An Anthropology of Property Rights in Natural Resources

1. An Anthropology of Property Rights in Natural Resources New challenges in a new century

2. Good Land Administration is Important • There are no rich countries without good private property protection or with non-functioning land tenure institutions • There are no poor countries with properly functioning property and land tenure institutions

3. Getting Institutions Right • One corner of the world • De Soto, North, et al • Japan, Korea and Taiwan • Important experience in Thailand • China and Vietnam

4. Why such disappointing results? • Experience from several hundred major land administration projects: • Not used by rural producers • Quickly out of date • Seldom if ever completed • Seldom benefits those we are trying to reach • Ineffective policy tool • Costly to implement and doesn’t pay for itself • Costly in time and money to use

5. Modern Land Tenure Security Land Markets Mortgages Collateral Tax base Conflict resolution What people need Investment Density of management Transactions Partial interests Stability Conflict resolution Sustainability Local-level capacity Governance Innovation Good land policy What do we want?

6. Institutional challenges • Small size of land units, fragmentation and multiple owner interests • Security and social capital • Inter- versus intra-community property relations • Where we do have willing sellers, we find land conversion, not agricultural investment • Do we really want a land market in rural areas, or do we want a stable, sustainable population. • making investments • Improving resource base • Non-viability of most rural enterprises • Subsidies, etc.

7. Reorganization of rural space • Land assembly and land consolidation • Village renewal • Urban/industrial conversion • Brownfields • Renovation • Cultural • Environmental Farm Heat Map Source: Southlandz.com New Zealand

8. Village reorganization Syria

9. Sequencing • Need to change existing land use • What is where and where is what • Local LIS in Central Java • Identified issues that would have been missed in land registration. • Coming realization that it may be necessary to have good contract and transaction law and institutions in place before final land registration

10. Adapting to changing marketswith new land tenure institutions Before demarcation After demarcation China

11. An urban world • First time in history – majority of humans live in cities • Urban culture dominates • Music, dress, aspirations • Old ways of life no longer acceptable • People are voting with their feet • Life in an Urban slum preferred to life in a village • Cities are the “engine of growth”

12. Where is the demand for private property institutions? • Urbanism and consumerism • New concepts of ownership • Cell phone, car, apartment • Participation in Global Economy • Contract • Transactions • Quality assurance and other interventions

13. The New Commons • Trans-boundary nature of Natural resources • Water • Air • Fuel • Materials • Natural resource use is no longer a local decision

14. land use planning, land management and land administration • Who decides? • Who monitors? • What determines the “best” use at any one time? • What will sustainability mean in the future?

15. Governance • Due to the changes above: people everywhere are insisting in participating in decisions that effect them. • Some form of democratic institutions • Unique in human history • The efficiency argument • Not just because it is “good”, but because it is “necessary” • No government or agency is capable of doing the job

16. No magic answer • It is the people who eventually have to do all the work. • Do we give them the right environment? • Land registration is necessary, but • What do we register? • Whose needs do we meet? • . Will this information enhance policy and capacity? • “Dead” administrative paper?

17. Which comes first? • Land registration or • Good contract and transaction law • LIS? • What do people need in order to plan better? Source: Williamson 2008

18. Thank you