’, and ‘backward’ communities that are incompetent of ‘developing’ themselves, resulting in their ‘backwardness’ gets carried over from the colonial to the contemporary period. Exposed to the processes of mining and industrialisation, Adivasis and their ecological resources have been exploited since the colonial period to suit the development model of the state. The Adivasi notion of selfhood was overlooked in the process of making the areas inhabited by them zones of ‘exclusive governmentality’. The paper argues and analyses this transformation process of Adivasis into ecological warriors; a process in which they used their shared, remembered and lived past to assert their customary rights. Basing the study on three environmental movements of state of Jharkhand in Central India, namely the Koel-Karo movement of the 1980s, the Netarhat movement of the 1990s, and the Pathalgadi movement of 2017–18, the study underlines that the Adivasi of Jharkhand anchored on their customary rights as a weapon, to protect their ecology and landscape against various state-sponsored development schemes. Drawing on the methodology of field investigation, interaction with the NGOs, government reports and media reports, the article argues that these community struggles are rays of hope for a global ecological future. Full article

Improving productivity is an important channel for satisfying household food needs through food availability. Increasing the productivity of small-scale farmers is linked to a number of factors, including land access, labor, chemicals, fertilizers and so on. Most farmers resort to expanding their cultivated areas to increase production because of insufficient financial resources available for purchasing inputs during agricultural seasons. This situation, combined with increasing pressure on land, does not favor agricultural production and, by extension, food security. This study therefore assesses the impact of different modes of access to land on agricultural productivity. Regime-switching multinomial regression techniques were used to account for endogeneity bias due to observed and unobserved factors. The results of the study show that access through free loans, tenancy and sharecropping negatively affect agricultural yields. The counterfactual analysis reveals a positive gain estimated at 509.9 kg/ha from land access by landowners. If the lenders were landowners, their gain would be 396.6 kg/ha, whereas the farmers would gain 485.1 kg/ha if they were landowners, and similarly the sharecroppers would gain 389.8 kg/ha if they were landowners. It is clear from these results that improving agricultural yields depends on securing land and requires the establishment of an effective land ownership system. This research impacts land ownership policies, which need to be revised to address customary rights and reduce inequalities in access to secure land. It highlights the way land tenure security drives agricultural advancements and offers actionable recommendations for policy improvements on food security. Full article

The mining industry is indispensable for development, and in developing countries like Ghana, it drives economic growth by generating revenue and creating job opportunities for millions of people. Nonetheless, irresponsible mining results in the deprivation of people’s right to surface land, predominantly held under customary land tenure, with agriculture as the mainstay of livelihood. Mining activities have extensive repercussions for the land tenure system, resulting in the displacement of people, the loss of land rights, and reduced control and access to land. All these impact the economic, environmental, and social conditions of the people in the community. This systematic literature review thoroughly analyzes the impact of mining on land rights in Ghana, revealing complex dynamics, challenges, and possible remedies. To achieve this, 183 of an initial pool of 495 academic journals, research papers, books, reports, policies, and legal documents were critically reviewed. This research reveals the challenges faced by mining-induced communities because of the displacement which has resulted in the loss of ancestral lands and disruption to community life. The displacement is also coupled with economic disparities and social tension. Furthermore, the ripple effects of environmental degradation, such as deforestation, water pollution, noise, and air pollution, have dire consequences on land use and ownership, particularly for communities dependent on natural resources. This review brings to light various responses and effective strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of mining on land tenure in Ghana. These include community engagement strategies, corporate social responsibility initiatives, and legal reforms. This study reveals that mining compensation depends on the duration of the mining lease, therefore implying that the expropriated parties have reversionary interests in their lands. The procedure for giving the land back to the owner is not explicitly outlined in the law. This underscores the need for a review of the law governing mining, sustainable mining practices, and environmental management to safeguard the land tenure system. This review enlightens policymakers, researchers, mining enterprises, and local communities regarding the intricacies of this convergence, offering a foundation for well-informed decision making. It underscores the crucial importance of upholding sustainable development, social fairness, and responsible resource management within the framework of Ghana’s diverse land tenure traditions. Full article

South Africa’s democracy turned 30 years old in 2024. At the same time, its constitutional order and jurisprudence marked three decades since the Interim Constitution and its successor, the 1996 Constitution, came into operation. Coincidentally, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) turned 75 years old in the previous year, 2023. The confluence of these facts is quite poignant in the context of a constitutional text that is often lauded for its commitment to the protection of human rights and the eradication of the injustices of the past, which were firmly entrenched by the segregationist policies of the apartheid regime. At the centre of this hype about South African constitutional jurisprudence is the centrality of international law to the interpretation of the Bill of Rights as well as the development of the common law, customary law, and statutory law. With the UDHR being such a central pillar in the human rights sector, this study set out to determine the extent to which the Constitutional Court of South Africa relied on the UDHR and other international instruments in carrying out the mandate set out above. The study analysed cases delivered by the Court in two separate years, spaced ten years apart. The study did not necessarily attempt to determine a correlation, but simply to use descriptive statistics to determine how often, in those two years, the Court relied on international law in general, and on the UDHR in particular, in its interpretive and legal development mandate. Full article

Globally, the forced displacement of socially vulnerable communities causes significant contestation, irrespective of whether that occurs for mega-projects or smaller infrastructural, agricultural, urban renewal, or property developments. Despite multilateral guidelines for “socially inclusive” development, it is difficult to avoid the marginalization of evicted, local communities. Grounded on the credibility thesis, this article provides a new, theoretical basis for understanding the “social function of property” and how this may be used as a criterion to assess whether development-induced and resettlement projects should be given the go-ahead. Methodologically, this article employs the FAT (Formal, Actual, and Targeted) Institutional Framework to unpack the social function of property. To this end, it analyzes the acquisition and privatization of the common property of Indigenous Peoples to construct the Malaysian Bakun Hydroelectric Project, purportedly Asia’s second-largest dam. The FAT analysis ascertains the following three conditions on which basis projects should be halted: (1) the property of the evicted communities fulfills a critical role in providing social welfare; (2) the said function is disregarded by the expropriating agency; (3) the power divides between the expropriator and expropriated prevent meaningful participation by the latter. This study demonstrates that the social function of property can be effectively measured and validates the FAT Framework as a viable tool to analyze development-induced projects (and policies), with particular reference to expropriation, privatization, and formalization. Full article

This paper examines changes in formal and informal land access rules for women in the Kafue Flats of southern Zambia and identifies alternatives to land privatization. In rural African communities dependent on subsistence production, access to common pool resources (CPRs) such as fisheries, wildlife or wild fruits made an important contribution to household food and nutritional security. In the pre-colonial period, the use of agricultural land and associated CPRs was governed by local institutions of common property, characterized by more-than-human relationships embedded in the local animistic ontology. To examine how women’s pre-colonial access rights were increasingly disregarded in the wake of new statutory laws, we analyzed qualitative ethnographic data on livelihoods and food security from three time periods between 2002 and 2018. The findings show how customary law land tenure has remained important, despite being complemented by statutory law designed to also protect women’s property rights. We conclude that women’s customary access rights to land and CPRs must be taken into account in the drafting of formal legislation, as suggested by successful examples of bottom-up institution building in other regions. Full article

The Nigerian legal system is diverse in that it recognizes several established legal systems that regulate how Nigerians conduct themselves. These legal frameworks include the civil law that was passed down from the British during and after colonization, pre-colonial customary laws and cultural practices, and religious laws (Christian and Islamic laws). Different kinds of norms and laws have subjected Nigerian women to violations of their rights depending on the woman’s cultural or religious affiliation. Such cultural and/or religious practices are usually in opposition to civil law and the Nigerian constitution, which is a custodian of these rights. Moreover, despite the supremacy of the constitution and expected compliance with international human rights treaties that Nigeria has ratified, the fact is that today there are impediments to the effective protection of women’s rights in Nigeria. For instance, although the Nigerian constitution outlaw’s discrimination on the grounds of gender, customary and religious laws continue to restrict the effective implementation of women’s rights, making it extremely difficult to harmonize domestic legislation with international human rights conventions, and also remove discriminatory measures. This article, thus, examines the issues of gender inequality as the basis for agitation for women’s empowerment and women’s rights while also proposing a re-alignment of domestic legislation in compliance with international human rights conventions and treaties, in order to combat cultural and religious norms that flout human rights considerations for Nigerian women. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to highlight the challenges that may arise when these legal systems clash, and how that affects the protection of women’s rights, particularly in view of international human rights treaties which Nigeria has signed and ratified. The article will therefore propose that women’s rights should be protected by seeking to eradicate cultural and religious practices that are discriminatory. This can be achieved by adopting laws which can be interpreted by domestic courts in line with constitutional requirements protecting the rights of women. It is noteworthy that the Nigerian judiciary has declared certain customs and traditions contrary to natural justice, equity and good conscience. Some of the case laws and judicial pronouncements will also be examined in this paper to enable implementation for the protection of women’s rights. The methodology adopted is desk-top legal research where judgments of courts and legislative enactments will form the basis of the findings of this paper. Full article

Agricultural land and forestlands can have multiple uses and generate multiple sources of utility. Although landowners benefit from most of them, society can benefit from others because of their intrinsic characteristics as common-property resources and customary practice. In many Italian territories, the picking of mushrooms is allowed on privately owned agricultural land and in forests. The management of these resources is challenging due to the emerging conflicts between landowners and users. In addition, the pressure exerted by users gives rise to issues on stock preservation, thus contributing to putting biodiversity at risk in contexts already heavily jeopardized by modern agriculture. Through the years, regulation established the primacy of the landowner’s right, introduced a permit fee for users, and set limits on the resource stock to be collected daily. Nonetheless, the relationship between public and private interests in common-property resource exploitation is still controversial. In this paper, we investigate and model a right holder’s decision whether to exploit a common-property resource according to their actual status of being an actual or potential user. The model is developed within the real options valuation framework. In detail, we investigate the entry/exit decision on the exploitation of the resource by considering the uncertainty that affects the resource stock, the entry/exist costs, and the number of rival users. Full article

Reciprocity amongst Māori peoples and the natural world is the foundation of the Māori worldview and natural resource management. Autonomy over resource management and the associated practices is an essential component of Māori wellbeing. This paper investigates the cultural, spiritual, historical, and ecological dimensions of mutton-bird harvesting, to gain a better understanding of the relational approach of Māori natural resource management. Resource management in Aotearoa New Zealand currently lacks the relational approach seen in Māori customary harvests. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify the key values that underpin this cultural practice. Semi-structured interviews identified three key themes: harvesting practices, kaitiakitanga (resource management based on a Māori worldview), and whanaungatanga (kinship between people). Harvest practices had a bottom-up governance approach creating diverse harvesting techniques that adapt to local environments. Kaitiakitanga identified mana whenua rights to decision-making power in natural resource management as a requirement for success. Whanaungatanga also identified relationships and collaboration as a vital component. To optimize the best outcomes for the environment, we advocate for a genuine cross-cultural and relational approach and the inclusion of these practices and values in the governance of natural resources in Aotearoa New Zealand. Full article