Safeguarding Tenure: Lessons from Cambodia and Papua New Guinea for the World Bank Safeguards Review

TitleSafeguarding Tenure: Lessons from Cambodia and Papua New Guinea for the World Bank Safeguards Review
Annotated RecordAnnotated
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsBugalski N, Pred D
Secondary TitleAnnual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty
Pagination1-23
PublisherThe World Bank
Key themesDispossession-grabbing, Formalisation-titling, MarginalisedPeople
Abstract

With a view to operationalizing the recently adopted Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries, this paper identifies gaps in existing World Bank safeguard policies with respect to tenure. The paper explores the adverse impacts on security of tenure for vulnerable groups resulting from a land administration project in Cambodia, and explains how oil a series of oil palm projects in Papua New Guinea resulted in a shift away from a flexible and equitable tenure governance system to a more rigid individualized system that has made some land users more vulnerable. In both cases, existing Bank safeguard policies did not effectively avoid and mitigate the adverse impacts on tenure or the consequential harms to affected people and communities. The paper outlines new safeguard measures proposed by Oxfam and Inclusive Development International that aim to prevent and mitigate negative impacts on tenure, whilst promoting greater security across the continuum of tenure forms and more equitable access to and control over land, housing and natural resources.
URLhttps://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/safeguarding-tenure.pdf
Availability

Available for download
Countries

Cambodia
Document Type

Conference Proceedings

Annotations

Overall relevance: 

This paper uses two case studies to argue that championing registered private land ownership as the way to increase security of tenure for vulnerable groups is fundamentally flawed. The authors describe the plurality of existing tenure arrangements, particularly among ethnic minorities, and highlight the ways in which imposing singular, private, and formalised land titling undermines the informal, flexible, and context specific arrangements which accommodate the shared interests of such groups. The case studies illustrate how land privatisation programs can become subject to elite capture and strengthen the control of land by powerful state and economic actors, and serve to further marginalise the most vulnerable groups. This paper provides an excellent critique of the neoliberal rationale for the privatisation of tenure as essential to the promotion of economic growth.

Key Themes: 
  • Land dispossession/land grabbing - Programs that have sought to extend security of tenure to vulnerable groups by granting legal land title have frequently effected the precise opposite. Such programs either formalise already existing tenure agreements by dictating household headship – a process that plays a significant role in undermining women’s claims to land title – or divide plots otherwise shared in common into private plots allocated to particular individuals.
  • Land rights recognition/formalization/titling/collective tenure - The debate on tenure security has often been reduced to one which frames two kinds of land users: those who are vulnerable, and without any formal tenure, and those who are secure, and in possession of formal land title. This overly simplistic duality effectively ignores the multiplicity of tenure arrangements. Moreover, efforts to formalise land through titles may create greater insecurity, particularly in contexts where there is little legal protection of customary land tenure.
  • Marginalized people's land rights and access: ethnic minorities, poor and women - Customary tenure arrangements are common amongst ethnic minorities. Privatisation of tenure affects these groups in particular because they destabilise their collective management arrangements, as well as their complex and culturally embedded relationship to land.
Research basis: 

This paper is based on two case studies: one examining the impacts of the Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP) project in Cambodia, and one examining the impacts of oil palm projects in Papua New Guinea. The case studies are used as examples in which World Bank programs have caused unintended negative impacts. The author uses these examples to support a detailed critical analysis of the Bank’s own existing safeguard policies in an effort to draw attention to significant gaps and to make recommendations about new measures to mitigate such adverse impacts. The paper recommends linking the review process with the FAOs Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in an effort to make the voluntary guidelines more binding.