Customary Land Tenure in Liberia - Land Tenure and Property ...

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Several communities have rules governing town development and maintenance, including periodically clearing
roads of overgrowth. In Tengia, failure to contribute to town development can result in restricting an
individual‟s access to town resources, such as the bush and the water pump, which in effect effectively forces
him/her out of town. Other clans reported that it was becoming increasingly challenging to engage youth in
town development activities.
In several clans, it was reported that communities are more frequently participating in the process of making
and adapting customary rules. In Little Kola, it used to be that rules were made only by the traditional
authorities, but now there is much more community participation in this process. In Tengia, Town Chiefs
continue to play a central role in interpreting and administering rules governing land and natural resources
management, but these rules are subject to adaptation by the larger community which also can put forth new
rules. In Upper Workor, rules are said to be made by the community, reviewed and endorsed by the elders,
and enforced by the chiefs. Rules continue to derive from elders and other authorities in Mana, but they are
now subject to endorsement by the broader community. Nevertheless, in Dobli, Tengia, and Mana, youth
resent not being more engaged in making rules and decisions.
Additional rules exist to demarcate boundaries for towns, family land, and individual landholdings. Several
clans rely on traditional markers, including soap trees, roads and pathways, rivers, creeks, and valleys. Often
boundaries are where one‟s forefathers stopped clearing land for farming and knowledge of these limits are
passed down from adults to children. In Tengia, it was reported that landholding boundaries have remained
stable over time and are respected, whereas in Gbanshay, boundary encroachments and disputes are on the
rise.
Some clans have witnessed major changes in their tenure structures during the past several decades.
Government agricultural interventions in Tengia during the 1970s prompted increased individualization of
property rights, with the expansion of tree farming and allocations of lowland rice farming parcels to
household heads. This was also true for swamp rice parcels in Upper Workor. In Gbanshay, the introduction
of TCs in the 1960s (discussed in Section 4.2), together with the construction of the motor road leading to
Gbargna City, appears to have led to increasing individualization of landholdings and the disappearance of
unclaimed land. In Mana Clan, the growth of the mining sector has ushered in a plethora of temporary claims
to land for both industrial and artisanal mining. Rising pressures on land due to population growth and the
introduction of statutory tenure forms, the latter of which is treated in Section 4.2, are also invoking changes
to customary tenure regimes. Interestingly, among the studied clans, the civil wars were generally regarded not
to have altered land tenure substantially, with the exception of Motor Road Clan where war violence led to
the abandonment of several towns.
4.1.3 Rules Governing other Natural Resources
Life Trees
All of the clans we visited engage in cultivating life trees, ranging from one or two individuals having parcels
in Nitrian and Motor Road to clans such as Ding and Dobli that claim that nearly every household in the clan
has at least some land planted in life trees. Some households and individuals cultivate small tree plantations,
while others may only have a few trees planted on their house plot. The latter is often the case with oil palms.
The most commonly planted trees in the studied clans are rubber, oil palm, and cocoa.
Planting of life trees engenders permanent, exclusive rights to those trees and the products they produce, just
as it does to the land they are planted on. The rights are typically vested in the planter and members of
his/her household. When land planted in life trees is bequeathed, heirs also gain permanent rights to the trees
on the land. In Ylan, daughters are reported to inherit less trees and tree-cropped land than sons. Daughters
cannot inherit life trees at all in Saykleken, nor can they plant them because it would result in a woman
establishing a permanent claim to land. This was not found to be the case in other studied clans.
Typically, uprooting or cutting a life tree is prohibited or highly restricted, reflecting their importance in
asserting permanent claims to land. In Saykleken, life trees cannot be cut or uprooted for any reason, while in
CUSTOMARY LAND TENURE IN LIBERIA