scholarly journals An ecology of difference: fence-line contrast photographs as scientific models in ecology

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eirin Hongslo
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Textual Theory ◽  
African Context ◽  
Land Use Policies ◽  
Fence Line

Political ecologists have long acknowledged the links between knowledge and power. Recently there has also been a growing interest in detailed studies about knowledge production within critical political ecology. This article is a study of the use of photographs in scientific articles on dryland ecology, and investigates the functions of photographs. Contrary to the straightforward manner in which they are presented, photographs are not value-free documentary proofs of 'how things are.' Rather, photographs constitute arguments in their own right. Using photographic and textual theory, this study analyzes two articles that include photographs of fence-line contrasts between two different management regimes. Contrasting areas divided by a fence-line is a methodology that demonstrates how management differences lead to differences in vegetation. In a Southern African context, however, differences across a fence tend to encompass deep racial and economic divides, and the fence-line photos risk encompassing these differences. This article argues that the fence-line contrast photographs in this study function as models that order the causal links between vegetation dynamics, land tenure and land management. These models correspond closely to equilibrium models in range ecology, and the fence-line photographs thus contribute to a degradation narrative that has been influential for land reform policies in Southern Africa, and that feeds into land use policies that favor private land ownership in communal areas.Keywords: Critical political ecology, fence-line photography, scientific models, rangeland ecology, Southern Africa

scholarly journals Land Tenure Reform in Three Former Settler Colonies in Southern Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
Chizuko Sato
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Tenure Reform ◽  
Traditional Leaders ◽  
Land Administration ◽  
Traditional Leadership ◽  
Communal Areas ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Customary Land

AbstractThis study explores the challenges of land tenure reform for three former settler colonies in southern Africa–Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. While land redistribution programmes have been the primary focus of land reform for these countries since independence, land tenure reform for the inhabitants of communal areas is an equally important and complex policy challenge. Before independence, the administration of these areas was more or less in the hands of traditional leaders, whose roles were sanctioned by the colonial and apartheid authorities. Therefore, one of the primary concerns with respect to reforming land tenure systems in communal areas is related to the power and authority of traditional leaders in the post-independence period. This study highlights striking similarities in the nations’ land tenure reform policies. All of them gave statutory recognition to traditional leaders and strengthened their roles in rural land administration. In understanding this ‘resurgence’ or tenacity of traditional leadership, the symbiotic relationship between the ruling parties and traditional leaders cannot be ignored and should be problematised. Nonetheless, this chapter also argues that this obsession with traditional leadership may result in the neglect of other important issues related to land tenure reform in communal areas, such as the role of customary land tenureas social security.

Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi, Mahmood Hasan Khan and M. Ghaffu Otaudhry (edt.). LaJld Reforms in Pakistan, A Historical Perspective. Islamabad: Pakistan Institute of Development Economics 1987. viii+216 pp.Price: Rs 220 (USS 35) for hardcover; Rs 140.00 (USS 20) for soft-cover.

1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-218
Author(s):  
Luther Tweeten
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
State Ownership ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Rural Pakistan ◽  
The Status ◽  
Land Tenure System ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
High Degree

The authors describe how Pakistan has grappled with land reform, surely one of the most intractable and divisive issues facing agriculture anywhere. The land-tenure system at independence in 1947 included a high degree of land ownership concentration, absentee landlordism, insecurity of tenant tenure, and excessive rent. Land reform since 1947 focused on imposition of ceilings on landholding, distribution of land to landless tenants and small owners, and readjustments of contracts to improve the position of the tenant. These reformist measures have removed some but by no means all of the undesirable characteristics of the system. The authors list as well as present a critique of the reports of five official committees and commissions on land reform. The reports highlight the conflicts and ideologies of the reformers. The predominant ideal of the land reformers is a system of peasant proprietorship although some reformers favoured other systems such as communal farming and state ownership of land, and still others favoured cash rents over share rents. More pragmatic reformers recognized that tenancy is likely to be with Pakistan for the foreseeable future and that the batai (sharecropping) arrangement is the most workable system. According to the editors, the batai system can work to the advantage of landlord and tenant if the ceilings on landholding can be sufficiently lowered (and enforced), the security of the tenant is ensured, and the tenant has recourse to the courts for adjudication of disputes with landlords. Many policy-makers in Pakistan have come to accept that position but intervention by the State to realize the ideal has been slow. The editors conclude that" ... the end result of these land reforms is that they have not succeeded in significantly changing the status quo in rural Pakistan" (p. 29).

Conservation and privatization decisions in land reform of New Zealand’s high country

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Adena R Rissman ◽  
Molly C Daniels ◽  
Peter Tait ◽  
Xiaojing Xing ◽  
Ann L Brower
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Biodiversity Conservation ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Conservation Easement ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Lower Productivity ◽  
Ecological Values

Summary Neoliberal land reforms to increase economic development have important implications for biodiversity conservation. This paper investigates land reform in New Zealand’s South Island that divides leased state-owned stations (ranches) with private grazing leases into state-owned conservation land, private land owned by the former leaseholder and private land under protective covenant (similar to conservation easement). Conserved lands had less threatened vegetation, lower productivity, less proximity to towns and steeper slopes than privatized lands. Covenants on private land were more common in intermediate zones with moderate land-use productivity and slope. Lands identified with ecological or recreational ‘significant inherent values’ were more likely to shift into conserved or covenant status. Yet among lands with identified ecological values, higher-threat areas were more likely to be privatized than lower-threat areas. This paper makes two novel contributions: (1) quantitatively examining the role of scientific recommendations about significant inherent values in land reform outcomes; and (2) examining the use of conservation covenants on privatized land. To achieve biodiversity goals, it is critical to avoid or prevent the removal of land-use restrictions beyond protected areas.

Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Some Legal Aspects

1993 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gino J. Naldi
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Livestock Production ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Unilateral Declaration ◽  
Liberation Movements ◽  
Crop And Livestock Production ◽  
Trust Lands

The Government of Zimbabwe has only recently begun to implement the commitment of the liberation movements to give land to poor ‘communal’ farmers, especially those dispossessed by the whiteminority régime after Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. It needs to be recalled that by virtue of the Land Tenure Act of 1969 almost half of the country's agricultural land was allocated to Europeans, who had ‘greater access to the regions considered suited to intensive crop and livestock production’, and that ‘On average, each of the nearly 7,000 European farms was roughly 100 times the size of any of the 700,000 or so holdings in the Tribal Trust Lands’. The fact that much of this land was under-utilised only served to increase African resentment.

THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF ‘INCURSIONS’: LIVESTOCK, PROTECTED AREAS AND SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS IN THE MARA REGION OF KENYA

Africa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 614-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilal Butt
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Mara Region

ABSTRACTAcross the world, the presence of domestic animals in protected areas (PAs) is considered an ‘incursion’ that threatens the economic and ecological viability of these areas. Dominant narratives about incursions inaccurately describe the relationships between people and PAs because they lack adequate contextualization. In this paper, I rely on a political-ecological framework to argue for an alternative narrative. Through a case study from a PA in southern Kenya, I demonstrate how incursions are instead modern co-productions that arise from the intersections between changing political geographies of resource control and variable animal geographies of resource utilization – thus clarifying a long-standing debate about the presence of domestic animals in PAs. I rely on direct empirical and supporting evidence from place-based studies to illustrate the spatial and temporal differences in resource access strategies of wildlife and livestock within and outside the PA. I contrast these against changing land tenure and resource management policies to highlight how livestock movements into PAs are patterned in ways that reflect the changing nature of PA management, the material conditions of the landscape, and the agency of animals. Through these investigations, this paper provides a more accurate and nuanced explanation for livestock movements into PAs.

scholarly journals Conditions for successful land reform in Africa

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
JA Groenewald
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Tenure Reform ◽  
Special Support ◽  
Fiscal Planning ◽  
Human Material

Land reform has traditionally had two objectives: equity and productivity. Food insecurity and the need for agriculture to contribute to development emphasise the need to maintain and improve productivity while improving equitability. Land must foster production and agriculture must attract good human material. The following areas need to be considered in policy formulation and delivery: an effective institutional framework involving all the relevant public and private bodies; efficient fiscal planning is essential; potentially successful farmers must be selected and given special support, including extension and adult education; complementary services and infrastructure are needed; prioritisation of functions and land tenure reform is often necessary. In addition, international agricultural markets are very important for Africa.  Wealthy nations should cease trade-distorting protection of their own farmers.

Financing the Market-Based Redistribution of Land to Disadvantaged Farmers and Farm Workers in South Africa: Recent Performance of the Land Reform Credit Facility

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lyne ◽  
Paul Zille ◽  
Douglas Graham
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
First Year ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Mortgage Loans ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Credit Facility ◽  
Flow Problems ◽  
Kwazulu Natal

This paper compares the results of public and private land redistribution in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It identifies problems that constrain access to the land market, and describes recent efforts to address the liquidity problem associated with mortgage finance. The Land Reform Credit Facility (LRCF) was launched by government in May 1999 to help alleviate cash flow problems on farms purchased by disadvantaged buyers and financed with mortgage loans from commercial banks. The LRCF does not offer subsidies. Rather it offers loans with deferred or graduated repayment schedules to reputable banks and venture capital investors who finance, on similar terms, equity-share projects and land purchased by aspiring farmers. The paper outlines the LRCF experience and considers reasons for its promising start. The loan target of R15 million (US$2.15 million) set for the first year was reached after only eight months.

scholarly journals The THE CONCEPT OF THE LAND REFORM IN CUSTOMARY LAW OF THE JAVANESE COMMUNITY

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-127
Author(s):  
Widhiana Hestining Puri
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Agrarian Reform ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Regulation Mechanism ◽  
Individual Property ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Community Regulation ◽  
The Village

THE CONCEPT OF THE LAND REFORM IN CUSTOMARY LAW OF THE JAVANESE COMMUNITY   Widhiana H. Puri Phd Student at Law Fakulty of Gadjah Mada University and Lecture in National Land Academy, Indonesia. Email [email protected] Research Highlights   Land reform is a state effort to overcome the imbalance of land tenure in the community (Wiradi, 2000 # 1). Customary law in the Javanese community recognizes the existence of a mechanism of welfare distribution through the ownership and joint use of land in community togetherness bonds based on territorial factors as well as the concept of land reform. The existence of customary land as pekulen land is land owned by the village whose use rights can be requested by the villagers with a rotating utilization mechanism among the villagers in need (Luthfi, 2010 # 2). The study found that indigenous peoples in Java had a welfare distribution mechanism that was the essence of land reform or agrarian reform through a mechanism of land communalization and distribution of its use carried out on a shared land / communal land of the village in rotation.     Research Objectives This research was conducted in order to understand the phenomena of the implementation of law that developed in the community. The existence of community law or so-called non state law, informal law, or customary law in Indonesia is very numerous. The reality of this law is that the majority is still far from the attention and order of a positive and formal state legal arrangement. The community regulation model is an effort to meet the needs of its legal ideals in the midst of limited state positive law arrangements that tend to be more static and less responsive (Puri, 2017 # 16). The community regulation mechanism is a manifestation of unity in the village community where the distribution of land use is carried out among community members who have a concept in line with the national agrarian policy of the country called land reform. The regulatory model initiated from the local level becomes the learning material for how the land regulation mechanism is not always top down, but can be bottom up based on customary law that is proven effective and in accordance with the characteristics of the local community.     Methodology This research was carried out through an empirical legal research model with research locations in villages in Pituruh Subdistrict, Purworejo Regency, Central Java Province. This research is a kind of analytical descriptive research that is directed to get an idea of ​​how the implementation of Javanese traditions in land management has a concept similar to land reform or agrarian reform. In order to analyze existing traditions, a socio-legal approach is carried out, namely a study of the law using the approach of law and social sciences in order to analyze it (Irianto, 2012 # 17). The legal approach referred to is not only to see aspects of norms that are built on the provisions of customary law alone but by looking at their relevance to the regulation of the positive law of the country as the territory of the enactment of the community regulation. This is to see the common thread and the interrelationship between the two and avoid the release of the phenomenon of legal pluralism that is within the scope of national law. So that the legal norms of the community can be assessed as the model of regulation that can be applied in other regions.     Results Javanese people in Indonesia have a land regulation mechanism that has a concept similar to that of land reform or agrarian reform by the state. The customary law of the Javanese community has a common bond based on territorial factors or similarity in the area of ​​residence (Taneko, 2002 # 11). Customary law communities with their customary rights can own and control land both in the concept of individual property rights and communal / communal property rights. The concept of shared property / communal rights illustrates the existence of ownership rights by all members of the community embodied in village control (Susanto, 1983 # 18). One form of joint ownership is the right of possession which can be controlled by community members with the permission of the village government to be used for the benefit of themselves and their families with a rotating mechanism. At present, land is experiencing strengthening and individualization, but the character of togetherness and social function of land is maintained through the distribution of utilization rights of speculative land which has the status of individual property rights, in village settings.     Findings Land reform or agrarian reform is a land policy that aims to overcome the imbalance of land tenure through the distribution of land to people in need. Land reform or agrarian reform can be extended not only to the concept of distribution of land ownership but also to the control and use of land. The limitations of the number of land parcels and the need for land can be overcome through a model of tenure and shared use of land based on the concept of joint property / communal rights over land.    

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