The link between conflict & land management: a critique of approaches in development cooperation

1. Insert pictures in this rectangle The link between conflict & land management: a critique of approaches in development cooperation 19 August 2005, Bern Tobias Hagmann, swisspeace

2. Menu • Introduction • Lessons learned • Analytical issues • Critical review of existing approches • Conclusions & ways forward

3. Introduction • Why do people fight over land? • What concerns for development actors? • Where should they intervene? • How should they intervene?

4. Lessons learned USAID (2004) on land conflict management: 1. Land conflicts are multidisciplinary • Access to land must be improved • Registration promotes conflict when weak institutions, unclear/overlapping rights • Multiple strategies to resolve competing land claims • Land important in post-conflict situations • Complement land interventions with other sectoral interventions

5. Lessons learned (ctd.) • Land policy projects often neglect conflict dimension • Conflict prevention & resolution programmes often disregard land issues • No generalising conclusions on how to address land conflicts (violent & non-) • No systematic knowledge on the functioning of local institutions in dispute resolution • Role of land policy in short & mid-term in conflict prevention is undocumented • Consensus-building in environmental disputes still in its infancy

6. Analytical issues • Conflict is inherent to natural resource management • Tenure relations are power relations • Land use determined by nature & humans • Need for flexible tenure arrangements • Rights & rules regulate resource use • Legal pluralism as norm not exception • Dispute resolution mechanisms exist, but are not reconciled inbetween

7. Critical review of approaches (A) Efforts to improve land tenure security • Land titling/registration programmes exacerbated conflicts • Different conceptions of property • Erosion of state power (ex. Sahel) (B) Efforts to revive customary institutions • Challenged by heterogenisation of resource use & users • Incompatibility with national & international institutions & framworks • A rule of old men ?

8. Critical review of approaches (ctd) (C) Efforts to build up community-based NRM • Context of state decentralisation • Romantic view on community • Strongly driven by common property resource theory (D) Efforts to improve conflict management • Transfer of Western conflict resolution prescriptions • Limited social anchorage • Challenge of supporting peace initiatives

9. Conclusions & ways forward • Make use of land tenure appraisals & conflict assessments • Increase interdisciplinary analysis & work • Strenghten local capacity to invent responses to land conflict • Mainstream stakeholder analysis into programming to assess distributional impacts • Combine interventions at institutional, behavioural & resource levels

10. Online resources • FAO Land Tenure Series http://www.fao.org/sd/LTdirect/ltstudies_en.htm • IIED Drylands, Land Tenure, Land Policy http://www.iied.org • Land Tenure Center (U Wisconsin) http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/ • ODI Natural Resource Perspectives http://www.odi.org.uk/nrp/index.html

11. Tools & textbooks • Buckles, D. (ed.) (1999), Cultivating peace: conflict and collaboration in natural resource management, Ottawa, IDRC. • Hendrickson, D. (1997), Supporting local capacities for managing conflicts over natural resources in the Sahel, London, IIED. • Pons-Vignon, N. and H.-B. Solignac Lecomte (2004), Land, violent conflict and development, Paris, OECD. • USAID (2004), Land and conflict: a toolkit for intervention, Washington D.C., USAID.