Applying a Community-Based Approach to Tenure Formalization

There is today a growing recognition internationally of the importance of securing tenure rights to land and other natural resources in those regions of the world where a majority of the population depend on these resources for a livelihood. Partly this is related to the escalating global demand for land for commercial investments of various kinds, which threaten to deprive poor rural populations of their most important subsistence resource, i.e., land, unless their rights to it are better secured. Partly it is a result of the climate change and environmental agenda, which, it is now being realized, will not be effective unless tenure rights to forests and other terrestrial resources are clarified. At the same time there has been a rethinking of approaches for securing local tenure rights in practice. Experience has shown that the conventional approach i.e., individual freehold titling, has often not worked well in areas where communal forms of customary tenure predominate, which research has shown is still the case in many parts of the world. This insight, in turn, has led to an interest in what could generically be referred to as the “community-based” approach to tenure formalization, i.e., where rights to own or manage land and other natural resources are formalized at the level of the community as a collective landholding unit. Building land tenure formalization on already existing customary communal tenure systems is not a new idea. This was put forward already in the early-1990s as an alternative to systematic titling and it has been further discussed since the early 2000s. Also The World Bank, otherwise a leading proponent of individual land titling and privatization of land tenure relations in Africa, recognized in its 2003 land policy paper that at least in some situations supporting the institutionalization of customary group rights to land might be a more socially advantageous and cost-effective solution than individual assignment of property rights. More recently, a similar approach to securing Africa’s land has been advocated by the former Lead Land Specialist in Africa Region at the World Bank. So what are the advantages with this alternative approach? Firstly, focusing on the formalization of community lands as collective holdings makes it possible to cover quite extensive areas and populations in a relatively short period of time and at a limited cost. In other words, it is a cost-effective way of providing local rural populations with some basic tenure security over their customary territories, which is especially important in today’s escalating global competition for land. Secondly, at least in principle, this model ensures certain equality in tenure by providing community members with the same legal rights as co-holders of the community landholding. Thirdly, including all types of land, e.g., individual as well as commons, agricultural as well as forest land, under one and the same tenure regime, conforms better with the integrated character of many smallholder farming systems in developing countries. Mozambique is one of the countries in Africa that has adopted this approach in its land policy and legislation, based on a land law promulgated in 1997, which is now being implemented at a gradually expanding scale throughout the country. The purpose of this paper is to assess the outcome as well as to identify some critical issues and challenges when implementing this law in practice, based on a case study from the Province of Niassa in Northern Mozambique