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The Coevolution of Property Rights Regimes for Land, Man, and Forests in Thailand, 1790-1990
(1994) Feeny, David
"The growth of markets for agricultural products led to the transformation of land rights in Thailand during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rights evolved from usufruct rights to a cadastral survey based system of land tilting. In contrast the commercialization of forestry resulted in the nationalization of forests. De jure state property was for the most part de facto open access. Widespread extra-legal logging and extensions of the areas under cultivation led to rapid and extensive deforestation. While much of this can be characterized as the conversion from low to high value use, both loggers and farmers have had few incentives to take negative externalities into account. Much of the natural resource rents for forest products were captured by government officials and the logging industry. The pattern for agricultural lands, although highly variable, has seen a much broader distribution of rents. Although there are important and notable exceptions, in general agricultural producers who cleared forest lands obtained the ownership rights. In Thailand privatization of agricultural land has been at least weakly associated with a broad distribution of benefits. In contrast, state ownership of forest lands has been associated with a narrow distribution of the benefits. The two property rights regimes have not operated in isolation. Exclusion from de jure state forest lands was unenforceable. While the rents from forests were appropriate by the few, the rents from converting forest to crop lands were captured by the many."
Conflict in Common Property Resource Use: Experiences From an Irrigation Project
(2002) Gefu, Jerome O.
"Many agrarian countries in Africa are experiencing high population growth with an accompanying increased demand for arable cropland. The need to provide food of crop and animal origin to meet ever growing demands necessitates opening up of lands hitherto uncultivated including marginal lands. In many cases, especially where high population densities have led to overcrowding of existing farm lands, agricultural intensification has inevitably resulted. This kind of population-driven agricultural intensification often necessitates the adoption of certain farming techniques such as irrigation procedures and the adoption of agro-chemicals or improved organic farming techniques. Farm lands that were left to fallow for natural regeneration of the soil nutrients are fast disappearing so also are grazing lands which have traditionally provided dry season grazing to pastoralists. "This changing pattern of agricultural production occasioned by population and/or market driven intensification has recently been given national and international support in many parts of Africa. Nigeria is a country that has tended towards this direction. The intention is to boost agricultural production to cope with increased demands. A recent approach has been the support of increased dry season irrigation farming. The objective of the irrigation project is to promote agricultural growth through conjunctive exploitation of surface and shallow aquifer water resources for small holder farm-owned and managed small- scale irrigation development. "Wetlands (fadamas) have alternative and competitive uses among which are: crop farming, grazing, fishing and wildlife hunting. Most fadama land in Nigeria is used largely for rainy season crop production and is left fallow for most part of the dry season for livestock grazing. Pastoralists have found relief in pasturing their animals in the uncultivated wetlands during the dry season. But with the advent of the dry season irrigation project, pastoralists have been denied the access to this dry season grazing resource. The competitive uses to which fadama land is put is the source of potential conflicts amongst the various rural land users. These include conflicts among settled farmers; between farmers and pastoralists; between farmers and fishermen and between fishermen and pastoralists. Furthermore, the development of the fadama areas is an interference on thefadama ecosystem which has the potential of adversely affecting plant and animal species bio-diversity. Thus, a conflict between environmentalists and the actual landless is likely. "This paper presents the different facets of conflict arising from resource utilization and the principal actors involved. The various modes of conflict resolution are presented with a discussion of the merits and demerits of each settlement mechanism. Conflicts of resource use have been grouped into two distinct categories viz:- 'Within group' and 'Between group.' The most frequent form of tension and conflict is the 'between group' where the farmer/pastoralist conflict is the most significant, involving people of divergent ethnic origins. The method used in resolving conflict depends on the nature and magnitude of the conflict. It was observed that places with a high cattle population recorded the highest cases of conflict between pastoralists and farmers due to limited dry season grazing resources. "Mitigative measures that would ameliorate conflict arising from natural resource utilization are discussed. To implement these, an awareness of principles of sustainable resource management has to be created as well as for chances arising from mutual understanding of resource needs and from the joint simultaneous or consultative use of natural resources among user groups."
Hill Fields, Reforestation, and the Construction of Inequality in Maehongson Province, Thailand
(1992) Tannenbaum, Nicola
"Shan farmers have practiced a mixed rice cropping strategy using both irrigated and hill fields. While the hill forest is crown land and it is illegal to cut timber and make fields, until recently these laws have not been enforced. Farmers cleared a hill field, used it for one crop of rice and, perhaps, a second crop of sesame and then left it fallow for ten to fifteen years. Farmers only had usufruct rights to the field and they retained no residual rights to reclear the land; once the trees grew back any one could clear it and plant rice. Due to the increasing deforestation in Thailand and the market for plantation grown teak many hill areas are being re-planted in teak. Reforestation appeals to international ecology movement and benefits the military and elites who gain from the timber concessions. The amount of land available for swiddens is rapidly decreasing with negative consequence for the farmers who relied on it to meet their subsistence requirements. "In this paper I show how use of this common property has changed from maintaining relatively egalitarian economic relationships within the community to a means of reinforcing the wealth differences on both a national and local scale."
The Influence of Community Level Institutions and Their Governance on Use and Management of Forest Resources in the Hills of Nepal
(1998) Shah, Shree G.
"Between 1965 and 1995, forests including shrub land in Nepal have been shrinking on average 24,757 hectares (0.83 percent) per year. In general, increasing demand for forest products to maintain a rural household, extension of agriculture land in accessible forests, and logging and clear felling particularly in Terai plain and inner valleys are the causes of deforestation in Nepal (Sharma and Amatya, 1978; HMG 1988; NEPAP, 1993 and HMG, 1996). There has been an average decline in forest vegetation and its loss has been much higher in Terai plains and in mid-hills up to 1,600 m. particularly in the vicinity of settlements (Bhattarai 1998). Only about 15 percent of the forests has a crown cover of more than 70 percent (HMG, 1993).... "While some areas have experienced a slight increase in vegetation during the past 8-10 years, no analytical information exists to provide a sound reasoning for such changes. Community forestry programme initiated in mid 1970s and leasehold forestry in early 1990s paved the way for user's participation in development and management of forests. There are a few examples of successful conservation and forest management systems, where rights to forest use and local organisations are involved (Messerchmidt, 1990; Gilmour, 1991; Shah et al., 1998; Shah and Shrestha, 1997). "Forestry development projects have formed community level organisations, locally called user groups and user committees, with responsibility to manage the forests given or leased to them for a fixed period. Little is known about the governance in these local level institutions, the structure of which vary depending upon the projects. It has been hypothesised that the local level institutions are greatly influenced by external factors and that their governance largely affect the use and management of forest resources. "The present paper examined the local level institutions, their rules and regulation and their functioning. Biological and socio-economic aspects of forest resources as influenced by these institutions are analysed in midhill situations, the external factors affecting the governance of local level institutions and the development and management of forests are also assessed."
Race for the Prize: Land Transactions and Rent Appropriation in the Malian Cotton Zone
(2002) Benjaminsen, Tor A.; Sjaastad, Espen
From Introduction: "This paper describes how agricultural land in peri-urban areas of the Malian cotton zone is converted, at a remarkable pace, from inalienable customary tenure to various forms of exclusive and alienable holdings. Around the rapidly expanding and densely settled urban centres, in a rough circle with a radial stretch of some ten to twenty kilometres, agricultural fields have become vehicles in a race. The prize pursued in this race is not so much the land itself as its value; the winner is not necessarily the one who, at the end, holds legal possession but instead the individual who has managed to extract the maximum portion of the lands rent. "The participants are numerous and varied; we find customary land chiefs, farmers with customary rights to till the land, merchants, middlemen, commune employees, district and regional government bureaucrats, and, finally, the Malian state, providing the separation of the latter's objectives from those of its servants is at all meaningful. An equally rich mix of strategies, legal and otherwise, is employed, and not just because of the multitude of objectives; in a transitional environment characterized by both legal pluralism and governmental impotence, novel ways to gain advantage thrive. "This text is exploratory, and much work remains to be done with regard to land transactions and rent appropriation in the study area; as cities in the cotton zone expand, a succession of new plots are targeted, and as one race concludes, another begins. Ultimately, however, the findings in this paper support an old lesson. As we shall see, it is mostly the wealthy, the powerful, and the informed that succeed in a race contested under such murky conditions. Although the social fallout of these processes have yet to fully settle, it is plain to see that few winners will be found among the farmers that held original rights to the land. "The information on which much of the paper is based was collected during a visit to the Malian cotton zone in February and March 2001. Besides gathering data on the particulars of 40 odd land transactions in the central part of the zone, interviews were made with district and regional officials, middlemen, land chiefs, court officials, surveyors, and researchers. The main part of the fieldwork took place in the towns of Koutiala (74 000 inhabitants) and Sikasso (114 000 inhabitants). Remaining information was obtained through official documents and literature."
The Robustness of Indigenous Common-property Systems to Frontier Expansion: Institutional Interplay in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor
(2008) Hayes, Tanya M.
"This article compares how indigenous residents in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor of Honduras and Nica-ragua have responded to agricultural expansion in two distinct institutional environments: a reserve under public management and a reserve where the indigenous residents hold territorial rights. The article com-bines institutional analysis with ethnographically-based fieldwork to (1) identify whether the indigenous common-property systems in the Mosquitia remain robust when residents are confronted with private-property institutions and land markets introduced by colonists; and (2) examine the links between main-tenance of the common-property systems and the broader institutional environment. The analysis pays particular attention to how the protected area policies in each reserve impact the transaction costs in-curred in local rule-making and individual land use strategies in response to migrant farmers and ranchers. The findings suggest that the broader institutional environment, specifically the protected area policies and processes, significantly influence the transaction costs and risks involved in collective rule-making, and thereby impact the capacity of the indigenous residents to sustain their common-property systems."
Sustainability, New Intensive Technologies, and Institutional Change
(1992) Ramaswamy, Sunder; Sanders, John H.
"With continuing population pressures and a lack of profitability of intensive production practices, crop yields have been declining and the soil degradation process has been accelerating in much of the Sahel. With mathematical programming, the authors explore the conditions under which farmers would adopot more intensive agricultural practices. The shift from extensive to intensive production practices is associated with decreased availability of land and increased profitability of agriculture. Model predictions are compared with recent technological changes occurring in the region. Some constraints to the introduction of new technologies are identified and several policy measures to accelerate technology introduction are evaluated. Finally, some implications of different technologies and policy measures for communal land use and the evolution of landholding institutions are evaluated."
The Unsuccessful Privatization of Common Property in Spain: Forests and Pastures (A Law and Economics Perspective: The Galicia Case)
(1998) Galilea, Pedro
"In our paper we will analyse the process of the individualisation of common ownership (forests used mainly for agricultural and grazing purposes) in Galicia, Northern Spain, as a reaction by farmers to Government and legal aggressions. It took a long time to obtain this result, as a consequence of the fierce opposition on the part of farmers to earlier attempts to privatise the resources. "However, we will show how the process of individualisation of property was in the end, paradoxically, the only means of defending common ownership and a new effort to intensify Galicia agriculture, above all in the first third of the twentieth century, before the traumatic upheaval caused by the Civil War. "We will start our presentation by explaining the conceptual framework we use in our paper, taken from the New Institutional Economics and the Law and Economics approach. From this perspective, we will explain the structure of mountains property in Spain in the nineteenth century. We analyse the reforms proposed by legislators (inspired by the neoclassical economic doctrines) and the opposition they met from the users of the resources. "This allows us to show the great divide between legal reforms and practice. Next, we will see the evolution of institutions and several attempts at change on the part of the central legislator. But finally, we will see how the peasants' opposition to privatisation turned into a movement in its favour. Ironically, this happened in a much more socialistic context, without State support for these changes."

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