Regenerating Conflicted Landscapes: Land, Environmental Governance, and Resettlement in Post-war El Salvador

University of California, Santa Cruz/The Heinz Center

Ariane de Bremond

Roadmap:

Peace, Land, and Trees: a vignette Central problems/questions/methods Two stories: Land reform and peace Social/natural regeneration in El Salvadors ex-conflictive zones What does the story tell us? (findings)

Why does it matter? (implications)

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Central problems/Questions:
How did the peace accords and land reform shape access to resources, livelihood options, and processes of land use in resettled communities? How did people reconstitute livelihoods and landscapes? How have meanings of place and identity shaped organizational practices and land use decision-making in El Salvadors ex-conflictive zones? What effects are these organizational practices having on the way land is managed?

 Research Design
Qualitative instrumental case study of land reform, postwar transition and environment in El Salvador

Two embedded subcases: Cinquera and La Montaona

 Methods
Political ecology: a diverse methodological toolkit

Ethnography (of practice)

Historical approach

 Methods (cont)
in-depth war testimonies (65) structured household interviews (55) in two communities

 Collaboration Tenure/Parcel

with biologists mapping Focus groups

FIRST STORY: Competing Agrarian Visions the war, the Peace Accords, and land transfer

Historical and institutional context of El Salvadors land transfer program and parcelization process
Land in El Salvadors historical political economy:

Economic modernization through diversification of commercial agricultural sector conservative modernization (1950s) Land pressures mount, efforts at reform are crushed by hardliner elite-military alliances (1960s) Intensifying state-sponsored violence (1970s) Civil war and state-led land reform (1980-1992)

The land program: a (partial) blueprint

what was decided at the negotiating table Voluntary sales: Private lands to be acquired by the government and transferred through the land bank to beneficiaries Transactions at market prices Beneficiaries would repay government loans

what was not.. Universe of beneficiaries (total number, who would be included, who would not) What land? Land quality/ quantity Where? location of land/settlements: issue of defining conflictive zones and eligible lands

(and so the struggle continued..) Implementing the PTT Slow (PTT took 8 years to implement) Contentious (several times threatened with collapse)
GOES resistance to turning over assets, desire to deny FMLN mln political clout that could be gained through land transfer..

FMLNgaining land for combatants and supporters imperative. Land a key issue in the fight to eliminate socioeconomic injustice and redressing what were considered by many to be economic roots of the conflict. Most fervent supporters and its future political base were poor people residing in rural areas. The FMLN did not believe that amounts and quality would enable sustainable livelihoods.
UN/ Group of Friends: international pressure countered government resistance, intervention at key moments rescued process from failure (October 13th agreements)

Outcomes:

Land Transfer Totals

# Properties # People

3,305 (collective titles) 36,000 (Together with 1980s reforms 20% of nations farmlands were transferred) 103,200 * ? What constitutes farmland

Area (ha)

Land Quality of PTT lands in Departments of Cabaas and Chalatenango

CABAAS Class I II III IV V VI VII Ha 0 89 117 326 4 486 1665 Mz 0 127 168 466 6 696 2383 % 0 3.14 4.16 11.51 0.15 17.16 58.76 CHALATENANGO Class I II III IV V VI VII Ha 0 200 187 932 41 982 2877 Mz 0 287 268 1333 58 1406 4117 % 0 3.74 3.5 17.37 0.76 18.31 53.64

VIII

144

206

5.09

VIII

142

203

2.65

Total

2834

4055

Total

5364

7675

Source: Instituto de Libertad y Progreso, Proyecto PROSEGUIR, 2001.

Outcomes:
Finalization of the PTT in 2000- slow implementation had credit limiting effects, drove up land prices, led to abandonment and sale Poor land quality (70% of lands deeded nationally were unsuitable for farming)

1996 Parcelization through PROSEGUIR- disrupted cooperative

production relationships in some places; resulted in break up of many AR coops One of the first of a generation of titling that included women

Together with 1980s reform resulted in transfer of 1/5 nations farmland

Forgiveness of agrarian debt

SECOND STORY: A forest grows there social and natural rehabilitation in Cinquera

II. To keep the forest that grew: the political project of placemaking

Cinquera municipality-detail

Five Municipalities comprising the Montaa de Cinquera Forest Area

From: de Bremond, 2006 (figures courtesy of E. Ellis)

Land use derived from IRS 2002 and Corin 2002 CORIN land cover data (Herrera, 2006)

To keep the forest that grew (cont) The ARDM and Environmental Governance in Cinquera

Challenges/Opportunities of community forest governance in Cinquera

The limits of conservation as a livelihood strategy Shared histories and competing agrarian visions within Cinquera and region Agroecology and Agroforestry as livelihood strategies

agency of nature

agency of people influenced by histories, culture

Skills of war deployed for making peace.

Competing agrarian visions.

Enrollment, enlistment, collaboration in making an environmental project

Land policy: Need is to go beyond issues of access to focus on land use -Successful land policy needs to be informed by culture and environment
People/peasants have strategies for managing/ relating to/ enlisting nature that fail to articulate with state-led and new market-based agrarian reform models Agriculture is inherently an ecological enterprise land expresses biological diversity

Implications:

Implications: Violence/conflict-environment linkages: how people make peace

Both environmental change (natures agency) and war also shaped the paths that people and/or their organizations would take in terms of livelihood strategies and land use decision-making in unexpected ways.

Thank You
To all of those who helped make this project possible throughout El
Salvador and Professors Stephen Gliessman, S. Ravi Rajan, David Goodman, and Jonathan Fox The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation Center for the Studies of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change (CIPEC) Univ. of Indiana The University of California Regents Fellowship The University of California Mentor Fellowship Department of Environmental Studies, CASFS Inter-American Foundation family and fellow graduate students Dedicated to memories of Emilio Larranyega, Mayor of Cinquera and Antonio Alvarez, Equipo Agrario FMLN

El Salvador: a state-market hybrid

(State-sponsored-w/ funding from US-but with new characteristics):

Voluntary land sales: PTT relied on new approach of land reform with voluntary and negotiated transactions Land Bank: grants for land purchases through the PTT were organized through a Land Bank established for that purpose. Titling and Administration: (PROSEGUIR) and nationwide program for land regularization, establishment of the CNR. Goal is to improve tenure security, investments in land, land-use planning

Parcelization (PROSEGUIR) division of properties initially deeded under collective titles through the PTT

 Thesis project overview

The Postwar Resettlement of Agrarian Landscapes in El Salvador

The Politics of Land Policy

Political Economy/Ecologies of Peace, Land Transfer, and Post-War Transition.

Visions of Livelihoods, Land, and Nature in Post-war Agrarian Reinsertion

War, Identity, and Environmental Governance in Re-formed Landscapes Conclusions: Expanding the view of peace: agroenvironmental land reform and governance

 Methodology
A diverse methodological toolkit Historical approach Ethnography (of practice) in-depth semi-structured household interviews and surveys (55) in two communities/coding Participant observation: (national-level popular, beneficiary and community governance orgs) Tenure/Parcel mapping Interviews/meeting attendance (200+)/focus groups Analysis of PTT land reform data sets98-2000

Implementation breakdown & the October 13th agreements Provided the framework for implementation: (a UN proposal with compromises from both sides)
Amount of land that would be received by each beneficiary determined by the soil type criteria for the previous agrarian reform FMLN agreed to smaller plot size GOES agreed to elimination of ceilings on land credit

Ownership could be individual or associative, a decision to be made by the beneficiaries themselves (proindiviso collective title) Number of beneficiaries determined:
Beneficiary groups FMLN combatants FAES tenedores Total # of people 75,00 15,000 25,000 47,000