Legal empowerment for local resource control

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TABLE 6. TOOLS TO VEST RESOURCE RIGHTS WITH LOCAL GROUPS
Cameroon
Ghana
Mozambique
Senegal
Tanzania
Who is the right holder?
Various private entities,
including customary
landholders; in forestry,
private entities organised
in associations and other
bodies
Various private entities,
including customary
landholders
Private legal entities, open
definition (local
communities)
Local government bodies
(“rural communities”)
Local government bodies
(villages)
What resource rights? What conditions/
Land Other resources
arrangements?
Use if customary; Forestry (subsistence Registration prerequisite
ownership if title
(rare)
use/ management); for ownership
Various legal
interests, including
ownership
Use/management
rights
Use/management
rights
Use/management
rights
Forestry (subsistence
use/ management);
not subsoil
Some surface
resources; not
subsoil
Some surface
resources; not
subsoil
Protection irrespective of
registration; community
land registration
resource users in their efforts to register land. Other African countries
formally do allow local resource users to register their rights collectively. In
Cameroon, for instance, Ordinance 74-1 of 1974 suggests that “customary
communities” can request and obtain land titles (article 7). However, vague
legislative provisions that merely allow collective land registration, without
addressing the legal specificities that this requires and the need for support
in implementation, are unlikely to go far.
Reform to protect resource rights regardless of their legal documentation,
and to facilitate the documentation of local resource rights (including
through collective arrangements such as community land registration) can
increase local control over natural resources.
3.1.5. To sum up
This chapter has examined experience with two types of tools for vesting
stronger resource rights with local users: decentralisation of natural
resource rights, and arrangements to vest resource rights with private (yet
collective) legal entities (e.g. on the basis of community land registration).
These tools can give local resource users greater control over the resources
on which they depend – provided that intra-community issues are