Sustainable development requires simultaneous attention to economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity in order to meet the needs of present generations without compromising those of the future. Secure tenure over land and resources by all segments of society, and particularly by the poor, has been identified as a critical enabling condition for this to occur. Specifically, tenure is thought to be essential to the eradication of extreme poverty, improved environmental stewardship, and reduced resource consumption (Deininger et al. 2003).
Unfortunately, the laws and customs that define tenure can be complex and difficult to understand relative to more simplistic measures of development such as poverty rates, literacy levels, or biodiversity. To underscore the importance of tenure issues, this monthly update defines some of the ways that populations and individuals can control their resources and illustrates the benefits of secure tenure in the context of development and environmental sustainability.
Understanding Resource Tenure
Generally, resource tenure is defined as the legal and customary rules that govern an individual or a group’s relationship to the land and its resources (FAO 2002:7). Tenure determines who owns a resource, who can use or extract it, and who can exclude others from using it (WRI 2005: 58). More specifically, the rights and obligations associated with tenure include:
- The right to use a resource, or control how it will be used;
- The right to exclude others from unauthorized use;
- The right to derive income from the resource;
- The right to sell all or some of the above rights, either permanently through sale or temporarily through a lease;
- The right to pass ownership or use rights to beneficiaries;
- Protection from illegal expropriation of these resources;
- An obligation not to harm others through the use of these resources; and
- An obligation to surrender these rights through lawful actions such as foreclosure (WRI 2005: 58).
Private landholders in both developed and developing countries are typically granted all of the rights and responsibilities associated with a piece of property. Less commonly, rights may be shared by different groups. For example, an indigenous group may have exclusive rights to harvest non-timber resources in a government-owned forest, while a logging company may be granted a concession to harvest and sell timber.
Tenure over resources is generally controlled in one of four ways (FAO 2002:8):
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1. Private: An individual or group has exclusive control over land or resources.
2. State: Resources are owned by a central or local government.
3. Communal: Each member of a community has rights to use the resources from a parcel of land or a marine area, e.g., a common grazing pasture.
4. Open Access: Rights are not assigned to these resources, such as in international waters. In practice, open access can occur whenever rights are not enforced.
In many developing countries, resource tenure was traditionally communal and governed by social customs. Customary tenure systems, referred to as "deemed rights of occupancy" are rarely afforded the same legal protection as more formalized, statutory tenure security (Bruce 2004). As countries develop, systems of allocating property rights tend to become more formalized and enforceable through law, often accompanied by privatization. While more formalized and secure property rights are generally considered positive, too much privatization can in some cases undermine the public good if the government does not have the right to secure land for national security or other purposes.
The Benefits of Tenure Security
Both formal and informal systems of tenure can lead to sustainable development as long as tenure is secure, meaning that the rules for managing property are consistent and enforceable (Deininger et al. 2003). In many developing countries, however, property rights can be undermined in a variety of ways. For example, a farmer’s land ownership may be threatened by civil unrest, causing him to postpone long-term investments on his property. Weak enforcement of traditional, customary tenure systems may leave the least powerful groups vulnerable to land grabs (Bruce 2004), or insufficient government regulation of state-owned land can lead to over-extraction and unsustainable pressure on resources.
On the other hand, secure tenure promotes investments in sustainable practices. If an individual or a group has a clearly defined stake in a resource, they are more likely to invest in it for their future benefit and for the benefit of future generations. Clear property rights allow all individuals, including poor and marginalized populations, to generate income by growing food, harvesting resources for use or profit, obtaining credit, or investing in other economic activities (WRI 2005: 59). For example, in many developing countries, more equal access to land correlates with increased economic growth at the national level (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Equality of Land Distribution and Economic Growth, Selected Countries
The Gini coefficient measures the degree of inequality in land ownership. The above figure shows that countries with more equal land distribution policies in the 1960s enjoyed higher economic growth in subsequent decades (graphic adapted from Deininger et al. 2003:18).
On a smaller scale, numerous cases of poverty alleviation have been recorded when tenure is made secure through both private (see Box 1) and communal ownership of land and resources. In Fiji, the reestablishment of locally-managed marine areas led to an exponential increase in the number of clams and other fish available for harvest. The vesting of clear authority over wildlife management and tourism to conservancies in Namibia resulted in both wildlife recovery and the generation of more than $2 million annually in additional income. When government agencies in Darewadi, India gave local villagers the right to work on state-owned common lands, it enabled a restoration of local watersheds that doubled in a decade the amount of farmland that could be irrigated. These stories are explained in more detail in the 2005 edition of the World Resources report.
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Box 1: A Success Story in Niger
In the past 30 years, tree planting on at least 7.4 million acres in Niger has slowed desertification and generated additional income for farmers in one of the poorest countries in Africa. This success, highlighted in the mainstream media after recent satellite images surprised scientists, is due to both collective action by poor farmers and a change in tenure policies. Since colonial times, the Niger government had assumed exclusive ownership over trees, but had few resources to control these rights. The result was rampant deforestation and systematic removal of saplings by poor farmers. With a change in government policy that allows landholders to own trees, farmers now preserve tree cover in order to generate income from the tree’s branches, pods, fruit, and bark (New York Times, February 2007).
Satellite images of Galma village, Niger, in 1975 (left) and 2003. The black dots represent tree cover. In a 30-year period, tree cover in Galma more than doubled in the village's cultivated upper plateau and increased more than 30-fold in agricultural parkland (Source: Reij 2006).
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Navigating a Path to the Future
The path to secure resource rights is complex, involving in some cases the recognition of informal rights and in others the codifying and enforcement of formal rights. While tenure security is taken for granted in much of North America and Western Europe, other regions face unique challenges. African governments are working to balance customary systems with the formal systems established during the colonial era. Much of Eastern Europe is transitioning from collective ownership to more privatized rights, and Latin American countries are struggling to address persistent inequalities in land and resource rights (Deininger et al. 2003).
To complicate matters, the full benefits of successful tenure reform are not felt for decades. Nonetheless, these issues remain vital to both poverty alleviation and environmental protection, and an understanding of their importance and application is necessary for anyone who is working to promote sustainable growth.
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RELATED LINKS:
CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights
International Land Coalition
FAO Natural Resources Management and Environment Department
World Bank Land Policy and Administration Division
International Association for the Study of the Commons
Rights and Resources Initiative
EarthTrends Links:
How Community-Based Resource Management Can Benefit the Poor
The EarthTrends Poverty Resource
Environmental Institutions and Governance Data Tables
RELATED WRI PUBLICATIONS
The Wealth of the Poor: Managing Ecosystems to Fight Poverty
Governance and Access Publications at WRI
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