This open access book presents a nuanced and accessible synthesis of the relationship between land tenure security and sustainable development. Contributing authors have collectively worked for decades on land tenure as connected with conservation and development across all major regions of the globe. The first section of this volume is intended as a standalone primer on land tenure security and its connections with sustainable development. The book then explores key thematic challenges that interact directly with land tenure security, followed by a section on strategies for addressing tenure insecurity. The book concludes with a section on new frontiers in research, policy, and action. An invaluable reference for researchers in the field and for practitioners looking for a comprehensive overview of this important topic. This is an open access book.
This publication deals with key issues in land tenure, especially as they relate to food insecurity and rural development situations. Land tenure issues are frequently ignored in rural development interventions, with often long-lasting, negative results. This guide is designed to assist technical officers in governments and civil society in understanding why and how land tenure issues should be considered in rural development projects. It analyses important contexts such as environmental degradation, gender discrimination, and conflicts, where land tenure is currently of critical concern.
Drawing from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Vietnam, and the Amazon forests of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, this book explores the relationship between gender and land, revealing the workings of global capital and of people's responses to it. A central theme is the people's resistance to global forces, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods. For instance, in the Amazon, the focus is on the social movements that have emerged in the context of struggles over land rights concerning the extraction of Brazil nuts and babacu kernels in an increasingly globalised market. In Vietnam, the process of 'de-collectivising' rights to land is examined with a view to understand how gender and other social differences are reworked in a market economy. The book addresses a gap in the literature on land tenure and gender in developing countries. It raises new questions about the process of globalisation, particularly about who the actors are (local people, the state, NGOs, multinational companies) and the shifting relations amongst them. The book also challenges the very concepts of gender, land and globalization.
This book gives a brief account of the background to the dual land tenure system in force in Sierra Leone and explains the reasons why the dualism derived from the different colonial experience of the former Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone still persists almost fifty years after the two entities were merged to form a unitary State of Sierra Leone. The book gives an account, for the benefit of both law students and legal practitioners, of the main features of the English derived land law in the Western Area and of the forms of land holding in the Provinces which are governed predominately by customary law. The book also highlights the practical problems that legal practitioners may be confronted with in advising clients wanting to enter into transactions involving land in Sierra Leone and in drafting legal documents for the creation or transfer of interests in land in different parts of the country. By giving an account of developments relating to policy initiatives and by laying bare the achievements and shortcomings of land tenure reform to date, the book aims to stimulate debate on current proposals for reform not only among law students and practitioners of the law but also among policy makers and members of the wider non-legal community It offers a brief but constructive criticism of the dual land tenure system and offers some proposals for reform of the system changes in the light of stated policies.
This book examines the relationship between land tenure, conservation and rural development in the context of the Southeast Asian archipelago. In particular, it is concerned with people living in and around national parks and other protected areas. It discusses the value of reinforcing indigenous tenure and sustainable resource use practices and of including them in policies and projects that attempt to integrate conservation and development.
"This book offers conceptual and empirical studies of land governance, focusing on land management approaches, land policy issues, advances in pro-poor land tenure, and land-based gender concerns. Topics include "Creating new understandings," "Exploring alternative approaches for land management and land tenure," "Viewing vistas of tenure experiences across the globe," and "Stretching the gender perspectives""--
Discussions of land tenure in social anthropology have usually been deeply embedded in broader empirical and theoretical explanations of social, economic, legal, and political institutions. In this volume the editors have sought to correct the emphasis of previous studies by focusing our attention directly on land tenure in Oceania, without, it must be added, losing sight of the connections between land tenure principles and general social structure. The editors have deliberately looked for similarities by analyzing each tenure system from the same analytical and conceptual perspective. Chapters 1 and 9 specifically discuss the methodological and theoretical framework that evolved in the course of analyzing the seven tenure systems described in chapters 2 through 8. The difficulties and problems encountered by the contributors in presenting their data in comparable form is reflected by the more than three years of analysis, writing, editing, and rewriting necessary to complete this volume. The seven substantive ethnographic chapters illustrate the range and diversity in the land tenure practices which are found within the vast culture area of Oceania. The similarities in basic tenure principles between all seven systems seem all the more remarkable in light of the varied geographical and cultural settings of the seven societies. In all of these societies we find a complete absence of fee simple ownership and a corresponding presence of entailed family estates. The ethnography reveals tenure principles that detail an impressive number and variety of separate categories of property. Each category, in turn, includes an even greater number of rights and duties that symbolize different forms of proprietorship. The differential allocation of these rights and duties among persons and groups represents the exact point of connection between land tenure and social structure. For example, kinship principles that specify the distribution of authority within age, sex, descent, and status categories converge on such tenure principles as land use, land distribution, succession, and inheritance. Principles of political organization concerning the relative scaling of authority and power within the society have clear parallels in the land tenure system, where corporate and individual tenure privileges are differentiated. Economic principles subtly merge with land tenure principles in social domains, where land as a resource and land as a value intersect.
In New Mexico—once a Spanish colony, then part of Mexico—Pueblo Indians and descendants of Spanish- and Mexican-era settlers still think of themselves as distinct peoples, each with a dynamic history. At the core of these persistent cultural identities is each group's historical relationship to the others and to the land, a connection that changed dramatically when the United States wrested control of the region from Mexico in 1848.
