The revolution over land ownership is still active in many countries despite gains in North America and Europe. Why is land ownership still so contested?
Benjamin Okyere
Those in societies where land ownership regimes have been solidified and well codified have difficulty in understanding the plight of peasants striving to have access to and own land. Philip Raikes writes: “On average, land is more abundant in Africa than in other continents, but most Africans have only very small plots and an increasing number are landless.” Parker Shipton and Mitzi Goheen further add to this statement: “If a single lesson emerges from recent scholarship on African landholding, it is that it is complex, variable, and fluid.” Therefore, however complex the land ownership regimes that exist in Africa, land reform and access to the ownership of land is important for poverty alleviation and economic development. Furthermore, a review of the historical and social development of an inequitable distribution of land in certain societies reveals grave imbalances that were historically institutionalized and are inappropriate for the present day realities and thus need to be rectified.
The Market-Driven Approach
One factor that has both hindered and promoted land reform initiatives has been the global pressure for the free market promoted by the World Bank in the 1990s, which also effectively promoted market-driven land reform as a means to improve the access of poor households to land ownership. However, as in Zimbabwe, these market-driven approaches, inevitably pushed land prices beyond the reach of poor beneficiaries, while governments lacked the funding to acquire land on behalf of the rural poor. Furthermore, market-driven strategies slowed the transfer of land to landless beneficiaries, as land owners played the market to sell their land at high prices and had the option of keeping their land.
Pro-poor Land Reform
Land policies that are more human centered and pro-poor and less driven by economic prescriptions are being promoted by the World Bank. Nonetheless, ongoing land reforms are diversified in approach such as from ‘state-instigated’ as in Zimbabwe, to ‘peasant-led’ as in Brazil, to ‘state/society-driven’ as in the Philippines, to ‘market-driven’, as in some pilot programs in Colombia, Brazil, South Africa and the Philippines. According to Klaus Deininger and Hans Binswanger, the World Bank pro-poor approach has been initiated in South Africa, where efforts were under way to reduce administrative requirements for ‘livelihood projects’ that involve very limited subsidies, so as to strengthen incentives for beneficiaries’ to make their own contributions, and decentralize the implementation of the land reform program. In Colombia, beneficiaries purchased large tracts of relatively unproductive (pasture) land that often generated less revenue than necessary to service interest on their debt (30 per cent of the land value) incurred to purchase the land.
Criticism of the Market-Driven Approach
In the research by Klaus Deininger and Hans Binswanger, in Brazil, allowing market-based acquisition of land by beneficiaries accomplished a faster land reform than expected. Decentralization ensured that the program was targeted to the poor, that it was economically viable, and that it provided incentives for repayment of the land credit. Recent papers by World Bank research staff now accept the advantages of communal tenure and redistributive land reforms over formal individual titles regarding cost effectiveness and equity. Furthermore, Abhijit Banerjee has pointed out that redistributive politically driven reform probably promotes equity as well as efficiency. Market-driven reforms according to Abhijit Banerjee are very expensive, and such a program will not achieve substantial redistribution in the near future. While officially states such as South Africa, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Columbia, and Brazil, to the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and countless others, have accepted the World Bank ceiling programs, they have rejected them in practice. In India, for example,
appropriation of surplus land was carried out only after compensating the owners of the land. The landlords were often successful in receiving more than equitable compensation. However, Monica Das Gupta, Helene Grandvoinnet and Mattia Romani maintain that this placed a huge burden on the public budget, and only a fraction of the land intended for redistribution was acquired.
References
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Borras, Saturnino Jr. (2001). “State-Society Relations in Land Reform Implementation in the Philippines,” Development and Change, Vol. 32 (3): 545–75.
Das Gupta, Monica, Grandvoinnet, Helene, and Romani, Mattia, (2004). “State-community synergies in community-driven development.” Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 40: 27-58.
Deininger, Klaus and Binswanger, Hans (1999). “The Evolution of the World Bank’s Land Policy: Principles, Experience and Future Challenges.” The World Bank Research Observer, Vol. 14 (2): 247–76.
Franco, Jennifer, (2005). “Making Property Rights Accessible: Movement Innovation in the Political Legal Struggle to Claim Land Rights in the Philippines.” IDS Working Paper Series, no. 244 (June, 2005) Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton.
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Palmer, Robin (2000). “Mugabe’s ‘Land Grab’ in Regional Perspective,” in T.A.S. Bowyer-Bower and C. Stoneman (eds.) Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Constraints and Prospects, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 15-23.
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Raikes, Philip, (2000). “Modernization and Adjustment in African Peasant Agriculture.” In Deborah Bryceson, Cristobal Kay and Jos Mooij (eds.) Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, pp. 64– 80.
Rosset, Peter (2001). “Tides Shift on Agrarian Reform: New Movements Show the Way,” Backgrounder, 7 (1): 1–8. Berkeley: Foodfirst Institute.
Shipton, Parker and Mitzi Goheen, (1992). “Introduction: Understanding African Land- Holding: Power, Wealth, and Meaning.” Africa, 62 (3): 307–25.
Toulmin, Camilla and Julian Quan, (eds.), (2000). Evolving Land Rights, Policy and Tenure in Africa. London: DFID/IIED/NRI.
Wolford, Wendy (2003) “Producing Community: The MST and Land Reform Settlements in Brazil,” Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3 (4): 500–20.
Worby, Eric (2001) “A Redivided Land? New Agrarian Conflicts and Questions in Zimbabwe,” Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 1 (4): 475–509.
Wright, Angus and Wendy Wolford (2003). To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil . Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
