Michael Kirk (1996):
The Role of Land Tenure and Property Rights in Sustainable Resource Use: The Case of Benin

Property in not an object but rather a social relation which defines the rights of the property owner with respect to something of value (a source of benefits of income) against all others. It is a triadic relationship involving benefit streams, rights holders and duty bearers. (Bromley 1991:29).

A property right is a claim to a source of benefit which the State or some other authority agrees to protect by imposing duties upon others parties who might interfere with the said source (Bromley 1991:2). Thus, property rights establish property relations. Within these relations between two or more individuals or groups, one party has an interest which is protected by a right only when all other parties have a duty (Bromley/Cernea 1989:5).

Land tenure, or land tenure system, designates a set of rules defining the customary and legal rights which govern the social relations between individuals or groups in their access and use of natural resources (Crowley 1991:2, Kuhnen 1982:1). Tenure (French: 'foncier') encompasses land and all those natural resources which are directly related to it (water, trees, pastures etc.) (Hesseling/Ba 1993:9).

A resource regime is a structure of rights and duties characterising the relationship of individuals to one another with respect to that particular resource (Bromley/Cernea 1989:5). Thus, land tenure systems and resource regimes are very close concepts. This cluster of institutional arrangements is created and altered, regardless of whether they are concerned with Government land, (individual) private or common property.

Behind every tenure regime are one or several institutions which sanction the rights of a specific set of individuals with regard to resources of common interests. These institutions may be kinship groups, households, families, cooperatives or the State, but as well they can be norms and values which have been institutionalised as laws, custom and conventions within the social groups (Crowley 1991, Müller-Glodde 1994, Weise et al. 1991).

Figure 1: Sites researched in case studies

(This figure is only available in the hardcopy of this document)

B. Property rights and sustainable resource management Benin as a West African example.

For the study here at hand, Benin stands as an example of

• a West African coastal country with agro-ecological zones from the wet savanna with secondary rain forest and two cropping periods to Sahelian conditions in the North, and

• a State which continues to be characterised by French colonial rule along with its concepts and institutions for land tenure.

The evaluation of material about the current land tenure situation and the most pressing problem areas is confined correspondingly to West African countries, including the Sahelian States. Especially here the work of the "Club du Sahel", of CILSS and the research of the Land Tenure Centre, Madison have given an important impulse to the analysis and assessment of rights for land and other natural resources as well as their long-term use.