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PANOS MEDIATOOLKIT ONCOMMUNICATING RESEARCH – No.1
Common Ground? Investigatingthe importance of managing land
Introduction
Research shows that people’s capacity to accessand use land is important for economic growth,for poverty reduction, and for promoting bothprivate investment and transparent, accountablegovernment. Governments have a responsibilityto establish systems which ensure access to landand housing for everyone in society.The pressures of modernisation have broughtabout new challenges as well as opportunitiesin managing land. For many countries in thesouth, the nature of these challenges andopportunities has been shaped by colonisationand post-independence politics.Much research produced on land managementinvestigates and confronts the inequities of thepast while proposing solutions for the future.It covers topics ranging from property rightsand local governance to tribal societies, modernagriculture and urban planning.Research influences current government landpolicy – but how much do journalists knowabout it? Conversely, knowledge that goes againstcurrent trends in public policy is often ignoredby decision-makers because it is not discussedin the media – journalists can make sure that it isbrought to public attention.
Maasai women at a protest rally –their communal land is being sold
As a journalist you can use plain language andhuman stories to tell people about land managementresearch and investigate the impact of its findingsand recommendations. Often, land managementissues only hit the news when they develop intoconflicts. But researchers are aware of the issueslong before conflicts arise. Academic research canhelp you get ahead of the story and broaden debate.This toolkit is designed to support you in identifyinghow you can use research on land management toenrich your journalism, highlighting processes andchanges that are happening in your country right now.It includes:examples of headlines on land management issuessummaries of the main debates and issues beingraised by research on land managementcountry case studies that show the human intereststories contained in research on land managementkey questions you can ask to scrutinise this research
Media toolkit on Communicating Research
This is the first in a series of briefing documents for the mediafrom the RELAY programme. The programme works with southernprint and broadcast journalists to communicate the findingsof academic research in an accessible way through the media.If you would like further information about the RELAY programme orwish to sign up to receive future media briefings by email, pleasecontact
relay@panos.org.uk
More information about PanosLondon and the Panos Network can be found at
www.panos.org.uk
 
Land policy in context
Struggling with the colonial legacy
(Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa)The Zambian 1995 Land Act reversed Zambia’spost-independence policy of nationalisation byrecognising the market value of land and allowinggreater access to land markets for foreign investors.The act privileges private title deeds over customaryland rights in an attempt to address artificial landshortages, speculation and high prices by ensuringmore land is available on the market. However,research suggests that this has made rural peoplemore insecure and that the intricate bundles of customary rights that have evolved over long periodsof time are being lost.Land reform in post-independence Kenya successfullyenabled black farmers to take over white farms.Some researchers argue that the lessons from Kenya’speaceful land reform experience have not been learntin Zimbabwe and South Africa. Others point out thatindividual titles have been unfairly distributed toKenyans according to party political allegiances.
Taking the lead from customary laws
(Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique)Research shows that new land laws in Uganda,Tanzania and Mozambique are allowing groupsand communities to hold land titles, recognisingcustomarily-obtained land as fully legally ownedin whatever form it is currently possessed. TheUgandan 1998 Land Act is a people-friendly law,which responded to a long history of landlord-tenantconflicts, in effect liberating tenants. A co-ownershipclause to protect women’s land rights was droppedfrom the act but partially reappeared in a lateramendment in the form of a provision on family land.
‘Land to the tiller’
(East and South Asia)‘Land to the tiller’ reforms after World War II aimedto break up large feudal estates and providedland for active farmers. Research shows that reformsin East Asia have alleviated poverty and landlessness,assisting industrialisation by transferring landto tenant farmers without breaking up productiveholdings. Reforms covering tenancies in the Indianstates of Kerala and West Bengal followed a similarpattern. However, research has found that thosenot tilling their own land, such as landless people,were not helped by these reforms. This issue isstill relevant today. In reaction to the huge numberof tenant-landlord disputes in Sri Lanka, the NewAgrarian Development Act of 2000 effectively abolishedtenant farming, believing it to be a cause of poorrural economic growth.
Issues in land management
The impact of modernisation
Fragmentation of farms into smaller holdingsResearch conducted by Ephraim Chirwa in 2004reveals that, after four decades of agriculture-leddevelopment strategies in post-independenceMalawi, economic growth has been erratic anda large proportion of the population lives belowthe poverty line. Agricultural policies have favouredlarge-scale cash crops, particularly tobacco,resulting in a more unequal distribution of landin rural areas. The promotion of smallholderagriculture on customary land, on which rights tocultivate and transfer land are granted by traditionalchiefs, has meant that approximately 70 per centof Malawian smallholder farmers cultivate less thanone hectare of land.Can pastoralism survive?Indigenous societies, including pastoralist andcommunal ones in countries like Kenya and Uganda,are now facing more obstacles to their way of lifethan at any previous time. Elliot Fratkin’s work in 2001examines the problems faced by three East Africanpastoral societies (the Maasai, Boran and Rendille),including population growth, land degradation,privatisation of rangeland, urban migration andpolitical conflict, and the ways in which pastoralistsocieties are dealing with these threats to theirway of life. Some academics argue that given thatpastoralism has survived so far, it will be ableto persist further, but this depends on the politicaldecisions made by national governments and theability of customary systems to adapt to change. Othercommentators recommend that traditional practicesshould be abandoned and instead integrated into anurbanised, market-based economy in order to promoteeconomic development.
Bushmen fight for homeland 
BBC News Online
South Africa orders first farm seizure 
The Independent, UK
Namibia – the ticking bomb 
allAfrica.com
Attorney General for Omukama land case 
New Vision, Uganda
State sets 3 year deadline to clear encroachments 
Times of India
Own homes to be reality for slum dwellers 
Expressindia
Headlines
 
The urban divide: enclaves and slums‘Urbanisation’ is often regarded as the essenceof modernisation, employment and growth. Yet recentresearch in developing countries shows that citycentres are being transformed into ‘elite enclaves’.There has been a dramatic improvement in somepeople’s living standards. However, rising propertyand rental prices force poor people into informaland illegal housing markets of slums and squattersettlements, which are often located along riverbanks,railway lines, on steep slopes and near rubbish dumps,and are therefore prone to natural and man-madedisasters. Because of their illegal status, thesesettlements often lack piped water and electricity andresidents are not inclined to invest in them becauseof the threat of being evicted from the land.Experience from Pakistan, documented by Arif Hasanin 2002, illustrates how informal settlements canbe the solution rather than the problem. In the absenceof services provided by government and formal privateenterprises, poor people rely on informal settlementsfor housing, infrastructure, healthcare, education andemployment. However, like many others, researchersat Zambia’s Institute of Economic and Social Researchpoint to the need for formal land registration in orderto ensure that governments can raise the necessarytax revenue to provide infrastructure and amenitiessuch as roads, water supply, hospitals and schools inexpanding urban areas.
Winners and losers in the property rights lottery
Do modern property rights work?Some academics, such as Patrick in 2005, believethat customary forms of land management arebetter in providing equal rights to vulnerable groups,such as women and poor people, arguing thatmodernisation and individual private ownershipare the cause of discrimination against womenand other low-status groups. Others point outthat customary tenure allows boundaries to becontinuously altered to fit changing needs, suchas the temporary residence of a relative in distress,and in the interests of social harmony. This systemof tenure has developed in a context where landis a livelihood rather than a capital asset.A case study highlighted by the University of theWestern Cape in 2005 shows how modern propertyrights can fail. In 1990, a group of households illegallyoccupied a vacant piece of land in Cape Town, SouthAfrica. After years of negotiation the Joe Slovo ParkHousing Project was implemented, building 936 houses.In line with national policy, the form of tenure grantedwas individual ownership. Ownership was registeredin one name per family, usually the male ‘head of thefamily’. Some long-standing community memberswere not allocated a house, while community leadersallegedly received more than one. Five years afterthe project was completed, about one-third of thenew houses had been sold. Almost all sales wereinformal, destroying the newly established formal landregistration system. People who legally owned houseswere sometimes unable to occupy them, as streetcommittees had decided who should be the occupier,and in some cases houses had been rented out bypeople who did not own them.
An illegal settlement contrasts sharplywith new buildings in Mumbai, IndiaA Zimbabwean womantends tobacco cropson a commercial farm
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