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

2. Fields of process oriented and participatory cooperation in Benin

2.1. Needs for international cooperation

In African States reform processes and reorientating for the creation of property rights and in the management of vital resources are neither to be tackled isolatedly at the local or national level, nor allow environmental problems a sectoral limitation and clear identification of target groups, or at best, of those involved in the process.

A structuring of the many-layered relationships which have the actors amongst them and which are also the basis for the relevant valid property rights to resources is, however, necessary. The colonial-historical and culture-specific inheritance of African countries like Benin has let as its poles a partially heterogeneous local variety of institutions and utilization patterns and a strongly centralised State. The institutional connections and the communication between them is insufficient. The same applies to the sectoral stiffness of the Administration, for one thing in the bordering between urban and rural areas and also for example between farming and animal husbandry.

2.1.1. Spatial and sectoral starting points

Local/municipal level

This level encompasses villages and settlements of peasatns, livestock holders and also fishermen, the camp of mobile livestock keepers, and also the municipality, which is the next highest administration unit created by the State as a merger of villages.

At this level there are needs in the following areas:

a) The identifying and supporting of committees or associations for sustainable resource utilization and conflict management.

Is the strengthening of autochthonous authorities sensible and promising? Does the local population still feel obligated to them, or is kinship no longer a binding principle thanks to migration, or is the majority already economically independent from an utilization of local resources? Which vested interests are village chiefs, land priests or kings obviously pursuing with regard to land market and tenancy? Did they have such far-reaching powers in the past that they could ease or solve newly arising conflicts involving livestock keepers and migrants for example? Problem analysis has shown that their inclusion is necessary for the success of local initiatives for sustainable resource management and conflict mediation and that their respective interests can be very diverse.

The analysis also shows that additional parties must more and more frequently be drawn into locally bound resource conflicts: transhumant livestock keepers, regionally and nationally operating traders, urban land owners with properties in rural areas; generally as well non-locals to an area without group ties, with only a slight personal relationship to village land and forests; furthermore, the State which on the one hand cannot witness land transfers or settle down trespassing routes for herds and on the other hand does not remain involved in management and conflict mediation.

The setting up of a variety of committees and organisations each with varying structures, patterns for decision making and areas of competence requires an inclusion and coordinating at regional and national level. In order to keep up with the local requirements in accordance with flexible institutions capable of adapting into the environmental area and also minimal standardising in the application of the framework of legislation more effectively, regulations and harmonising on the region level (i.e. the sub-prefecture) need to be made.

b) Creation of greater transparency in land transactions

As shown, this transparency must not be limited to the sale of land; rather it must also comprise the temporary surrender when renting out land. While in the case of sales it is of primary importance to get evidence about current owners, the determining of the term of a lease for planning security is of central importance when renting-out land.

Greater clarity in the village context comprises the inclusion of the public and can be started with autochthonous institutions and principles. Precise ventures like the land tenure activities of the PGRN are still in the initial stages (see C.2.2.2.). When an inventory has been taken of village land and when the local land tenure plan has been presented and accepted by the village community, a decisive first step will have been made. Along with that, a close collaboration with the village authorities - who have either been elected or achieved their position through status - and also with the administration of the municipality is necessary.

c) The securing of ownership rights

Incontestable and verifiable ownership rights, i.e. also long-lasting utilization rights like hereditary leasehold are a necessary but not sufficient condition for a sustainable utilization of resources which also care for the resources. The cost of this must be appropriate to the incomes of the mass of land owners. The procedure must be simple and give access to everyone. In the spirit of legal unity within the country, a simplification and cheapening of land registration would offer an instrument which ought to be fostered. But the setting up of a decentralised land register which also reaches villages can neither financially nor from an organisational point of view be implemented in a foreseeable time period of time.

More important still, however, is the question whether it is worth striving for the further privatisation of land alone through the land registry. Just how in the north of the country are rights of way and grazing rights to be secured? To what extent will land speculation additionally be forced on by nation-wide registration programs? What is the cost-benefit ratio like for the setting up of a comprehensive system?

Accordingly, a pragmatic, less formal approach, like the one the PGRN has with its working out of village land registers, should be given preference, even if this does not contribute to removing the parallelism or dualism of various legal conditions for land utilization and preservation.

A particular challenge for development cooperation exists in identifying the respective bias even in less formal processes for creating legal security, such as:

• Preferential treatment of the interests of urban owners who are simply easier to reach than owners in villages.

• The establishing of rights of elders and men as owners contrary to the rights of women and younger people.

• Clear classification of ownership in the case of cropping land, and of the grey areas of property rights in the case of grazing land in the proximity of villages.

• Clear classification within village terrains, and of unclear, attenuated rights in peripheral areas of villages with reference to forests, pastures and water courses.

d) Secure tenancy conditions

If land becomes scarce as in the South, not everyone cultivating land will be a land owner in the future. All forms of tenancy will receive an important function as a compensating institution between those offering land (absentee landlords, households with multiple employment, emigrants etc.) and those looking for land (immigrants, landless people in emergency situations, the young). Trust and stability in tenancy conditions are basic prerequisites for an utilization which not only means 'soil mining', but rather pursues lasting maintenance of soil fertility.

Attempts in Asian countries by the State to regulate tenancy rules have led to enormously inventiveness of getting around them using secret side-arrangements. If there were at least success in setting clear regulations in regard to the duration of tenancy contracts using witnesses and/or written confirmation, it would be a step towards a growing willingness to achieve more long-term resource utilization.

e) Promotion of integrated land use systems. In Benin this comprises three dimensions:

• Agro-forestry systems first and foremost in the South, where transhumance has a subordinate significance. Participatory initiatives of agricultural research, which take on endogenous innovations of peasants in particular, already exist.

• Agro-sylvo-pastoral systems always in connection with participatory initiatives for the controlled utilization of protected and classified forests. The new forest law creates the preconditions, the PGRN works in pilot zones with its activity 'forest utilization'.

• Agro-pastoral systems in the North which bear in mind the changed exchange conditions between all parties and secure a balancing out of interests. The PPEA in Natitingou is active here.

In all cases it is not the technical solutions which form the worst bottle-neck, but rather the primary sociological questions such as the set up of how improved communications and cooperation structures for environmentally sound action can be carried on. What will be decisive is how here the working together of all actors involved in the process of use and the protection of resources can be institutionalised through external support, i.e. can they be standardised and stabilised in the longer term.

Regional level

This encounters the district and the province as well. In order to do justice to the various natural and social basic conditions, numerous initiatives must begin at the local level. However, a long-term established land tenure policy and resource management require harmonising, coordinating and steering at a higher, superordinate level in at least three areas:

• The land register is at present in Benin an established institutional regulation for the acquisition of private exclusive rights to land which is not for disposal. There exists an urgent need to decentralise the 'service des domaines' in order to make its services available to all interested parties. In view of the budget limitations and the level of urgency, the first step is to strive for the setting up of land register in the main centres of the present six provinces.

• The existing practice of informal land sales with confirmation through the administration should at least be coordinated and documented at the district level. What is required are unified minimal demands of written agreements and the construction of a simple register for transfers, as long as village land tenure plans do not exist in general, like the way those from the PGRN began as a pilot phase. There exists also the need for further clarification and coordination, since this practise has to date never been legally recognised at the national level by th ministerial bureaucracy.

• Conflicts between agriculturalists and mobile livestock keepers are sharply increasing. A land use planning which respects in particular rights of way and utilization rights of the livestock keepers for pastures, cannot be carried out uncoordinatedly at the village level or even through district officials. Transhumants overstep administration limits so that consistent planning at the province level is urgently needed in order to be able to guaranty models of utilization which care for the environment (alternation of pastures, temporary blocking of access, etc.)

National level

All the activities for a reform of the land legislation or other resources such as water and forests are incumbent upon State legislation. This affects in particular the planned working out of a comprehensive statute book for all rural areas, the 'code rural'. Should this prove to be lasting and practicable, information gaps need to be closed: in regard to the local practice of land tenure by peasants, there will be a wealth of material from project work (PGRN) in addition to what is already available. But from empirical scientific work as well (University of Hohenheim). The same also applies to the urban area (Projet Registre Urbain). Gaps arise for the northern provinces, and above all in regard to current arrangements of livestock keepers and agriculturalists.

In a one-sided centralist State without strong regional administrative bodies with their own power to make decisions, an improved flow of information from the local basis to the central powers is an indispensable prerequisite for planning. And this is not sufficient in Benin. In order to obtain information from villages and municipalities about current land tenure practice and new problems on the agenda as well as areas free of law, a considerably closer cooperation or rather a working together is required.

In view of such an assessment of the land tenure situation the legislator is also forced to decide whether only a very generally kept to law of orientation of the basic principles of resource rights is formulated and a broader leeway for local and regional implementation requirements remain per decree and regulation, or whether a detailed set of rules should exist for regulating cropping as well for animal husbandry and their interaction, and in addition their connection to forest utilization.

Development cooperation would have to help to stimulate this mutual flow of information in the first place and also to install it long term as a part of the decentralising at the different administrative levels.

Sectoral level

It is not justified to make the land tenure system wholly responsible for non-sustainable utilization of resources, be it dominated by autochthonous institutions or by State law. The example of cotton cultivation in the North of Benin makes it impressively clear that agricultural policy as sectoral policy exercises an enormous influence on changed human-land relationships. No reformed or reoriented land tenure policy can be run in rural areas without coordinating it with the priorities of agricultural and export priorities.

In the centre of all this is a mutual connection with

• price policy for the most important agricultural products (cotton, mais),

• marketing for example for mais as against cotton,

• agricultural research policy which favourites cultivation techniques which secure the preservation of soil fertility and decelerate deforestation.

2.1.2. Institutions to be included

If one follows the composition in B.3., the following should be included above all:

• Autochthonous institutions and the local authorities and committee members as moderators and conflict mediators.

• Ministry level: the Ministry of the Environment is acquiring a growing number of tasks in the urban context, further the Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Finance and Justice. Activities are expected in the framework of an environmentally oriented legislation, and above all for the better coordination of existing statutes. Further the institutionalising of work routines, problem analysis and planning which will be sector comprehensive.

• Territorial administration: in the course of decentralising it would acquire stronger powers, both in general and specifically for decision making; a process of empowering would thus have to begin.

• Committees for resource management: it must be checked out how many committees already in existence, implemented 'from above', do justice to the necessary demands.

• Non-Governmental Organisations: based on the subsidiary principle, they would acquire the task of legal assistance in cases of conflict.

• International donors: in view of complex programs, internal coordination between donors is becoming more and more important, but also more difficult.