Land tenure is the relationship, defined in law and customs, that people as individuals or groups have with land. It involves a bundle of rights to land, such as the right to use, sell, or bequeath land. Secure tenure is crucial for people to have secure homes, for food production, and for the economy. For many it is also central to their identity and culture.
While there is broad agreement on the importance of effective governance of secure land tenure, the best way to achieve this is the subject of much debate. The core contestation is between commodifying land through individual rights and markets, versus protecting it as a social good through communal rights to prevent landlessness and inequality. An overlapping debate is between more customary or traditional systems and those based on statutory law and democratic principles.
Food systems, economic justice, and agrarian reform have been the focus of my scholarship over the last 20 years. Seeing both progress and the same old debates continue, my two co-researchers and I felt it a good moment to examine what has happened with land tenure governance and what we can learn from that.
