Land redistribution is not the flavour of the month. Many see it as impossible, an idealistic position more suited to the 1950s and 60s. Yet in an era of extreme inequality, when land concentration continues to intensify and livelihoods are constrained, gaining access to land remains crucial important in many parts of the world.
This was an important lesson emerging from the amazing three-day conference recently held at the University of the Western Cape and hosted by the now 30-year-old PLAAS (Institute for Land, Poverty and Agrarian Studies). Recognising the significance of the themes discussed, it was opened by the South African Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mzwanele Nyhontso (pictured below) and addressed by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Colombia, Martha Viviana Carvajalino Villegas.
The Cape Town Declaration
On the theme of redistribution, property and land control, the Declaration has four points:
- To halt and reverse the increasing land concentration and inequality, there is a need to focus on the redistribution of land and resources, including water, to widen access and control. Land occupation by poor and working people who are landless must be decriminalised, and the social utility of land and territory recognised.
- Market-based land reforms have failed. Redistribution efforts must not rely on markets and must include not only classic transfers of plots of land to poorer and landless peoples, but also the wider redistribution of control over land and water, restructuring relationships to redress inequality. More collective alternatives are relevant for many, including pastoralists making use of wider landscapes through mobility.
- As effective guardians of land and natural resources, a focus on Indigenous peoples, marginalised ethnic groups and castes, women and youth, and migrants in need, must be at the centre of redistributive land reform efforts.
- Land distribution cannot focus narrowly on individual private property, or it will fail; a wider range of property relations must be acknowledged. While access to individual plots with secure tenure may be part of the solution, a broader appreciation of collective, shared resources is important as part of a new emphasis on commoning solutions. Private access must be qualified by conditions of use and transfer to ensure a wider public benefit.
Along with 11 other resolutions, the Declaration urges the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) to be held in Cartagena, Colombia next February, 20 years after the landmark first conference in Brazil, to address these challenges head on. Much of this runs counter to the insipid mainstream debate that continues to repeat failed solutions around land tenure and governance. Today, the conference discussions confirmed, there is a more urgent challenge, requiring new efforts reclaiming some from the past.
For Zimbabwean readers, these ideas will be very familiar. Land reform has been central to the political debate since Independence, and the limitations of market-based (willing seller-willing buyer) approaches are well known. Currently there are raging debates about land titling, but wider lessons show that this is only one response to reforming property relations, and often not the best one.
Zimbabwe is not an outlier, however. There are many countries around the world addressing land reform even during the neoliberal era when land redistribution efforts were frequently scorned. In a double panel session, organised by the Land Redistribution Initiative (see some of the contributors in the lead image), we heard about Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, India (West Bengal), the Philippines, South Africa and Zimbabwe through the presentation of a series of fascinating papers (which will emerge as an edited book in due course).
International experiences
Since 1980, Zimbabwe has been a leader in land reform, first with a faltering but nevertheless important market-led reform, and then through expropriation following land invasions. There have been ups and downs as this blog has discussed over the years, but compared to the desultory experience from South Africa, Zimbabwe leads the way in Africa in important respects. Although of course with much left to do in order to translate redistribution into proper agrarian reform.
However, Zimbabwe is not alone. For example, major redistributive efforts in Bolivia often go unnoticed, although capture by agribusiness as titles are transferred is a common experience. Brazil is famous for the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and its pressure on the government to implement reform, but again here the power of agribusiness means successful land reform has been constrained. The same applies in Colombia where the major strides in land recognition for Indigenous people and Afro-descendent communities have not been matched by significant transfers through redistribution or restitution.
The reforms in West Bengal in India however have been impressive, especially given their focus on communities marginalised by ethnicity and caste, although 50 years on livelihoods and land uses have changed requiring important rethinking. Perhaps the most striking reform discussed was from the Philippines where many millions of poor peasants have been allocated land in the past decades. Once again uneven and with many challenges, the potentials for land reform, even in periods when mainstream policy positions are against it, were highlighted.
And land reform is not just the preserve of the Global South. We also discussed the case of Scotland, one of the countries where land is inequality is most extreme. Here attempts by the Scottish government to facilitate land reform – particularly through the community right to buy – have been challenged by many familiar problems of policy-led land reform: complex bureaucracy, high costs and arcane legal hurdles. Nevertheless, land reform, as in many other places that we discussed, has resulted in new debates about what land is for and for whom, with discussions about identity, language and belonging combining with commitments to transforming production and food systems to supply local, nutritious food more widely.
Towards ICARRD+20
Two exciting panels and a follow up plenary (see the recording of an amazing discussion here) explored these issues.
Our excellent panel discussants – Wendy Wolford from Cornell University, Francesco Pierri from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Morgan Ody from La Via Campesina – drew out important themes and, together with the participants, highlighted priorities for ICARRD+20 next year. Look out for more discussions on the importance of land redistribution at the Cartagena academic event and sign up here before the end of this month to contribute.
This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.
Photo credits: Yamkela Zozi and Zacharia Mashele and the PLAAS team.