scholarly journals Current Social and Rangeland Access Trends among Pastoralists in the Western Algerian Steppe

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 674
Author(s):  
Slimane Bencherif ◽  
Dahmani Mohamed Boumedienne ◽  
Daniel Burgas ◽  
Pablo Manzano
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Development Programs ◽  
Pasture Management ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Local Livelihoods ◽  
Combating Desertification ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
State Interventions ◽  
Grazing Lands

In the western Algerian steppe, the public authorities have carried out actions aimed at rural development (agricultural development programs) and combating desertification (grazing reserves) to counter the significant and rapid loss of vegetation cover of pastures by overgrazing, and the consequent impacts on local livelihoods. In the Rogassa area, these actions have impacted land tenure and the ancestral and collective way of land use and access. These changes have caused transformations in lifestyle and pasture management. This research aims to characterize how such changes are affecting local pastoralists and what their perceptions are about them. A selective sampling of 150 agropastoral households was carried out by interviewing their heads, analyzing socioeconomic, land tenure and government perception variables. Most agropastoralists access land under tribal tenure, conditioned by local social structures. Pastures are prevailingly perceived by pastoralists as insufficient, and the perception of grazing reserves is largely negative. Pastoralists are worried about land degradation and declining grazing lands, and are looking for solutions and alternatives. However, state interventions have been uncoordinated and have not considered their customary land rights. The generalized awareness of environmental deterioration points to the need for better communication and intervention strategies to be developed by authorities in the future that involve the inhabitants of these lands.

scholarly journals Landscapes on the Move: Land-Use Change History in a Mexican Agroforest Frontier

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1066
Author(s):  
Carolina Berget ◽  
Gerard Verschoor ◽  
Eduardo García-Frapolli ◽  
Edith Mondragón-Vázquez ◽  
Frans Bongers
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Landscape Composition ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
Land Conflicts ◽  
Local Livelihoods

An unprecedented magnitude of land-use/land-cover changes have led to a rapid conversion of tropical forested landscapes to different land-uses. This comparative study evaluates and reconstructs the recent history (1976–2019) of land-use change and the associated land-use types that have emerged over time in two neighboring rural villages in Southern Mexico. Qualitative ethnographic and oral histories research and quantitative land-use change analysis using remote sensing were used. Findings indicate that several interacting historical social-ecological drivers (e.g., colonization program, soil quality, land conflicts with indigenous people, land-tenure, availability of surrounding land where to expand, Guatemala’s civil war, several agricultural development and conservation programs, regional wildfire, Zapatista uprising, and highway construction) have influenced each village’s own unique land-use change history and landscape composition: the smaller village is characterized by a dominating pasture landscape with some scattered agricultural and forest areas, while the larger village has large conserved forest areas intermixed with pastures, agriculture, oil palm and rubber plantations. The differential histories of each village have also had livelihood diversification implications. It is suggested that landscape history research in tropical agroforest frontiers is necessary because it can inform land-use policies and forest conservation strategies that are compatible with local livelihoods and conservation goals.

Against many odds: the dilemmas of women's self-help groups in Mbeere, Kenya

Africa ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nyaga Mwaniki
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Contributory Factor ◽  
Agricultural Policies ◽  
Population Growth Rates ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Self Help Groups

Opening ParagraphOne of the major, and perhaps the most embarrassing, problems still facing African populations today is hunger. It is described by Lofchie and Commins (1982: 1) as ‘the most immediate, visible, and compelling symptom of a continent-wide agricultural breakdown in tropical Africa,’ thereby making ‘sub-Sahara Africa … the only region in the world where food production per capita has declined during the past two decades.’ This condition has been blamed on many factors, the most frequently mentioned being climate, environmental degradation, outmoded and inefficient traditional agricultural methods, customary land tenure systems which inhibit innovation by individual farmers, lack of incentives to farmers to increase food outputs, bad agricultural policies, high population growth rates and agrarian dualism. A growing body of literature focusing on women's contributions in the development process has revealed another very crucial, but often ignored, reason why hunger is still prevalent in Africa: the disregard of the role of women, who are the main food producers in Africa, in efforts to promote agricultural development (Baumann, 1928; Boserup, 1970; Bryson, 1981; Guyer, 1980; Robertson, 1983). A recent book by Odero-Ogwel (1983), which discusses the food problems in Africa, pays no attention to the fact that a major contributory factor to the food crisis in Africa is the disadvantaged position of women. This exemplifies the failure, even by African intellectuals, to realise the crucial role women can play in increasing food supplies if only certain constraints are removed. Claire Robertson (1983) warns that, unless women are fully included in the development process, the food problem in Africa will deteriorate even further.

Ecologically Based Agricultural Development Programs

Agroecology ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 145-178
Author(s):  
Miguel A. Altieri ◽  
John G. Farrell ◽  
Susanna B. Hecht ◽  
Matt Liebman ◽  
Fred Magdoff ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Development Programs

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.

Land Control in Kenya

1978 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Coldham
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Land Market ◽  
Nineteen Fifties ◽  
Traditional System ◽  
Class A ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Land Control

As the land adjudication and consolidation programme made progress in the Kikuyu Land Unit in the middle of the nineteen-fifties, it became clear that the traditional system of land tenure would have to be replaced by a system based on the registration of individual titles. Customary law was seen as an obstacle to agricultural development. Customary rules of inheritance could destroy the benefits of land consolidation. Moreover, the individual farmer had little incentive to develop his holding under customary arrangements. This point of view was illustrated by the Swynnerton Plan which proposed that “the African farmer … be provided with such security of tenure through an indefeasible title as will encourage him to invest his labour and profits into the development of his farm and as will enable him to offer it as security against financial credits”. Swynnerton hoped that the security of title conferred by registration would create a land market enabling fanners owning unviable plots or unworkable fragments to sell them off to neighbours who would be in a position to develop them more effectively. In this way “… energetic or rich Africans will be able to acquire more land and bad or poor farmers less, creating a landed and a landless class”, a process which he calls “a normal step in the evolution of a country”.

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