Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

OWNERSHIPW O R L D R E S O U R C E S 2 0 0 8STATUS OF LAND TENURE AND PROPERTY RIGHTS, 2005Status of Land Tenureand Property Rights, 2005Moderately severe concernSerious concernSource: USAID and ARD, Inc. 2008Extremely serious concernNot ranked50most developing nations, although this has begun to change asmore nations have embraced decentralization reforms. Truedecentralization shifts power over resources by realigningresource-related decision-making processes to put local institutions—andthus local users—at the center. Devolution ofmeaningful resource rights can take place within such a decentralizationprocess, with local government playing a critical role.Unfortunately, most current decentralization efforts remainpartial, and lack of resource rights is still a serious impediment formost of the rural poor.Land and Resource TenureAccess to land and natural resources is the basis for livelihoods,shelter, and social inclusion. Tenure is the right—embodied in law,custom, or convention—to such access. It is the right to use,manage, and profit from resources and to exclude others fromaccess—a bundle often termed property rights. As such, land andresource tenure is the basis for all ecosystem enterprises—fromfarming to fishing—and lack of secure tenure is one of the mostconsistent and significant obstacles the poor face in tapping thewealth of nature. In fact, rural poverty is strongly associated withweak property rights or outright landlessness (Cotula et al. 2006:7).Creating the conditions for “ownership” and community buy-in tonature-based enterprises thus requires wrestling early on with theissue of tenure.The link between successful enterprise and property rights iswell established. Those with secure land and resource rights havea reasonable expectation that they will benefit from the use of their“property” and are more willing to invest time and money toimprove or manage it (van den Brink et al. 2006:4). Some studiesshow that investment doubles on land where tenure is strengthened(Feder 2002:15). It comes as no surprise, then, that strongproperty rights are associated with increased economic growth(Cotula et al. 2006:7).The connection between property rights and investment isparticularly true of investments that take time to yield benefits, suchas using good cultivation and water-management practices, plantinglong-lived crops such as orchards and plantations, adoptingsustainable fishing practices, or installing expensive infrastructuresuch as irrigation systems or new fishing equipment (Meinzen-Dickand Di Gregorio 2004:1; van den Brink et al. 2006:4). The key hereis that the individuals or groups holding the property rights feelthese rights are secure, meaning that there is little chance they willbe dispossessed of their land or property for a period long enoughto ensure that they reap the benefits of their investment.Secure tenure is also linked to the success of communitybasednatural resource management. In a 2006 meta-study of 49community forest management (CFM) cases worldwide, Pagdee etal. found a significant association between a community’s securityof forest tenure and the project’s success (See Figure 1). Conversely,when user rights and benefits were insecure, CFM was more likelyto fail. Clearly defined forest boundaries and clear rules for forestuse were other factors important to successful communitymanagement. All of these are features of robust property rightsregimes (Pagdee et al. 2006:43–45, 49).Challenges to SecurityWhile the benefits of secure tenure are clear, achieving it is oftenexceedingly difficult for the poor. Tenure regimes are complex and