Resource information
Summary: "This paper presents an overview of the distinctive
features of communal tenure in
different community-based land and natural resource
management systems. Communal
tenure refers to situations where groups, communities, or one or more villages have
well defined, exclusive rights to jointly own and/or manage particular areas of natural
resources such as land, forest and water. These are
often referred to as
common pool
resources: many rural communities are dependent on these resources for their
livelihood. In communal tenure, both the boundaries of the resource owned in
common and group membership are clearly defined. These are necessary conditions to
exclude outsiders and to secure the rights of group
members so that these rights cannot
be taken away or changed unilaterally.
Two models of communal tenure are presented in the
paper;
these models differ in
terms of the function of the state, the length of tenure and the characteristics of the
resource system concerned. In the first model, the
permanent title
model, the state fully
and permanently hands the land over to local indigenous communities for private
collective ownership. In this situation, the resource system is often multi-facetted,
comprising agricultural lands as well as forest, water and pasture land. Permanent title
for indigenous peoples’ communal land is a special
claim supported by national
legislation and by international conventions, coven
ants and declarations that many
countries have endorsed. Examples of permanent title in Asia include the Philippines
and Cambodia, where legislation provides for collective rights of indigenous
communities. In many instances such as Cambodia, Philippines or, for instance, Papua
New Guinea, the indigenous groups or communities that are eligible by law for private
and permanent communal tenure need to become a legal entity to be recognized as
a
communal right-holder by the state. This may require community incorporation.
However, the process of incorporation can be cumbersome for people who are not
necessarily literate in the national language or in
the demands of state bureaucracy.
In the second model, the
delegated management
model, the state maintains ownership
of the resources and delegates management to local
groups, most often villages, for a
specific period of time, with the possibility of renewal. Such agreements are generally
subject to national legislation only. In this case,
the resources are often uniform and
relate to, for example, community forestry, community fishery, pasture or irrigation
group tenure that all come in many different forms
with different bundles of rights.
This model is far more common than the first, with
Nepal, India, Thailand, Cambodia
or Mongolia providing examples.
In addition to these two general models, one may still find traditional customary
communal tenure in remote communities. Here the state does not actually regulate or
intervene in the management of resources, but all local communities in the area would
know of the local rules of harvesting and withdrawal rights.
Both the permanent title in communal land and the d
elegated management model may
originate from an existing customary arrangement, where the rules are known and have
been adhered to by right-holders – and their neighbors – for generations. The state can
acknowledge these existing communal systems through
formalization of existing rules
and rights. In a different situation, where customary arrangements are no longer
present and the resource is degraded and under open
access, the formalization of
Communal tenure and the governance of common property resources in Asia
delegated management of, for example, a new community forest, may imply setting up
or
inducing
communal tenure institutions, where they did not previously exist.
Inducing institutions is a major exercise in social
engineering; the resulting induced
institution must be carefully aligned with the physical and natural characteristics of the
resources or resource system and, ideally, should build on an existing set of norms in
the community. Where governments and/or donor projects have a pro-poor approach in
inducing communal tenure for natural resource management, the pro-poor targeting
mechanisms must be mainstreamed in the institution
building.
In all communal tenure systems, the physical and biological characteristics of the
resource system factor decisively into the regulatory frameworks that communities
establish. One must match with the other. In situations where both subsistence and
market value products can be withdrawn from the resource system there are also many
kinds of interlinked and embedded rights: the communal tenure is usually embedded
within a larger nested hierarchy of institutions."
Nowadays the communities will often need support an
d recognition by the state in
order to manage effectively their common pool resou
rces. As a consequence,
communities will need to establish two sets of rule
s: (i) those rules that constitute the
community as an entity in the eyes of the state and
(ii) those that define internal rules
of benefit sharing. Whereas constitutional rules de
fine the community as a legal entity,
internal community rules establish the management r
ights in the resources and the fair
appropriation of benefits.
Interest in communal tenure and common property res
ource management has risen since
the 1980s among academics, governments and internat
ional development organizations
working on land and natural resources management. D
ebates on communal tenure are
still ongoing in many countries in Asia, in the con
text of market pressures and
dynamics, which call for privatization to increase
productivity, and in the context of
big business vying for a stake in valuable land and
other natural resources, in some
instances leading to land grabbing. The current mar
ket driven pressures on natural
resources create both challenges and opportunities
for communities and governments.
Overall, policies and institutions that promote acc
ountability and good governance
over these resources, both by the government at nat
ional and local level and by
communities, are required. Some specific approaches
, such as communities’ mapping
of their territories, are proving useful tools to s
afeguard their lands, although they are
not sufficient conditions: the wider political and
regulatory environment must be
supportive too.
Communal tenure will very likely play a significant
role in the policies and actions for
climate change mitigation. With the emergence of in
itiatives for Reduced Emissions
from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD and REDD+)
, governance and benefit
sharing of carbon finance become critical questions
in defining who owns the carbon
stocked in forest. Marketable community rights to t
his special resource unit (stocked
carbon) must be supported by national legislation t
hat favors communal tenure of some
of the carbon properties. This may lead to a separa
tion of rights to carbon from the
broader rights to the forest and land, an aspect no
t yet addressed by theoretical work on
communal tenure...
