Land, Poverty and Livelihoods in an Era of Globalization

Perspectives from Developing and Transition Countries

A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Cristóbal Kay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415494014
• eBook ISBN: 9781134121908
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

A host of internationally eminent scholars are brought together here to explore the structural causes of rural poverty and income inequality, as well as the processes of social exclusion and political subordination encountered by the peasantry and rural workers across a wide range of countries.

This volume examines the intersection of politics and economics and provides a critical analysis and framework for the study of neo-liberal land policies in the current phase of globalization. Utilizing new empirical evidence from ten countries, it provides an in-depth analysis of key country studies, a comparative analysis of agrarian reforms and their impact on rural poverty in Africa, Asia, Latin America and transition countries.

Presenting an agrarian reform policy embedded in an appropriate development strategy, which is able to significantly reduce and hopefully eliminate rural poverty, this work is a key resource for postgraduate students studying in the areas of development economics, development studies and international political economy.

1 Agrarian reform and rural development

Historical overview and current issues

Saturnino M. Borras Jr, Cristóbal Kay and A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi

Introduction

Land reform is back on the policy agenda of international development institutions as well as of many nation states.¹ Globally, poverty still has primarily a rural face, with two-thirds of the world’s poor constituted by the rural poor. Its persistence has defied policy makers for decades despite sustained efforts by national governments, international institutions and civil society. Effective control over productive resources, especially land, by the rural poor is crucial to their capacity to construct a rural livelihood and overcome poverty. This is because in many agrarian settings a significant portion of the income of the rural poor still comes from farming, despite far-reaching livelihood diversification processes that occurred in different places over time.² Hence, lack of access to land is strongly related to poverty and inequality.³ It is therefore not altogether surprising that the World Bank’s 2006 World Development Report, focusing on the question of equity, has underscored the importance of land access (World Bank, 2005: chapter 8). However, policy discussions around the Millennium Development Goals are yet to systematically and significantly include the issue of wealth and power redistribution in the rural areas, i.e. agrarian reform, especially in a situation where the majority of the world’s poor are rural poor (CPRC, 2005). The need for land reform in the context of the global campaign against poverty has also been one of the key conclusions of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) held on 6–10 March 2006 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the Brazilian government (see, e.g. Cotula et al., 2006; Leite with Avila, 2006; Merlet et al., 2006).

But unlike in past theorising and practice of land reform, where the central state took a commanding role, in contemporary thinking about land policies a decisive role is assigned to ‘free’ market forces in land reallocation and use.⁴ More than a decade into its experimentation and implementation, the new type of land reform should be examined more systematically, both in theory and practice, as to whether it has delivered what it has promised, and if not, why not. Yet, it is important that a parallel critical evaluation of ongoing conventional state-directed land reforms, wherever these have been implemented, must be carried out as well. The end goal is to produce empirically grounded conceptual reflection on land policies and their relevance to rural poverty eradication within the changed and changing global, national and local context.

This book gathers evidence on the impact of the different land policies, and the varying strategies and approaches to implement them, on reducing poverty and social exclusion in the rural areas, with an end view of identifying possible sets of workable alternative policy options in contemporary developing countries and transition economies. This volume maps out and critically analyses the different types of land policies that have been carried out in a number of national settings. It has been guided by a broad conceptualisation of redistributive land reform that includes land titling, restitution of indigenous lands, indigenous land claims, land settlement, tenancy and rental arrangements, farm consolidation and parcelisation, along with the complementary measures necessary to facilitate the success of redistributive reform. Finally, this introductory chapter puts the discussion in this volume within the broader historical perspective and identifies common themes that have been the subject of the country case studies.

The ten countries examined in this study are Armenia, Bolivia, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, Namibia, the Philippines, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. These ten countries, cutting across regions, represent broad types of historical contexts within which different land policies have been carried out more recently. The historical context is important to take into consideration partly because it provides us with a good idea about the character of the pre-existing agrarian structure and its relationship with existing poverty – the main objects of the redistributive agenda in any land reform.

The first type involves those countries that have not seen significant land reform in the past but where, since the 1990s, land reform has emerged as an important component of the national development policy and political agendas and has seen greater degrees of implementation. In this research project, this is represented by Brazil and the Philippines. Both countries have seen state-driven attempts to redistribute some lands in the 1950s–1970s, but with less than significant outcomes in terms of the quantity of lands redistributed. Both countries have witnessed strong militant peasant movements in the 1950s–1960s, experienced military dictatorship and regime national transition almost at the same time, in the mid-1980s, coinciding with the resurgence of militant rural social movements demanding land reform (Fox, 1990; Lara and Morales, 1990; Franco, 2001). Carmen Diana Deere and Leonilde Servolo de Medeiros as well as Saturnino Borras Jr., Danilo Carranza and Ricardo Reyes analyse land policies in Brazil and the Philippines, respectively, and explain why and how land reform has been resurrected in these countries from the mid-1980s onward, and with what outcomes. As shown in these studies, both countries have also witnessed the introduction of broadly pro-market approaches to land reform beginning in the later part of the 1990s – side by side with a state-driven land reform programme – and Deere and Medeiros as well as Borras et al. examine such approaches and their initial outcomes, particularly looking into their impact on poverty and inequality. Finally, both countries have active contemporary agrarian reform movements, and these are analysed within an ‘interactive framework’ in the study of state–society relations (Fox, 1993, 2004).

The second type pertains to those national settings that have had significant land reforms in the past within broadly capitalist-oriented development frameworks, but which are now experiencing important ongoing changes in land policies with profound implications for the peasantry. In this book, this type is represented by Bolivia and Egypt, as both countries underwent important land reforms in the 1950s–1960s, although these major land reforms did not result in significant degrees of poverty reduction in either country, and both nations are currently confronted by important changes in land policy regimes. Cristóbal Kay and Miguel Urioste, as well as Ray Bush, examine past land policies and their impact on poverty in Bolivia and Egypt, respectively. They also critically analyse the key features of contemporary adjustments being made in land policies in these countries, and their impact on poverty and social exclusion.

The third type involves those countries that have undergone socialist construction in the past, but are now currently promoting varying forms and degrees of market-oriented land policies. In this research undertaking, this type is represented by Armenia, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. These countries, with different historical backgrounds, had carried out socialist-oriented land reforms in the past, biased in favour of a combination of farm collectives and state farms. Since the early 1990s, all of these nations started to carry out, in varying extent and pace, broadly pro-market land policies, giving importance to individualised property rights over land, with varying outcomes and implications. Max Spoor (Armenia), Gebru Mersha and Mwangi wa Gĩthĩji(Ethiopia), Azizur Rahman Khan (Uzbekistan), and A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi (Vietnam) examine the historical evolution of the land policies in these four countries, the recent market-oriented changes in land policies, and their subsequent impact on poverty and inequality.

The fourth type pertains to those countries lacking a long history of land policies, whose ongoing land policies are very much framed within the post-colonial context. This type is represented, in this volume, by Zimbabwe and Namibia. In both countries, land policies have been shaped by the way colonialism ended, as well as the character of the nationalist governments that took over state power. Both have somehow adopted, or were forced to adopt, generally market-oriented land policies, although Zimbabwe started to break away from this framework when the Mugabe government launched its ‘fast-track’ state-instigated land redistribution campaign in 1996. Sam Moyo (Zimbabwe) as well as Jan Kees van Donge, George Eiseb and Alfons Mosimane (Namibia) examine the evolution of the pro-market land policies and their impact on poverty and social exclusion. They critically analyse the continuing legacy of colonialism far beyond its formal end, as manifested partly in the persistent control over vast tracts of land by white settlers of European origin.

Historical contextualisation of the emergence of varying types of agrarian structures within countries, as done in each of the country case studies in this volume, is important for a better understanding of land-based social relations and state–society interactions around land policies. However, examining land policies on a global level is equally relevant and important for a fuller understanding of the broader and longer historical context within which land reforms appeared, disappeared and reappeared in the development policy agendas. This will be discussed in the succeeding section.

Revisiting past land reforms

The terms ‘land reform’ and ‘agrarian reform’ are commonly interchanged to mean the same thing, i.e. to reform existing agrarian structure. However, some scholars find it useful to distinguish these terms, i.e. land reform pertains to the reform of the distribution of landed property rights, while agrarian reform refers to land reform and complementary socio-economic and political reforms (see, e.g. Thiesenhusen, 1989: 7–9). By making this distinction, analysts hoped that highlighting this fact would draw the attention of policy makers to the importance of these complementary measures for improving the chances of success of the reform. In this chapter, we are aware of this distinction, although we will use the two terms in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on the contributors
• Foreword by Terry McKinley
• Preface
• List of abbreviations and acronyms
• 1 Agrarian reform and rural development: historical overview and current issues
• 2 Bolivia's unfinished agrarian reform: rural poverty and development policies
• 3 Agrarian reform and poverty reduction: lessons from Brazil
• 4 Land, poverty and state-society interaction in the Philippines
• 5 Land markets and rural livelihoods in Vietnam
• 6 Land reform, rural poverty and inequality in Armenia: a pro-poor approach to land policies
• 7 The land system, agriculture and poverty in Uzbekistan
• 8 Mubarak's legacy for Egypt's rural poor: returning land to the landlords
• 9 Land reform in Namibia: issues of equity and poverty
• 10 Untying the Gordian knot: the question of land reform in Ethiopia
• 11 Land policy, poverty reduction and public action in Zimbabwe
• 12 Neoliberal globalization, land and poverty: implications for public action
• Index