‘The law is not for the poor’: Land,law and eviction in Luanda

This article investigates how an existing two‐tiered land tenure system creates a hybrid space that blurs, and essentially questions and problematizes the boundaries of the formal/informal divide as presented within Angolan political and legal discourses. It showcases how urban formality and informality exist alongside each other in Luanda and how people take recourse to both formal and informal channels in attempts to secure housing, land tenure and livelihoods in the city. Through case studies, the article describes how small‐scale farmers in Luanda's northern municipality of Cacuaco lost their lands to urban development in 2009–10 and the ensuing circumstances in which formal rights and informal land tenure became intermeshed and ambiguous. As the case studies illustrate, a gap exists between the legal code and practice on the ground. This gap is represented in how Angola's postconflict land strategy, with its forced evictions and demolitions of houses and neighbourhoods, often with little or no compensation, is at odds with the Angolan Land Law, which states that land may only be expropriated by the state or local authorities for specific public use and must be justly compensated.     

Property and Difference in Nature Conservation

Social science research on nature conservation ascribes enclosures and the consequent evictions and dispossession of local people to unequal power relations. It reveals that the monopoly of power by the state configures new relations between local people and their natural resources, and legitimizes land grabbing. In this paper we build on this literature by engaging two questions. The first question relates to how land tenure regimes enable green grabbing and also configure the participation of local people in nature conservation enterprises. Knowing how land tenure regimes structure the involvement of local people in nature conservation is a necessary step toward an inquiry into the relationship between local people and protected areas. In the second question we ask how historical land tenure allocations enable current configurations of power relations in conservation areas. We use the case study of Mapungubwe on the Botswana‐South Africa‐Zimbabwe borderlands to demonstrate that historical land tenure allocations facilitate land alienation and the marginalization of local people in TFCAs.     

Enclosing the land: Cotton,population growth and tenure in Mali

On-going tenure changes in the cotton zone in southern Mali are discussed. Land tenure in the area is changing and adapting to the rapid agricultural development taking place. This adaptation supports the main tenets of Property Rights Theory (PRT). The driving forces behind enclosure of land rights as described by PRT, such as population pressure and increased market access, are acknowledged. Enclosure takes two forms in the study area. First, some customary authorities in villages where population pressure is relatively high attempt to restrict access to pastures and woods on village land to create exclusive village commons. Second, holdings are being subdivided and farmers are increasingly confining their fields through tree planting. Except around the towns, where semi-formal land sales are becoming increasingly frequent, this individualisation does not imply exclusive and absolute private property to land. Bundles of overlapping rights still exist where various individuals or groups control access to different resources on the same piece of land.     

Finding common ground: relational concepts of land tenure and economy in the oil palm frontier of Papua New Guinea

In the oil palm frontier regions of West New Britain and Oro provinces, Papua New Guinea, customary land tenure arrangements are changing in response to the growing demand for land for agricultural development. This paper examines one aspect of these changes, namely the gifting and selling of customary land for oil palm development to people who have no customary birthrights to the land. By analysing how access rights are maintained over the relatively long cultivation cycle of oil palm (approximately 25 years), and in the context of the rapidly changing socio-economic and demographic environments of the oil palm frontiers, the paper demonstrates that while land transactions seemingly entail the commodification of land, land rights and security of land tenure remain embedded in social relationships. For customary landowners, the moral basis of land rights is contingent on 'outsiders' maintaining particular kinds of social and economic relationships with their customary landowning 'hosts'. In exploring how these social relationships are constituted through the performance of particular kinds of exchange relationships, the paper provides insights into relational concepts of land rights and how these are able to persist in Papua New Guinea's oil palm frontier regions where resource struggles are often intense and where large migrant populations are seeking land for agricultural development.     

Land reform in Namaqualand, 1994–2005: A review

With the transition to democracy in 1994, South Africa was faced with an enormous challenge in redressing the highly unequal and racialized pattern of land rights inherited from the colonial and apartheid past. In Namaqualand, a history of land dispossession and racial segregation presented the new government with a complex set of problems, which led to a series of distinct policy responses within the context of the wider national land reform programme. Land reform in Namaqualand aims to impact positively on local people's access to land, improve livelihood opportunities and develop the local economy. Unique features of the land reform process in Namaqualand include the reform of tenure in the former Coloured Rural Areas, the prominent role played by local municipalities and the heavy reliance on municipal commonage as a form of landholding. This study provides and overview of the process of land reform in Namaqualand since 1994, considering the three elements of tenure reform, land redistribution and restitution of historical land rights. It concludes that, while considerable progress has been made in provision of additional land to historically disadvantaged communities, obstacles remain in the area of post-transfer support to new and emerging farmers.     

"VALUING THE TROPICS": DISCOURSES OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE FARM AND FOREST SECTORS OF FRENCH INDOCHINA, circa 1900–40

The paper examines how land and forest management policies were elaborated in French Indochina circa 1900–40. It places their development in the context of a scientific and economic discourse about the value of land and forest resources, the most appropriate ways in which they might be exploited and the relationship between colonial science and indigenous knowledge. By focusing on debates and laws relating to the development of small‐scale and plantation farming systems (Land Code legislations) and forest management and exploitation (Forest Code legislations) the paper seeks to ground arguments about Western conceptions of the “tropics” within a discussion of national policy development and impacts. Focusing primarily on Cochinchina and Annam (southern and central Vietnam) and drawing on materials from French archives, the paper shows how changes in both attitudes and legislation have had lasting consequences on systems of property rights in forest management and on the place and status of indigenous peoples in Indochina.     

Postrevolutionary land encroachments in Cairo: Rhizomatic urban space making and the line of flight from illegality

After the January 2011 revolution, new and unpermitted constructions on previously empty land went up across Cairo at striking speed. This paper explores a case of such land encroachments carried out by waste collectors in the neighbourhood of Manshiet Nasser in Cairo, Egypt. It begins with theoretical debates about the production of urban space, arguing that the de Certeauian paradigm, in which urban marginals poach or hijack others' spaces evanescently, fails to account for the way such encroachments produce permanent new spaces rhizomatically alongside the pre‐existing order. The paper then turns to a close examination of the events in Manshiet Nasser. Although in a broad view the actors are marginals living in the ‘informal’ city, the conditions enabling the encroachments were such that only the wealthiest and most powerful members of the ‘community’ benefitted. In a context of generalized ‘illegality’, the squatters rely on practical norms and de facto recognitions to obtain some degree of tenure security. Since these efforts rely on and play off legal norms even as the squatters violate them, the paper argues that property rights in this context should be understood not in classificatory terms based on the legal/illegal binary, but rather through a trajectory of ‘becoming‐legal’: a ‘line of flight’ that approaches legality asymptotically.     

Legal Geographies of Catastrophe: Forests,Fires, and Property in Colonial Algeria

Forest fires in Algeria in the 1850s and 1860s suggest a link between environmentally induced catastrophes and the geographies of property and territory in the colony. In eastern Algeria, these fires helped fuel a discussion over the security and reliability of European settlers’ property rights and of the colonial state's ability to guarantee them. Following a brief analysis of forestry policy in France and Algeria, this paper analyzes some of the correspondence and official reports that emerged in the wake of major conflagrations. By the early 1860s, settlers and private forestry companies were calling the colonial state's credibility into question and demanding far‐reaching changes to the property law and land‐use regimes in place in the colony. Eventually, colonial authorities moved to help cement settlers’ property claims, eliminating enclaves and imposing new rules on “native” Algerians’ rights to use the forest. This essay concludes by suggesting that the process of making property private, in Algeria and elsewhere, is informed by perceptions of risk and by the modes of awareness inspired by environmentally induced catastrophic events.     

Contested identities of indigenous people: Indigenization or integration of the Veddas in Sri Lanka

Traditionally, the identity of indigenous people was defined in relation to closeness to nature and use of wildlife resources. Such an identity has been put under pressure due to development programmes, neo‐liberal policies and increasing market economy, forcing these people to redefine their identity within new socio‐economic and geopolitical contexts. Based on ethnographic research, the situation of the Vedda people in Sri Lanka is analysed. First, we unravel how they define their identity through a ‘meaningful relationship’ with the place in which they used to live prior to their displacement because of a large scale development project. Second, we analyse how the Veddas (re‐)negotiate their identity in a context of limited access to land, lack of education, unemployment, and an increasing demand for indigenous tourism. It is found that the Veddas redefine their identity by pursuing two survival strategies: tourist development and re‐indigenization, and integration into mainstream Sinhalese society. Both strategies pose challenges and opportunities.     

产权视角下中国快速城镇化地区的增长与收缩 ——以珠江三角洲东莞市为例

伴随全球化的蔓延,快速城镇化地区的增长与收缩已成为地区发展转型研究中的国际性话题。改革开放以来,珠江三角洲在外来资本和廉价劳动力的双重推动下实现了农村城镇化发展,随之出现了大量的“城乡一体化（Desakota）”混杂空间。然而,2008年的金融危机对城市发展造成了巨大冲击,地区产权结构的不同导致了更新政策的差异,城市中出现增长与收缩并存的新空间现象。基于此,文章从区域农村城镇化的特殊条件出发,结合城乡二元土地产权结构的制度背景,探索珠江三角洲“Desakota”形成的内在因素,并提出理解城镇增长与收缩的分析框架。后危机时代,城市国有土地和集体土地与国家产业政策的匹配程度存在巨大差异,为不同地区带来了截然不同的发展机会。实证分析部分以东莞市为例,通过夜间灯光数据探索城市增长与收缩的空间分布特征,同时结合典型地区的案例分析,从产权视角切入分析地区出现差异化发展的机制。土地是决定地区发展方向的本质性因素,城市中产权明确且结构单一的国有土地有利于更新置换并实现再增长,而产权零散、用地混杂的集体土地往往因改造成本高而难以推动更新发展,地区出现“穿孔式”收缩。     

Evolution of new regional development interventions in New Zealand: An analysis of the first year of the Provincial Growth Fund

Regional development has evolved in response to shifting local and global priorities. These shifts have transformed both the way we think about regions, their role and how that shapes the outcomes and benefits that might occur from engaging in regional development. Key debates centre around the ability (or desirability) of regional development interventions to unsettle path dependence and “lock‐in” created by past approaches and to create opportunities for alternative development futures and to provide choices between sectoral‐based investments to support economic activity in contrast to a more place‐based approach to regional development. This paper overviews the dynamic nature of regional development to offer reasons for its recent resurgence by highlighting the key debates about the purpose and function of regions and what regional development can or should do. We then discuss the New Zealand context specifically and use the first year of Provincial Growth Fund investments to reflect on how the processes, objectives and goals reflect particular interpretations of the meaning and purpose of regional development. We conclude that a strong adherence to a growth imperative has the potential to reinforce path dependencies at the expense of alternative development pathways.     

The Indigenous Aetas of Bataan,Philippines: Extraordinary genetic origins,modern history and land rights

The Aeta Magbukún of Bataan in Luzon, the Philippines remain one of the least known and documented Indigenous tribes. They retain primarily subsistence hunter‐gathering strategies to supply their basic needs. They also strive for recognition of their ancestral connection with, and rights to inhabit their ancestral forest domains, which is threatened by the expansion of agriculture and urban development by non‐Aetas, primarily the majority Tagalog population. The Aeta continue to endure dispossession, poverty and political discrimination through decades of protracted land rights processes. This review explores the potential use of recent genetic evidence in anthropology and human geography to legitimize the Aeta's status as Indigenous people and contradict the perspective of some governments in the Asia Pacific region who question the existence of Indigenous peoples generally, often from fear of land tenure and associated political repercussions. The acquisition and use of genetic research on Indigenous populations is both socially and politically contested through fear of the potential to jeopardize sovereignty claims and lead to biologically‐based discrimination. However, the full implications of the potential use of genetic research to legitimize Indigenous status, as described within this research, has yet to be thoroughly explored. By exploring both the genetic and anthropological evidence using a case study of the Indigenous Aeta, this paper provides a unique approach to building a case for Indigenous rights, occupation, use of ancestral lands, self‐determination, and ultimately, recognition as Indigenous people.     

Economics of mining law

Modern mining law, by facilitating socially and environmentally acceptable exploration, development, and production of mineral materials, helps secure the benefits of mineral production while minimizing environmental harm and accounting for increasing land-use competition. Mining investments are sunk costs, irreversibly tied to a particular mineral site, and require many years to recoup. Providing security of tenure is the most critical element of a practical mining law.Governments owning mineral rights have a conflict of interest between their roles as a profit-maximizing landowner and as a guardian of public welfare. As a monopoly supplier, governments have considerable power to manipulate mineral-rights markets. To avoid monopoly rent-seeking by governments, a competitive market for government-owned mineral rights must be created by artifice.What mining firms will pay for mineral rights depends on expected exploration success and extraction costs. Landowners and mining firms will negotlate respective shares of anticipated differential rents, usually allowing for some form of risk sharing. Private landowners do not normally account for external benefits or costs of minerals use.Government ownership of mineral rights allows for direct accounting of social prices for mineral-bearing lands and external costs. An equitable and efficient method is to charge an appropriate reservation price for surface land use, net of the value of land after reclamation, and to recover all or part of differential rents through a flat income or resource-rent tax. The traditional royalty on gross value of production, essentially a regressive income tax, cannot recover as much rent as a flat income tax, causes arbitrary mineral-reserve sterilization, and creates a bias toward development on the extensive margin where marginal environmental costs are higher.Mitigating environmental costs and resolving land-use conflicts require local evaluation and planning. National oversight ensures that the relative global avaliability of minerals and other values are considered, and can also promote adaptive efficiency by publicizing creative local solutions, providing technical support, and funding useful research.     

Community Forest Owners Evaluate a Decade of Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Mexican Cloud Forest: The Importance of Attention to Indigenous Sovereignty in Conservation

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have taken a variety of forms that depend on many mediating factors, such as national and local politics, land tenure, regional collective action, the capacity of intermediaries, and socio-ecological context. This diversity has produced unsurprisingly mixed experiences, with many falling short of achieving the twin goals of environmental and social benefits and some causing adverse consequences. This study examines one rare PES case that has contributed both to forest conservation and to community livelihoods. In this study, community forest owners from four indigenous communities in the Mexican cloud forest evaluate their participation in ten years of a public PES program to support watershed stewardship. We argue that attention to indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in program implementation contributed to widely appreciated socio-environmental benefits. Though many PES programs are implemented in indigenous communities, scholarly debates have rarely dealt directly with these issues.     

Impacts of – and farmers’ adaptation to – land allocation policies in the north central uplands of Vietnam

A series of policies on land tenure have been implemented in Vietnam following the doi moi restructuring. This study assesses the impacts of these policies, the extent to which they have had intended effects and coping strategies adopted by farmers. Data were collected in five upland villages in Nghe An Province, North Central Vietnam. The intended effects of the land allocation policies were poverty alleviation, intensification of agriculture, agricultural modernization and forest protection. The policies implemented to achieve these goals include changes in land allocation, purportedly to increase land tenure security. However, the policies have been implemented in a very uneven manner and the effects differ widely due to differences in the local contexts in which they have been implemented. In general, farmers perceive the impacts of policies as adverse and have attempted to cope with their impact in a variety of ways. The paper argues that land allocation policies have: (1) decreased the amount of land available, (2) not improved land tenure security and (3) had a limited impact on farming practices. The differences between the five villages are great, demonstrating the very different results produced by national policies depending on the specific implementation modality and the local context.     

Aborigines and land in Northern Australian development

Northern Australian development has been based primarily on land ownership and the commercial exploitation of resources. Aborigines, lacking legally recognised tenure to land, have largely been excluded from this process. Their priorities for development have rarely been considered. Aboriginal land rights legislation theoretically transforms this situation. But, because of external pressures, Aboriginal land owners have to a large extent continued to follow the conventional development path through the establishment of enterprises. Factors such as physical isolation, lack of management expertise and the demands for reciprocity in Aboriginal society have inhibited the success of such enterprises. This paper, focusing primarily on Aboriginal pastoral operations, discusses these issues and illustrates some alternative forms of land and resource use which suggest that Aboriginal development priorities have a stronger social orientation.     

“Die man is die hoof en vat voor”: Women's attitudes to land and farming in the communal areas of Namaqualand

In the former coloured rural reserves of Namaqualand, land is held under an evolving form of communal tenure. This study, using in-depth interviews with both women farmers and non-farmers in Namaqualand, explores women's attitudes towards land and their experience of agriculture. It finds that women gain access to land for residential and production purposes mainly through dependent relationships with husbands, fathers and sons, and that unmarried women find it virtually impossible to obtain land rights in their own name. In the event of divorce or widowhood, women are vulnerable to loss of land rights and other resources. Women were found to engage in a range of agricultural activities, both on land allocated for their own use and on land controlled by male relatives, while a few better-off women engage in independent livestock farming. While the South African government's land reform programme has extended the area of communal land and attempted to secure the rights of existing land holders, this has largely benefited existing male farmers and appears to offer little to women farmers. Women's attitudes to the patriarchal system of land holding were found to be largely conservative. Few are willing to challenge the highly gendered nature of land rights within families, and women generally feel excluded from public processes around land. Nonetheless, women in the study expressed a demand for more secure access to land and an interest in agriculture as part of wider livelihood strategies.     

WILDLIFE CONSERVATION AND BAMBOO MANAGEMENT IN CHINA'S SOUTHEAST UPLANDS*

ABSTRACT. The subtropical forests, grasslands, and wetlands of Southeast China's Wuyi‐Daiyun Mountain Range provide essential habitats for diverse wildlife, including a dwindling population of tigers. Three primary protected areas, the Meihuashan, Wuyishan, and Longxishan Nature Reserves, contain varied wildlife habitats and also provide natural resources for 7,000 people in several dozen villages. A field‐based study of land use and habitat quality in these reserves shows that anthropogenic bamboo forests are among the least valuable habitats for wildlife but that, as the primary source of household income, bamboo monoculture is spreading rapidly and replacing habitats of greater ecological value. Although authorities in Meihuashan have demarcated the many broadleaf forest patches for strict protection, household income and bamboo‐management research in all three reserves suggests that successful habitat conservation may ultimately depend on more equitable systems of land tenure, improved cooperative cottage industries, and greater local economic diversification.     

Land tenure and forest cover change. The case of southwestern Beni,Bolivian Amazon, 1986–2009

As land use change continues to increase throughout the Amazon basin, there is a pressing need to accurately map, quantify and assess the effects of different factors on forest cover change (FCC). Land tenure may sometimes have important effects on forest cover, yet such effects remain poorly understood in Amazonia, particularly outside Brazil. In this paper we assess whether significant differences in trends of FCC can be partially explained by different land tenure arrangements, using a case study in southwestern Beni (Bolivian Amazon). We examine spatio-temporal dynamics of FCC across four land tenure systems (indigenous titled territory, protected area, logging concession, and private land) by classifying forests using a time-series of Landsat satellite imagery consisting of four dates (1986, 1996, 2001, 2009). Specifically, we unravel (1) trends in early growth and old-growth forest extent, including changes in total cover area, annual change rates, and spatial change dynamics, and (2) trends in old-growth forest fragmentation. To better understand the association between land tenure and FCC, we qualitatively assess the potential role that other underlying and proximate drivers may have had in FCC over the study period. We found that private lands underwent, by far, the largest FCC, that indigenous territories and the protected area had little FCC, and that logging concessions were responsible for the lowest FCC. Our findings suggest that land tenure played a key role in FCC except in private areas, where many other drivers had operated. Our study sheds light into the potential role of land tenure in FCC and has important implications for public policies aimed at socioeconomic development and environmental conservation in the Amazon. We give some policy recommendations drawn from a biocultural conservation perspective that could contribute to implement more inclusive conservation policies in the region.     

基于产权视角的快速城镇化地区农村土地流转模式及其效益研究——以湖北省熊口镇为例

快速城镇化地区面临建设用地扩张和耕地资源保护的矛盾,农村土地流转已成为农业规模化、产业化和集约化发展、解决当前快速城镇化地区用地矛盾的重要举措。但由于土地权属不清、土地功能发生转变、流转各方利益冲突与保障措施等问题未能得到有效解决,土地流转推进受到阻碍。本文运用产权理论,以快速城镇化地区湖北省潜江市熊口镇为研究对象,通过访谈、问卷调查等方式研究不同土地流转模式中土地性质、运作机制、产权关系、流转收益变化等,并运用主成分分析法对问卷进行统计分析,定量评价土地流转各方满意度及满意要素需求。研究表明:熊口镇现存的4 种土地流转模式中,“农户+政府+企业”模式由于流转规模大、推进速度快、各方收益得到保障等而成为比较容易接受的流转模式;满意度评价中,涉及农户流转满意要素重要性远远高于政府与企业的满意要素,但其满意度均比较低;在总共15 个要素中,农户对土地流转的整体评价、企业对土地流转中风险控制、土地流转对地方经济带动等因素获得满意度最高。最后对推进农村土地流转制度建设提出了建议。