Ens Dictionary

April 6, 2011 - Development experts, policymakers and academics, meeting at a major conference on global land grabbing, being held at IDS, were told today that a new 'scramble for Africa' is taking place. A major study released by the World Bank last September found that in 2009 deals were being struck for the allocation of 45 million hectares of land, 70 per cent of this was in Africa. But today, those attending the conference, were told that new research by the International Land Coalition and partners suggests that the real figure is substantially higher, perhaps double this amount, again mostly in Africa.

Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur and keynote speaker, said: 'There is a real risk that the current scramble for land will transfer wealth from the poor and the marginalised to those who have access to capital and markets, with deeply regressive consequences.'

Read the full article at: http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/news/experts-warn-of-new-scramble-for-africa-at-an-international-conference-on-land-grabbing

The enclosure that many assumes to be evident, is only a few hundred years old, being introduced in England. Some historical details are at Enclosure (Wikipedia).

In December 2009, Prof. Elinor Ostrom was awarded the economics Nobel Prize for her work on managing the commons (non-enclosed land).

Especially in sustainable forest governance, the commons concept is very important. The city dweller's ''enclosure paradigm'' of landownership is indeed narrow, and it has been destructive for local level institutions, as reported by Bromley and Cernea in their 1989 report ' The management of common property natural resources: some conceptual and operational fallacies. http://go.worldbank.org/HSGV9MBY30

History has produced several tenure concepts (see Wikipedia: Land_tenure and Title_property) and facing new challenges, we should not shy away from more institutional innovation in the area. May-be city-dwellers could learn from forest dwellers?

As a challenger to the conventional wisdom(?) and thoughts of city-dwellers and mono-culture farmers on the matter, I recommend this paper by Deborah Barry and Ruth Meinzen-Dick: The invisible map: Community tenure rights (2008).

More publications on the topic are at: http://www.citeulike.org/user/jago/tag/land-tenure (and land-use) and: http://go.worldbank.org/29UFH5ZEK0

For details, see http://www.landesa.org/rural-women-agricultural-land-conversions-china/
; as comment also posted under Farmer's Rights.

For this and other studies on Indonesia and 14 other countries, see: http://www.rightsandresources.org/documents/quarantined/changing_context.php ,
on tenure rights in particular, see: What Rights? Measuring the Depth of Indigenous Peoples and Community Forest Tenure: Preliminary Findings from a Legal Analysis of 33 Forest Tenure Regimes in 15 Countries (July 2011)

For information on this declaration, and some of its articles, see the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Actor Atlas).