Land Tenure, Property Rights Concepts and Terminology - Law - Lecture Slides, Slides of Law

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Land Tenure, Property Rights Concepts and

Terminology

Land in the News

2

Delegates And

Government Clash On

Customary Land

Families in Kacyiru,

Kimicanga Areas to

Be Expropriated

Rwanda: Land

Registration Complete

Zimbabwe land reform 'not

a failure'

What's Behind International

Land Grabs?

What is land tenure?

1. Land Tenure and Real Property

2. What’s the point of property rights in land?

 Avoiding a free-for-all

 Reducing risks and creating

incentives

 Allowing land to move

among users

 Creating capital - land is a

financial asset

5

What is tenure—A bundle of rights

7

Property regimes

 Individual property: Strands of property bundle are held by a natural or legal person

 Community property : Strands are shared among members of a community or association

 Public (or state) property: Strands are concentrated, held and managed by the government

 Terra nullius : Land to belongs to no one. Does it exist?

What is a tenure system?

1. Includes all the tenures present within a given polity, for example a nation
2. Consists of:

 Tenures (several bundles of rights and responsibilities which compliment each other) and  Institutions (land management/administration), with  Connections to larger systems (e.g., economic, political, social systems), which produce certain  Results (equity, efficiency, or more narrowly, security, productivity, distribution, marketability, credit access)

3. Most developing countries include several sub-systems from different sources

What is customary land tenure?

1. A body of norms generated and enforced by a community to govern the use of land by its members.
2. Best not regarded as informal, because it enjoys social sanction by a polity. An alternative formality.
3. Customary tenure does not = communal tenure.
4. Is it necessarily old and unchanging?
5. Is it insecure?
6. Is it headed for “the trash bin of history”?
7. Strategies: replacement, recognition, adaptation or …?
8. Increased urgency: land market globalization

What is common property?

1. A “commons” a community-

managed resources whose use

is shared by members

2. Common property vs.

 open access resources

 communal land tenure

3. Two key factors in analysis of common property:

 Tenure (the group right)

 Management (institutions)

What is land reform?

13

Type of Reform Interventions

Reforms that strengthen property rights and security

 Land law reform (land tenure reform)  Land formalization (titling and registration)  Reform of land management/ land administration

Reforms that strengthen access

 Redistributive land reform  From large private holders, or the state  Expropriation or market mechanism  Tenancy reform and other law reforms  Restitution  Resettlement

Regulatory interventions

 Land use planning  Land consolidation

What is land formalization?

1. Informality = insecurity? 2. Titling: the state confers a title on an

individual in specified land, either by grant or by recognition of a pre-existing right

3. Registration: creation of an official, public

record of the right (title registration) or the document creating the right (deed registration)

 Sporadic: Demand driven, private initiative.

 Systematic: Policy driven, public initiative. 14

16

Country Projects Area (000 ha) Median Size (ha)

Domestic Share Cambodia 61 958 8,985 70 Ethiopia 406 1,190 700 49 Liberia 17 1,602 59,374 7 Mozambique 405 2,670 2,225 53 Nigeria 115 793 1,500 97 Sudan 132 3,965 7,980 78

Data for 2004-09 except for Cambodia and Nigeria which cover 1990-2006. Domestic share is proportion of total transferred area allocated to domestic investors: Source: The World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland, 2011.

Where are large scale acquisitions taking place?

Points to take away

1. Always query key terms. Does “security of tenure” imply transferability? And what is “private property”? Is it ownership, or may it be something less?
2. “Tagging” a phenomenon can tilt the whole discourse on that phenomenon; e.g., “land-grabbing”
3. Use of politically emotive language confuses matters: A constitution provides: “Land belongs to the people”
4. Statutory definitions complicate matters: e.g.: “In this law, ‘ownership’ means a right to use land for the life of the user.” Pay attention to definitions in statutes.
5. Remember, one man’s “reform” is another’s deform (sic).