From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERled to the country’s first national land policy, which tried to reconcilethe needs of peasants, squatters, indigenous peoples, and commercialinvestors. Over a million land titles have been handed out, and theland rights of many women have been secured for the first time ever. 94In the Philippines, land reform in public and some private land tookoff in the mid 1990s during the presidency of Fidel Ramos, a formergeneral and defence minister. An analysis by two Filipino academicspoints to a powerful combination of active citizenship and an effectivestate: ‘a high degree of social pressures from below and a high degreeof independent state reform initiatives from above, and then the highdegree of interaction between the two’. In the Philippines this isknown as the ‘bibingka strategy’, after a traditional delicacy, a rice cakethat is cooked by fire lit both above and below it.Elsewhere, land reform has had a chequered record. In Zimbabwe,productive white-owned farms have been handed over as rewards togovernment supporters who had little farming experience, withdevastating effects on agricultural output. Elsewhere, land reform hasfailed because it has not guaranteed access to vital services such ascredit, infrastructure, or extension services. In many countries landreforms have run out of steam in the face of dogged and often violentresistance from local elites, lack of state commitment, and the sheerbureaucratic and legal complexities of enforcing land titles and redistributionacross hundreds of thousands of small farms. Even in thePhilippines, these have remained constant challenges. In such situations,the slow pace of reform breeds a simmering resentment, whichoccasionally explodes into protests and land occupations.Where land reform has successfully transformed economies andsocieties, it has required strong, independent states that are able to facedown local elites. Success also requires mobilised organisations oflandless workers or peasant farmers, able to channel demands andensure that the reform process meets their needs.Donors and many governments have responded to the recentresurgence in interest in land reform by introducing so-called‘market-led’ policies. These seek to avoid forced redistribution by thestate in favour of ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approaches, wherebylarge farmers agree to sell their land to peasants and landless workers,often with the state stepping in to facilitate the sale, for example by76