The Efficacy of Preserving Communal Tenure in South Africa

European colonialism and apartheid in South Africa included the alienation of land just as the restructuring of customary tenure. The reconstructed customary tenure vested title to land in the colonial and apartheid state in this way, merging sovereignty and property. The merger encouraged authoritative control of rural society. Customary tenure was argued to be communal and excluded individual rights. Regardless of the official rendition, customary tenure was dynamic, recognized individual use rights and “facilitated accumulation and differentiation.” In the present-day, customary tenure is perceived as unregulated capital, holding back the ability of the poor people to prosper. Thus, the relevance and place of customary tenure is in dispute. This article aims to examine the efficacy for preserving customary tenure, using Vhembe district as a case study. The article uses the exploratory qualitative approach to collect data.

Devolution and the politics of communal tenure reform in Kenya

Increased legal access and the devolution of natural resource administration are generally seen as sources of power for local communities and their institutions. However, beyond this widely held expectation, the politics of land reform suggest that legal recognition of rights and devolution is not the only issue with implications for communal tenure reforms. Misconceptions about communal tenure, which are rooted in history, and their appropriation by local elites in the processes of communal tenure reform are characteristic of both colonial and post-colonial governments in Kenya. Although typically articulated and promulgated to enhance political representation and to devolve control over resources to the local level, unresolved issues in the reform process have worked to undermine the legitimacy of communal land rights in contemporary Kenyan society. A case study of the post-2010 community land legislation process demonstrates the continuing relevance of historically conditioned political and ideological representations of communal tenure built during the colonial period and reproduced in policy in independent Kenya. This paper offers reflections on the centrality of sustained communal tenure misconceptions, fetishization of formal governance institutions, and the institutional and power configurations that primarily benefit powerful stakeholders as sources of the current breakdown in the implementation of community land law.

ANTARA ULAYAT ADAT DAN HUTAN NAGARI : SEBUAH KEBIJAKAN PERHUTANAN SOSIAL DI MINANGKABAU

This article is the result from our fieldwork to observed about the rule of regulation the social forestry in South Solok, West Sumatera. As this research uses etnoscience approach where the informant will be choosed by perposive sampling. Since the rule of LHK/83 is implemeted in South Solok that became strategic place of political ecology for advantaging the village forest in the Customary Land of the Alam Surambi Sungai Pagu. Based on the results, there are differences in customary communal tenure between the darek region whose control is held by penghulu andiko, while the rantau region whose control is given to rajo. Rajo is the head of the tribe who is in 4 the customary land in Alam Surambi Sungai Pagu. In the Alam Surambi Sungai Pagu community, the forest processing is divided into three, namely; 1) ulayat suku is an unprocessed highland forest or rimbo gadang; 2) ulayat kaum or harato pusako tinggi, which is a land of ancestor from ninik nan salapan and ninik 60 kurang like rice fields or sawah and will be passed on daughters; 3) ulayat saparuik, also known as Harato Pusako Randah, is a family property from parents or property owned by their father and mother during marriage in the form of fields or rimbo randah. After the issuance of 5 decrees of The Village Forest in Alam Surambi Sungai Pagu, some of rimbo gadang began to be used as a Village Forest, moreover the use of the forest began to take into account the nagari government. Hence, the boundaries of 4 customary land begin to blur. In addition, the existence of Nagari Forest does not only provide the legality for the people of Alam Surambi Sungai Pagu, but also provides the benefits for outside communities, LPHN and mining companies.

Adapting Governance Incentives to Avoid Common Pool Resource Underuse: The Case of Swiss Summer Pastures

The use of summer pastures in the European Alps provides much evidence against Hardin’s prediction of the tragedy of the commons. For centuries, farmers have kept summer pastures in communal tenure and avoided its overuse with self-designed regulations. During the past decades, however, summer pastures have become less intensely used, which has reduced its agronomic value and the by-production of public goods. However, very little is known about how the various governance incentives affect farmers’ use of summer pasture to result in below-sustainable activity. In this study, we develop an empirically informed game theoretical model of farmers’ land use decisions, which we validate with survey data from a case study in Switzerland. Our results reveal that farmers weigh the benefit of resource use against the costs of maintaining it and that all major sectoral developments, such as increasing livestock endowment, increasing opportunity costs, and decreasing land use intensity on private plots, result in the reduced use of summer pastures. Based on these insights, we suggest adapting the incentive structure at the local and federal governance levels to increase incentives for stocking at the margin. Our study shows how game theory combines with field validation to identify the contextual behavioral drivers in common pool resource dilemmas for informed and improved policy making.