Summary of key issues

1
Summary of key issues

• Day 2

2
Historical Context

• Shared access through community membership
• Colonial project required land expropriation
• shared access systems were presented as
  ineffective
• not recognized by law, leaglly invisible
• Therefore considered not to be a right
• Any land not owned belonged to the state

3
Historical Context

• Therefore formal legal system not effective at
  mediating between multiple claims and uses of
  land under common property regimes
• We need to reconsider the concept of ownership
• Perhaps the concept of ownership is unhelpful
• The idea of customary law may be too vague and is
  evolutionary even as society is evolutionary
• May be better to refer to such arrangements as
  group rights

4
Relationships between state and local resource
mgmt institutions

• Where there are pre-existing institutions of
  local management, or even created by the state
  (e.g. Tanzania) there is more scope for
  effectiveness of locally mediated resource
  management
• In highly centralized or predatory states, there
  is much less scope for local resource tenure
  innovations

5
Appropriate land tenure for drylands

• Appropriate for what?
• Equity
• Environmental sustainability
• Economic development/ Efficiency
• Conflict resolution
• Historical restitution
• Others
• What is assumed to be the objective is regionally
  specific
• We need multiple objectives that respond to the
  specific contexts

6
Appropriate for whom?

• National scale and local scale benefits
• Various land users farmers, pastoralists,
  refugees, IDPs, women, orphans, etc.
• Who can decide, influence?

7
Conditions for sustainable innovations for land
tenure institutions

• New market opportunities
• Demonstration
• Crisis
• Alternative income generating activities for men
  and women
• E.g. Mossi plateau example of technical
  innovations in stone lines for soil and water
  conservation conditions were low cost,
  effective collective action, outside party fills
  crucial gap to overcome technical problems.
• E.g. local conventions in the Sahel, pastoral
  passport, cattle corridor, rural code, campfire,
  conservancies
• Property rights reform is only possible under a
  combination of conditions.
• It may be important to recognize when those
  conditions are right instead of trying to create
  them.

8
Process

• Importance of participation what is it and how
  do we do it? The cost of doing it wrong.

9
Elements of a policy for the drylands

• Know the OBJECTIVES of dryland tenure policy
• Address Information Needs
• Governance
• Guarantee Security of Tenure
• Link Natural and Socio-economic Systems
• Support Services
• Cross-cutting Issues
• Role of the state (e.g. in security, water
  development)
• Links between dryland tenure and other NRM
  policies
• Recognize/ accommodate cross-border interactions
• International
• Dryland/wetland
• Rural/urban
• Gender inclusiveness, integration

10
Strategies for Implementing Drylands Policy

• Make sure fundamental are RIGHT before starting
  implementation
• Ensure that overall policy framework in conducive
  to Land tenure reform
• Put in place an iterative process between
  research, policy and practice
• Ensure that institutions, processes are in place
  and are inclusive for implementation
• Learn from ME process and adapt
• Harmonize legal frameworks
• Look for sufficient financing