Community Based Natural Resource Management and Community Based Property Rights in Land Reform Law: Zimbabwe's Case

Abstract

"This paper is an attempt to analyse and critic land reform legislation, which was heralded by the second phase of the land redistribution program, dubbed the fast track programme. In particular this research seeks to find out if environmental concerns have been adequately taken into account and whether the possibility of community based management of land as a resource has been considered as an option and whether land legislation can be used to protect indigenous knowledge systems relating to management and conservation of land as common property. Tenure systems are the determinants of whether one can categorise land as common property, thus some tracks of land are common property while others are not even within the context of the fast track land reform programme. It should not be expected therefore that this paper would analyse the adequacy of Zimbabwean environmental laws generally. There has been extensive research into this and other general aspects relating to land tenure and environmental laws and environmental management. A reference here and there to these aspects will be made."