The politics of indigenous land rights Brazil

Brazilian indigenous rights policy has been exclusionary. As a result indigenous people and their supporters have mobilised and politicised indigenous issues. Politicisation led to inclusion of indigenous rights in the 1988 Constitution. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that this process led to a retrenchment of interests opposed to indigenous rights. This analysis compares the asymmetric access to the policy‐formation process granted to political and economic interests and indigenous people. The argument is that democratisation has yet to open the policy‐making process to disenfranchised groups such as indigenous people. To illustrate the argument evidence of setbacks to indigenous land rights is examined.     

Ethnic Rights Under Threat: The Black Peasant Movement Against Armed Groups' Pressure in the Chocó, Colombia

During the past decade Colombia has been experiencing the paradox of, on the one hand, enjoying one of the most advanced constitutional frameworks for the empowerment of citizenship rights in general and ethnic rights in particular, and on the other, suffering from the drawn-out effects of endemic violence and armed conflict. In this paper, the manifestation of this paradox in a specific context, that of the black peasants' land rights movement in the Chocó region, is explored. Under the aegis of the 1991 Constitution, organisations of black peasants have been making headway in filing for and receiving substantial collective land titles on the basis of a discourse of black ethnic rights. At the same time, and not coincidentally, various armed actors such as the FARC guerrillas and paramilitary forces have made violent inroads into this region. The violence has led to internal displacement, social uprooting, and the disruption of the organisational efforts of the black peasantry. This has put the process of ethnic construction and mobilisation under severe strain. However, black peasants' organisation have been trying to use the land entitlements as a tool to mount a counterstrategy against the violence inflicted by the armed groups.     

Agrarian adaptations in Tajikistan: land reform,water and law

In Central Asia, agriculture and water management have ranked as the two most important economic activities in this arid environment. These activities gained even more prominence during the Soviet era as planners expanded irrigation into previously marginal land that bolstered their vision that the best land be allocated exclusively for cotton production. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan has enacted laws meant to expand and clarify land use categories to meet the dual targets of expanding food production within the country while maintaining as much land as possible in cotton production – their economic mainstay. To this end, the Tajik government instituted five categories of land tenure. Though comprehensive, these new dispositions merely mask a continuation of top-down agrarian decision making implemented during the Soviet period. Consequently, this change has created new problems for farm labourers as they struggle to adapt to post-Soviet life and negotiate with the new bureaucracy in the face of ‘de-modernization’ and the loss of jobs, wages, and in many cases, access to productive land. This research demonstrates that the means by which the Tajik government expanded food production has contributed to agricultural problems apparent at the time of independence.     

Land grabbing or economic development? A modernisation debate enacted on Bugala Island,Uganda

ABSTRACT

Globally, the phenomenon of large-scale land leasing, or ‘land grabbing’, is the subject of increasing concern. At the heart of the criticism of this phenomenon is the debate over the most appropriate methods of achieving economic development within the context of a rapidly globalising world. This paper analyzes the process and outcomes of establishing an oil palm plantation on Bugala Island, Uganda. The author asserts that tensions over land use within Uganda reflect incompatible understandings of the relations between land and society and distrust amongst stakeholders. In this case, in spite of these incompatibilities and distrust, the plantation has resulted in positive results for both local land users and the national economy. Yet at the same time, it demonstrates a traditional approach to land use that ignores past injustice and does not recognise power differentials.     

Decolonisation and comparative land reform with a special focus on Africa

Abstract

One of the principles guiding the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 was the need to eradicate colonialism and to ensure the total emancipation of African territories and its peoples. The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights adopted in 1981 grants all peoples the right to self-determination, through which to freely determine their political status and pursue their social and economic development. The last two African countries to gain independence from apartheid and white minority rule, namely Namibia and South Africa, have taken different approaches to land and tenure reform. The year 2013 marked 100 years since the enactment of the Natives Land Act 27 of 1913 in South Africa that led to the indigenous majority population having access to only 13% of the land while the white minority had access to 87% of the land. The year 1913 is also the current cut-off point for recognising land claims. The South African government has recently taken initiatives aimed at improving the pace of land reform, which currently stand at 5% of the land being transferred to black South Africans against a target of delivering 30% by 2014. While the government has called for patience in this regard, some urgent intervention is required, lest South Africans lose patience and undertake land invasions on a sustained basis.     

Conservation on contested lands: the case of Namibia's communal conservancies

Community Conservation initiatives have become widespread in several Southern African countries and have also been increasingly involved in disputes over land claims, control of resources and territorial authority. The aim of this paper is to analyse how Communal Conservancies in Namibia are being used by rural communities as tools for gaining or securing access to and control of communal land in a moment when it is perceived as increasingly scarce. Peasants, Traditional Authorities, the State and conservationists all try to influence the use that will be given to contested lands. The paper will focus on two cases: King Nehale Conservancy, a heavily populated mixed agricultural land in North-Central Namibia (Owamboland) and Nyae Nyae Conservancy, a semi-arid land inhabited by a historically marginalised population, the Ju/’hoan San. In both cases Conservancies contribute to an increased control by communities over their land, but also imply the reinforcement of the presence of the State and private capital in communal areas, and become part of the internal struggles among sections of the communities themselves.     

The land question,land grabbing and agriculture in Africa

Abstract

Land grabbing has emerged as a form of production and export of food and biofuels in the Third World by enterprises owned by foreign governments and business entities. Large tracts of land are either leased or sold to these enterprises cheaply by the state, usually with the argument that such land is empty and needs to be put to good use. But land grabbing dates back to colonial times, thus substantially shaping the political economy of such countries as South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe. It is therefore fitting at this conjuncture to discuss land grabbing in its holistic and historical context, noting that smallholding agriculture juxtaposed against large scale commercial farming will for a long time define agrarian class struggles, the character of the state and the project of nation building.

Over the last decade or so land distribution in Zimbabwe by the Mugabe government was assumed to be heading for disaster. Recent information, however, reveals that productivity has improved, tobacco exports are improving and smallholders accessing affordable farm input and markets while getting a fair reward for their labour behave no differently from large scale commercial farmers. In the final analysis the issue of equity and poverty elimination needs to be central in addressing the land and agriculture question in Africa.     

The dark underbelly of land struggles: the instrumentalization of female activism and emotional resistance in Cambodia

Facing land grabs and eviction in the name of development, women worldwide increasingly join land rights struggles despite often deeply engrained images of female domesticity and conventional gender norms. Yet, the literature on female agency in the context of land struggles has remained largely underexplored. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, my findings suggest that land rights activism in Cambodia has undergone a gendered re-framing process. Reasoning that women use non-violent means of contestation and are less prone to violence from security personnel, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) push women affected by land grabs and eviction to the frontline of protests. Moreover, female activists are encouraged to publicly display emotions, such as the experienced pain behavior that sharply contrasts with Cambodian norms of feminine modesty. I critically question this women-to-the-front strategy and, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s politics of emotions approach, show the adverse risks for female activists. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the instrumentalization of female bodies and emotions in land rights protests perpetuate gender disparities instead of strengthening female agency in the Cambodian society and opening up political space for women.     

Social cohesion for the unfinished business of land reform in South Africa

Abstract

This article aims to discuss social cohesion as an alternative instrument to address the ever dragging land question in South Africa. Although there are various activities that have been undertaken and policy programmes that have been proposed, all those initiatives have not been able to completely translate land reform policy into practice as intended. Other than recognising the ‘willing seller-willing buyer’ policy which appears not to have been internalised by the stakeholders concerned, this article also presents a transformative approach for both white land owners and black emerging farmers to work together in a tolerant and amicable manner. The most critical step that is required for land reform in the whole country is a public consultation process for government to be able to engage with all parties and to put a list of informed alternatives on the table for discussion. Obviously, that includes the willing seller willing buyer policy. Based on the outcomes of such discussions, the government has to play a mediation role to heal the racial division caused by the Natives Land Act of 1913. In short, this discussion presents social cohesion to heal the past without land owners perceiving transformation policies as apartheid in reverse.     

Mining with a ‘Vuvuzela’: reconfiguring artisanal mining in Southern Zimbabwe and its implications to rural livelihoods

The rural landscape of Zimbabwe has dramatically changed in the last decade. Zimbabwe inherited a racially biased land ownership pattern at independence in 1980 and 20 years on efforts by the state to address the colonial land imbalances have been largely unsuccessful. In 2000 the Zimbabwe government embarked on a controversial rapid land redistribution exercise that saw vast tracts of land previously owned by white commercial farmers taken over and distributed to mostly black Zimbabweans. Some authors have argued that there is no single story of the Fast Track Land Reform and Resettlement programme because of the myths and realities spread by the media. It is important to note that what happened in one province might not be similar to the other. Rural dwellers in the countryside had for years depended on agrarian livelihoods and the fact that more land had been availed by the state meant better livelihoods. However, this article argues that in spite of a widened horizon to pursue agrarian activities many people have actually drifted away from on-farm to off-farm livelihoods. This is true in the case of southern Zimbabwe where a large number of rural dwellers have chosen artisanal gold mining as a pathway in realising a livelihood. This article therefore focuses on the expansion of artisanal gold mining in southern Zimbabwe; particularly in southern Matabeleland. Using fieldwork as a method of data gathering, the article unravels the development of artisanal mining in this region and how it has been reconfigured after the hosting of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa 2010. In particular it shows how the metal detector technology (the Vuvuzela) availed by the hosting of the Soccer World Cup has found its way to the region and changed the gold panning process. Conclusions drawn from a detailed PhD study revealed that a significant number of southern Zimbabwe gold panners have adopted the metal detector technology as a way of expanding their trade.     

Restoring degraded landscapes: Assessing the utility of biodiversity offsets for the business sector in Africa

Abstract

Increasing pressure for the conversion of tropical and sub-tropical wetlands and forests to alternative land usage raises the possibility that biodiversity offsets will increasingly take centre stage in biodiversity conservation planning and ecosystem restoration discourses. This article explores the major discourses on and utility of biodiversity offsets in the African context with a view to identifying and articulating some of the challenges and opportunities evident in attempts to operationalise the concept in practice. The discussion establishes that as intuitively pleasing as they have become in recent years, with potentially large benefits expected to be derived from offset initiatives, several significant hurdles need to be overcome for them to become well established practice in Africa. For instance, some observers have argued strongly that, in practice, land use and wetland mitigation in most countries have come nowhere near achieving the goal of ‘no-net-loss’. There are also enduring questions about the credibility of the formulae used to calculate net-losses and net-gains in biodiversity offset schemes. In the light of these and other outstanding questions, the article concludes that biodiversity offsets may seem simple but are much more complex to design and implement to the extent that they become really convincing as a conservation tool for businesses in Africa.     

Coercive capacity,land reform and political order in Afghanistan

This article compares four historical periods in Afghanistan to better understand whether land reform in the post-2001 context will improve prospects for political order. Its central finding is that political order can be established without land reform provided that the state is able to establish and maintain coercive capacity. However, the cost of establishing political order mainly through coercion is very low levels of economic development. We also find that when land reform was implemented in periods of weak or declining coercive capacity, political disorder resulted from grievances unrelated to land issues. In addition, land reforms implemented in the context of highly centralized political institutions increased property insecurity. This suggests the importance of investing in coercive capacity alongside land reform in the current context but also that establishing inclusive political institutions prior to land reform will increase its chances of success.     

Adivasiness as Caste Expression and Land Rights Claim-Making in Central-Eastern India

ABSTRACT

The adivasi population represents a special case in India’s new land wars. Strong individual and community rights to agricultural and forest lands have been enacted for this group based on notions of adivasi identities as primeval, but without linking these to economic and political influence. This article interrogates the adivasi land question seen through a caste lens. It does so via case studies in two states to understand the ways in which adivasi identity can be mobilised for its instrumental value and used to demand land rights. In Andhra Pradesh, the Supreme Court’s Samatha Judgement has prevented virtually all private mining activities. In Jharkhand, however, similar legislation is seen to be trumped by the national Coal Bearing Areas Act, as well as by former and current land acquisition acts that allow industrial land claims to take precedence over identity-based ones. Available evidence indicates the challenges involved in bringing support for land rights that are premised on a supposedly unchanging adivasi identity when these rights go against dominant interests. This circumstance serves to highlight the possibilities present in caste analysis to understand the plight of adivasis, despite their usually distinct treatment in scholarly analyses.     

Large-scale land deals,global capital and the politics of livelihoods: Experiences of women small-holder farmers in Chisumbanje,Zimbabwe

Abstract

Large scale land acquisitions by foreign conglomerates in Zimbabwe have been a recurrent phenomenon within the last five years. This has led to land deals being negotiated with state, individual and nongovernmental actors, leading to the production of agro fuels. This article investigates how the large scale commercial land deals have affected the livelihoods of women small holder farmers, the role of global capital in entrenching discrimination of women and how the politics of resource use and distribution has become a central force in shaping livelihoods in Zimbabwe's communal areas. The article is based on field work that was conducted in Ndowoyo communal area, in Chisumbanje village, from July 2011 until April 2012. The methods used for collecting data were in-depth interviews with the women, interviews with officials from the Platform for Youth Development, a nongovernmental organisation, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, focus group discussions and personal observations that involved interactions with the women. In 2011, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, both bio fuels companies owned by Billy Rautenbach started green fuel production operations in Chisumbanje and this has led to the altering of the livelihoods systems of women smallholder farmers. The argument seeks, first, to demonstrate how the company‘s green fuel production systems have led to the loss of land for women and the redefinition of tenure in a communal area. Secondly it explores how the company has been involved in political issues that have undermined the role of development for the women and, thirdly, the article investigates how the women have created livelihood alternatives in an area which has been transformed from a communal rural area into almost an urban area. It concludes by suggesting the need to give primacy to women centred notions of agency in coping with the negative implications of commercial land deals on women‘s livelihoods.     

SOUTH AFRICAN LAND REFORM: CASE-STUDIES IN 'DEMAND' AND 'PARTICIPATION' IN THE FREE STATE

This article offers an ethnographic cross-section in one provinceof South Africa's new land reform programme. ‘Demand’and ‘participation’ are the rhetorical keywordsof the programme. Demand for land redistribution, however, cannotbe understood in abstraction from the political and economicconditions of its supply. Similarly, ‘participation’is a managed process involving many institutional intermediaries.A series of illustrative case-studies is presented, relatingto the allocation of state-owned land; state-facilitated ‘market’access to privately-owned land; the reconstruction and partialprivatization of a para-statal development agency, which havebrought into question the viability of a ‘community conservation’project and also exposed the agency to political cross-fire;and, finally, some intricacies of the possibility of land restitutionto people dispossessed under apartheid, which raises the questionof whether the concept of indirect racial discrimination maybe applied in the South African context. Several contradictionsof the process of land redistribution are analysed: for example,the massive financial costs, direct and indirect, of bringingprojects to fruition in the short term, without resolution ofthe need for long-term support; the divergence between nominaland actual beneficiaries; political and institutional conflicts,both inside and outside the state; and routine incompatibilitybetween the diverse aspirations of beneficiaries and the ‘businessplans’ required by bureaucrats and suppliers of credit.     

Land policy in post-independence Eritrea: A critical reflection

After a brief review of the traditional land tenure systems in a historical perspective, the article attempts to identify and discuss the main tenets of the post-independence government's land policy and explains the reasons underlying the government's decision to opt for state ownership, in spite of the bleak track record of such a property rights regime, instead of building on the wealth of the historically transmitted, culturally embedded, and socially sanctioned tenurial regimes in the country. On the surface, there appear to be well-thought-out arguments underlying the government's land policy as underpinned by the land law. This article questions the main assumptions and the reasons that support this policy.     

Are the Odds of Justice “Stacked” Against Them? Challenges and Opportunities for Securing Land Claims by Smallholder Farmers in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

In 2012, the Government of Myanmar passed the Farmland Law and the Vacant, Fallow, Virgin Land Law, with an aim to increase investment in land through the formalization of a land market. Land titling is often considered “the natural end point of land rights formalization.”¹1 Hall et al. 2011 Hall, Derek, Philip Hirsch, and Tania Murray Li. 2011. Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia. Singapore: NUS Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 35. A major obstacle to achieving this in Myanmar is its legacy of multiple regimes which has created “stacked laws.”²2 Roquas 2002 Roquas, Ester. 2002. Stacked Law: Land, Property and Conflict in Honduras. Amsterdam: Rozenberg. [Google Scholar], 11. This term refers to a situation in which a country has multiple layers of laws that exist simultaneously, leading to conflicts and contradictions in the legal system. This ambiguity is often manipulated by those who have more access to political and economic resources, particularly those who received large land concessions under the 1988–2010 military regime. In this context, this paper attempts to answer the question: In Myanmar, how do smallholder farmers engage with a stacked legal framework, which is ambiguous and unfairly applied, to defend themselves against land dispossession? The analysis seeks to contribute to the literature on the contest over land control and access through an analysis of how a stacked legal framework can be used to further disenfranchise farmers by elites, or on the contrary, by farmers to gradually reclaim this control through strategic political maneuvering.     

Caste in Stone? Exploring Caste and Class Dimensions of Conservation Displacement in Central India

ABSTRACT

This article explores the caste and class dimensions of the local resource politics of conservation displacement. Through long-term study of a conservation displacement site in central India, it interrogates how alliances and rivalries contoured along historical class-caste contestations result in differential patterns of recovery from “green grabbing” and exclusionary conservation. It is argued that contestations within and between subaltern social groups, traditional dominant castes and newly upwardly mobile peasant castes are geared towards cornering resource flows associated with the local welfare/developmental state. Given severely limited avenues of gainful employment for the rural poor in the neo-liberal era, access to the local gatekeeping economy shapes trajectories of accumulation and decline in the context of India’s new land wars.     

Land Acquisition,Investment, and Development in the Lao Coffee Sector: Successes and Failures

ABSTRACT

Despite the increasing acknowledgment of scholars and practitioners that many large-scale agricultural land acquisitions in developing countries fail or never materialize, empirical evidence about how and why they fail to date is still scarce. Too often, land deals are portrayed as straightforward investments and their success is taken for granted. Looking at the coffee sector in Laos, the authors of this article explore dimensions of the land grab debate that have not yet been sufficiently examined. Coffee concessionaires in southern Laos often fail to use all of the land granted them and fail to produce high yields on the land they do use. Thus, the authors challenge the often-assumed superiority and effectiveness of large-scale versus small-scale production, specifically the argument that they modernize agricultural production and optimize land use. They argue that examining failed investments is as important as studying successful ones for understanding the implications of the land grabbing phenomenon for social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Knowledge about the scale of “failed land deals” provides important motivation for national governments to close the gap between intentions and actual outcomes. This article engages with the current debate on quality of investment and challenges the approach of employing land concessions as a vehicle for economic development in the Lao coffee sector and in other sectors and countries.     

Regulation of Liberalised Network Industries: Infostructure as a Missing Link

The aim of this paper is to evaluate how infostructure has been reformed in the liberalisation process of network industries, which has involved third party access to the network through a comparison of the electricity, railway, and civil aviation sectors in Switzerland. Our theoretical argument posits that infostructure is a missing link in the study of the regulation of liberalised network industries. Infostructure is defined as the control and command services that are necessary for monitoring the access to and optimising the uses of infrastructure. Our empirical comparison of the sectors aims at answering the principle question: What is the impact of the management of infostructure on the liberalisation process and the structure of liberalising markets? This study of the liberalisation of network industries in Switzerland highlights the potential strategic function of infostructure in the context of opening to competition and internationalising markets. Infostructure management can impact infrastructure ownership and service operation in terms of market structure and constrain access to the infrastructure and the market. Infostructure could also weaken the capacity to regulate the entire sector from regulatory agencies, particularly when self‐regulatory arrangements control third party access to the network.