Community Land Tenure

Tenure reform is offering Africa an unexpected opportunity to move into a more inclusive and equitable era of social transformation through decolonizing property rights. There is increased recognition that customary land rights can no longer be treated as permissive rights of occupancy on unowned public or government land but as registrable ownership. As community based customary tenure embraces more than 70 percent of the continent, reform in its status challenges the classical routes of growth and wealth creation. Predictably, hesitation and pushback abound. Expanding the scope of public lands is one means through which governments have indulged in grabbing the best community lands for themselves and continue to attempt to do so. Yet, tracks to new property relations between state and citizens cannot easily be closed. The global nature of the reform contributes to its force. This paper will examine tenure reform, and argue that one of many old norms is currently under challenge as reform unfolds: compulsory acquisition as affecting community lands. The paper will argue that overdue adjustments in its conceptual basis and practice could herald a new, fairer era in agrarianism, deeply significant for the continent.

This document presents a critique to state approach of Sacred Grove  Management premised on financial support, co-management and mainstream focus on plantation and infrastructure development. It argues for state recognition and acceptance of community contribution, capacity and control, which have been the cornerstones of this unique practice of culture linked biodiversity conservation with community tenure.

Significant portion of the land in the abodes Indigenous people (IP) comprising one fifth of the world’s territory, is governed under customary law. Inhabited in some of richest yet fragile ecosystems, IP have demonstrated restrain and ingenuity in effectively protecting them, many times better than those maintained under formal systems. Their decentralized local institutions as well as a culture of conservation have ensured sustainable natural resources management, well complimented by the local ecological knowledge (LEK) systems which gets enriched through continuous, adaptive innovations.

This paper presents land governance in Nagaland, India, where communities own 92% of land through un-codified customary laws. However, a strong community-control with tenure arrangements linked to landscape and use, has been able to provide space for a dynamic and innovative climate smart landscape management. Shifting cultivation, practiced by all the tribes over half of the area, is the culture, livelihoods and major food production system. A combination of tenure and interconnected traditional knowledge system, have enabled this practice to adapt to the biophysical and socio-economic changes and also to transform to conservation-oriented land use with high mitigation potential. This demonstrates the potential resilience of such alternate systems to effectively locally respond to global changes.