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

2.2. Areas of process-oriented, participatory cooperation

In Benin as in other African countries, the urban percentage of the population is growing. The future forming of property rights for the preservation of resources will remain less and less restricted to rural areas: the consumers of foodstuffs, wood and water live more and more in towns; urban groups increasingly gain influence through purchase and sale over the ways in which rural resources are utilized.

2.2.1. Sector and regionally comprehensive programs

In Benin there already exist long-term programs encompassing sectors and regions which expressly serve resource preservation or at least indirectly comprise environmentally relevant components. By a program one understands a complex bundle of measures in the planning and implementation of which many actors exist at various levels of intervention.

A key role at present is played by the 'Projet des Gestion des Resources Naturelles' (PGRN) which is commonly financed by a donor consortium consisting of IDA, GTZ, the French Caisse Centrale (CCCE) and UNDP (Banque Mondiale 1992).

The project supports the development of the national planning capacities with regard to natural resources, including an improvement of the legislation system. It tests development models and is fostering initiatives in representative regions which support a sustainable and responsible management of natural resources like soil, forests, water, game through the rural communities themselves.

In detail, its activities are encompassed for the strengthening of the institutional capacities of planning, monitoring and evaluation at the national level, and the revision of the forest legislation, etc (see the new forest law of 1993). Added to that are trainings programs for the various parties and multiplicators.

The field activities apply to:

a) the management and protection of forest resources through local populations;

b) Land reclamation of water catchment areas in exemplary regions of the country, activities with a strong agricultural bent;

c) land tenure activities: assessment of land tenure systems under the participation of village communities in the same pilot zones of the water catchment areas. This encompasses the taking up of the current rights to land plots in a rural land tenure plan with the long-term goal of working out a national land statute book;

d) applied research in the pilot zones;

e) management of wildlife together with the neighbours of hunting zones.

The land tenure activities will be treated as an experimental, open, pragmatic initiative which includes learning processes. At the end will be a plan of the land rights in the participating villages in which the legal relations are documented. At the same time it will serve as a publicly accessible documentation, as collateral and record for legal security and as a source of information in the case of transfers.

The following proceeding is planned for the village context (Hounkpodote 1991, Karsenty 1993):

a) An introductory socio-economic survey to get demographic, economic and social starting information. (The necessity of this phase is disputed within the project.)

b) The diagnosis phase: this will make an appraisal of the current land tenure problems, of the strategies of locally involved parties and the possible risks of further action. Those making the survey will be specially trained to present the objectives and proceedings in a way conforming to the situation, e.g. through role playing. In this way the village population will be introduced to the idea of a local plan of land tenure which could be a result at the end of the field phase, if the population is prepared to cooperate.

c) Realising the local land tenure plan: first of all, with the assistance of the local population the physical particulars, the land plots and their characteristics will be recorded in a land plot index. Additionally the names of the owners, users, the conditions of renting and mortgaging, particular rights such as rights to trees, etc. The land tenure register will build up on this. It will be classified according to persons or groups who have rights to land plots.

d) Negotiating and formalising phase with regard to terms of contacts: this is the most sensitive phase since open legal questions will have to be dealt with and suggestions for attempts at negotiating and solving conflicts will have to be furnished. At the end, the village community will be presented with varying possibilities for codifying their land tenure relations and practices. It is the goal of all to fix rights and corresponding duties for all actors.

e) The concluding phase: the construction of systems for the lasting management of the register. This means the establishing of procedures for transactions and the appointing of competent authorities. The presented land tenure plan must be expressly accepted and approved by the village community. Apart from that is must be determined where the plan will be deposited (for example at districts office). A further goal is to stimulate the founding of a village committee for land use planning which ought to make its own decisions in the framework of the project area of the reclamation of water catchment areas.

In favourable circumstances, legal security and positive preconditions for investment in resource maintenance would be created without a formal land register entry at the capital. Apart form that, the plan could also help to defuse conflicts between villages or different ethnics, since the usufructuary rights of livestock keepers would also have to be settled which could strengthen their legal position.

The project is still in its initial phase: statements about the degree of participation of villages in the pilot zone, the experience gained from the working out of local land tenure plans and registers are not yet available.

Socio-economic basic surveys as a first phase are questioned in the project. In view of the increasing influence of non-locals in the villages (immigrants, absentee landlords) and their claim to resources, often to the detriment of locals, a strong emphasis should be given to the gathering of information concerning the repartition of social groups, the ethnic cohesion, land use and employment pattern (see also C.2.3.1.a). It will help from the very beginning to anticipate the most probable problems and conflicts about landed resources (either terms of tenancy or defining usufructuary rights or quarrels about field limits) and may shape project strategies for moderating, facilitating and reconciling. Risks of failure due to an underestimating of the role of non-locals may thus be reduced.

Village land tenure plans facilitate the decision making for financial cooperation as programs and projects to improve farming system's efficiency (diffusion of agro-forestry for example), rural infrastructure or marketing channels can rely upon increased incentives to invest in land. Plots are much less contested by third parties, contractual terms between landlords and tenants will be more precisely defined if a village plan is presented.

Up to now, village land tenure plans are not given a comparable legal status to entries into the land registry and do not substitute as a collateral in case of credit programs. Nevertheless, compared to the present situation of missing collaterals in an African context financial cooperation can rely upon a more secure data base.

A further example for already started programs is the support of the forming of local administrative bodies and the urban administration in Benin (L'appui aux collectivités locales et à la gestion urbaine au Bénin), which under strong French influence is being financed by a donor consortium.

Two of its activities affect resource rights and management: 1) the promotion of deconcentration and decentralising, followed up amongst other things by a government adviser in the Ministry of the Interior and 2) the program for the support of the municipal administration of Parakou. Both initiatives are dealt with at other points (B.4.5 and B.4.8.)

2.2.2. Initiatives in rural areas

a) (Village) land use planning

The main objectives of such approaches are

• Identification of those involved in the process who use one or more of the natural resources in common which are run short,

• making open the leading interests of the involved actors concerning resource utilization,

• bringing these at times diverging interests as far as possible in harmony,

• the setting up of stable institutions and organisations which guaranty sustainable resource management.

The available Benin results show once again that highly varying committees for resource management which were introduced by an act of the Administration do not function and do not fulfil what has been expected of them. The prerequisite that they should develop themselves into long-lasting environmentally oriented institutions is very likely a bad one.

Resource management encompasses two dimensions (Waters-Bayer 1992):

• The decisions about the ways of make use of the natural production bases such as soil, water and forest with the aim of a sustainable utilization;

• the putting into action of these decisions in the form of effective supervision and control.

In order to be able to fulfil both of these, the founding and work of the committees must follow the principles of voluntary cooperation as well as active participation and self-help ideas. Committees must be a part of the process of self-responsibility of local population groups in order to be able to solve as urgently felt problems for the group in the utilization of resources. Support means fostering and encouragement in attempts to find solutions for self recognised problems in the utilization of their resource environment . The work is process oriented as far as it is necessary to increase self-responsibility in the management of their resources step by step. Therefore an accompanying advice for the process is desirable as a continuous dialogue between the respective actors involved (Müller-Glodde 194). Constant trying out, adaptation and, if necessary the ejection of out-dated procedures and the willingness to learn from successes and mistakes are prerequisites (Waters-Bayer 1992).

Projects of bilateral and international development cooperation have already collected experience with committees for resource management. The starting point of their activities were often technical expert advice in farming, forestry and animal husbandry. More and more in the project phases they had to recognise the necessity of concentrating on the social organisation of their target groups and actors intervening in the project area who are also involved in the utilization of resources. The required hosting of processes doing justice to the development of institutional capacities in the area of environment, which lead to a better management of the complex environmental systems, have begun these projects, at least in parts (Müller-Glodde 1994). The process of trial and error and altered setting of priorities in the project phases offers favourable prerequisites for the promotion of the setting up and long-term support of self-determining committees.

The 'Projet Promotion de l'Elevage dans l'Atakora' (PPEA), which is financed by the GTZ, was begun as an animal health project in 1983. The extending of cotton fields, the pressure on farm and grazing land and the strengthened taking up of the interests of the Peulh led to a changed target formulation: progressive adaptation of production forms relating to the natural resource stock. In chosen pilot zones (Zone d'Actions Pilotes), processes are encouraged for common land use planning between peasants (Bariba) and settled and mobile livestock keepers (Peulh).

Central to the common interests of resource management are water retention reservoirs in the proximity of villages. They provide water for mobile herds, draught animals and for households. Peasants, livestock keepers, women and village authorities are the basic actors involved. The forming and administering of local committees are supported, the members of which are appointed or elected from the population; parity in these groups between peasants and livestock keepers is urgent. At present there are 14 so-called pastoral units (Unités Pastorales) which are fully functional and five up to a point.

Transhumants from neighbouring countries and other provinces lead to sharper tension between peasants and livestock keepers. In the system of patronage (système parrainage) the project performs as moderator and mediator and tries to support autochthonous authorities which carry responsibility for settling conflicts, and thus strengthen local independent environmental institutions at long-term. The project thus strengthens the position of land priests of the Bariba peasants and that of the traditional Peulh-chief, has brought them to round table discussion and has reactivated and made clear the procedures for complaints and solutions to negotiations. At the same time the goal is also not to make these disputes over trampling and browsing damage, water use and bush fire directly dependent on courts.

The experience of the project is still young, the intensity of advisory work is high. In the strengthening of these indigenous institutional activities there is no short-term one-sided transfer of knowledge, rather a long-term calculated comprehensive learning process. (As an example, an equal social status for land priest and Peulh chief on the committee is of great significance for beneficial work.) If one compares the work performed by the committees in the districts in the project area of the PPEA with the incompetence of the committees implemented 'from above' in the neighbouring district of Banikoara, the necessity of an easing and stabilising from outside in the founding phase in distinct.

In the 'Projet Développement Elevage Borgou-Est" (PDEBE) of the FAO and PNUD the attempt is being made to regulate the management of water points communally between the involved actors. Accordingly it is starting work with autochthonous authorities and is trying for example to settle the problems of transhumance with regional reference to the National Peulh Committee.

The project 'Réstauration des Resources Forestières de la Région de Bassila' conducted by ONAB and GTZ bears the altered forest policy priorities in mind and is in the process of conceiving the process of a growing participation of the population in the restoration and preservation of forest resource in the project area (Fagbemi/Sodeik 1993). Thus a standing committee is planned which is supposed to be put together from the most important actors such as peasants, livestock keepers, hunters, land owners, immigrants, administration and local project staff. It will guide the central areas of the management of forest resources and control their execution: permanent cropping, battling bush fire, land use planning and pasture control.

Next to that there are numerous long-established programs like that of the German Development Service (DED) for the sinking of wells in which above and beyond technical measures the utilization of water moves more and more into the centre of activities. In the villages in the vicinity of Savalou committees are nurtured in which peasants and livestock keepers together set the seasonal justifiable removal of water, determine the mode of utilization, settle variable water fees according to amount and season, and supervise the servicing of wells. Compared with State committees, overblown with personnel in the neighbouring villages, they work, for the present at least, very successfully.

b) Coordination of committees at the national level

Already existing initiatives for the promotion of local environmentally related institutions show the variety of resource use problems and solution models. The following Table 7 attempts its (incomplete) systemising.

In the majority of cases, these local institutions show identical structures and methods of working. The core of their work is formed by identical problems. In view of the multitude of initiatives, there is a lack of a summarising and comparing collection of facts, their analysis and the chance of giving the results back to the committees, so that learning processes can be accelerated and unnecessary duplicating can be avoided.

Thus, a supportive coordination and accompaniment at the national level fulfils at least two functions:

1. Collection of information regarding the founding and everyday work of committees as well as the exchange of information between them. What could be led off from that would be refined locally applicable techniques of monitoring and the sensibilisation as well as competent support in the case of blockages or deficits of information.

2. The identification of land tenure limitations and land rights practice, which completely hinders the work of the committees. With that, a close collaboration with state organisations at the national and regional level is necessary which are busy with the land tenure legislation in order to turn the gathered information into the legislation process.

c) A narrower dovetailing of land tenure, resource management and agricultural policy

Neither secure legal titles of resources for the mass of peasants, nor environmental reforms of the legislation which recognise the rights of all involved actors, encourage resource maintenance if they are not seen in collaboration with the respectively favourised sector policies. This affects for one thing price signals and incentives which have long supported cultivation practises which are destructive to resources. The one-sided promotion of cotton planting as an export commodity accelerates the scarcity of land and soil degradation. Price and marketing policies hardly create an incentive to production of other cash crops.

Agricultural research urgently requires a broader impulse in order to cushion the transition in the South and Centre from extensive, land consuming systems to more intensive ones. The maintenance of soil fertility must with that be extensively secured through system-own circulations. Endogenous innovations must be given enough attention.

When trees are brought into the systems, limits are very quickly reached: as agroforestry utilization is indispensable (soil improvement, foliage, demand for wood, etc.), the more scarce land becomes, and the more significant renting becomes, the more difficult is the integration of trees at present. Even if in a favourable case one can assume the security of land rights through the village land tenure register, it will not allow a systematic utilization of trees and bushes until the next generation.

d) The future of former State farms

Not only in Benin, but also in other West African countries, under pressure from international donors, the significance of denationalisation is growing as well as the withdrawal of the State from many of its wildly proliferous activities in the past. This provides a chance for sustainable resource maintenance, but will perhaps also provide its greatest challenge, as the condition of farm land left open and oil palm plantations in Benin show.

With the restitution and/or reorganisation of former state farms and cooperatives, a reform process could be stimulated which is strictly oriented towards environmental requirements. Only from here can an up to date demand for a land reform be derived. And German cooperation work could accompany the process of the new determination of the future of State land at the national level, also in view of the recent experience with the transformation of property systems after the German unification. Depending upon the interests of the government, the intensity of interference is variable, from a moderating support through the facilitating to directive promotion which sets strong impulses (Müller-Glodde 1994).

In Benin this encompasses decisions about whether and when estates should be transferred back. It must be made clear which legal status former owners may retain. Can the State explicitly relinquish its property reservations again without damaging its authority? It would be conceivable to have individual utilization forms, village-community or further going strictly cooperative ownership and utilization forms. The State can plan in an authoritive or participatory manner the reorganisation in that it takes negotiations with representatives of former owners. External cooperation would, as an 'honest broker' and facilitator thereby acquire the task of supporting the process of negotiation between the State, directly affected individuals and village communities as well as other interest groups like urban officials and traders.

Any long-term commitment of bilateral or international financial cooperation for a environmental oriented future use of these lands will most probably be bound to a satisfactory solution of the restitution question.

In view of the poor condition of the land tracts, a greater need for coordination between legal and political framework as well as sector and research policy exists. A reform of land tenure is scarcely separable from a reform of the conditions of land use and land management, all the more since the question of soil fertility maintenance only has a slight value on State farms.

2.2.3. Initiatives in urban environs

Taxation and land tenure questions

The taxing of landed property is a key point on the revenue side of municipalities. Its significance will increase when they become increasingly financially independent in the course of decentralisation. At present in Benin, the budgets of the municipalities are up to 75% dependent on so-called 'old dues'. From these four tax types, 64% in Parakou (1991) and Cotonou 61% (1991) were allotted to land tax on developed and undeveloped land. In the face of the small tax percentage for trade and commerce, they will gain a fundamental significance for tax revenue and investment opportunities also in environmental control especially in smaller towns, the district centres. Direct taxes and land tenure are interrelated in this very connection with decentralisation and the financial sovereignty of the regional administrative bodies.

Accordingly, the project 'Registre Foncier Urbain' (RFU) is first of all concentrating its activities on the target of raising tax revenue and the reform of tax administration. Such projects, which collect innovation about long-term nation-wide programs, always pursue the target of securing land rights in urban environs and as well the reform for better management of property rights with the introduction of an urban land register.

Thus a broad field of tasks as well for external cooperation also lies in the planning and support of the implementation of legal and political instruments for an increase in legal security in the case of access to and utilization of land resources in towns.

For financial cooperation which supports future urbanization programs a close relationship between precisely defined property rights in real estates, urban land tax revenues and the financial contribution of partner municipalities becomes evident.

Environmental requirements and land tax

The implementation of even minimal environmental measures in urban districts such as garbage and sewage removal and redevelopment require additional investment which communities in accordance with an administration reform will for the most part have to come up with themselves through good management. Via municipal land tax three principle functions can thus be fulfilled:

1. Contributions to the overall tax revenue of towns,

2. Security of property rights through an urban land register,

3. Contributions by users to the costs of environmental measures

A predetermination of taxes for a special purpose contradicts solid principals of fiscal policy. However, tying together dues and fees to the raising of taxes offers big advantages: through the improvement of the systems of land taxation the State gets more information about the basis of taxation of individual house owners. The collection of taxes is relatively well organised and comprehensive. Beginning in the cities at least, external development cooperation can collaborate in an advisory capacity in the working out of models in which ways citizens must be involved in the costs of the maintenance of the environment and where the individual taxable capacity should be oriented. Should varying taxable capacity be identified according to property size or to classification of residential districts?

The factor land will also in the future gain a key role for the contribution of users in resource protection in view of insufficient capacities for the setting up of a differentiated tax and duty system. External cooperation will work together with a municipal administration which thus far shows more decentralised structures. Already started projects have a pilot character for collecting information. It is necessary to work out, mid- and long-term, programs for building up the institutional capacities of municipalities as well. Decentralised planning and initiatives for action which overstep the competence of individual authorities and are obligated to the subsidiary principle, must take centre stage.

Property rights and environment oriented urban planning

The legal framework and the institutional rules for the access to and utilization of land in towns were completely inadequate in the past for making rational urban planning possible which already included environmental aspects early enough. This can be seen for example in the settlement of ecologically strongly endangered areas and the inability of responsible organisations to be able to prevent or at least control it.

At present in Benin the most important responsibilities in this area are allocated to three different Ministries without an institutionalized framework for coordination having been built up: territorial administration is dealt with by the Ministry of the Interior, the land registry and public lands administration by the Ministry of Finance and urban and environmental planning by the Ministry of the Environment. Technical cooperation can for one thing help to identify deficits in the execution and control of legal rules within ministerial bureaucracy with all those involved, these deficits being the result of a lack of a flow of information and inadequate coordination.

For another thing there exists the need for the working out of sector comprehensive planning instruments, for example the way how already settled ecological problem zones like flood areas or mountain slopes can be preserved or in the future can be protected from an illegal settlement. Resource protection and land tenure as an legal and political framework stand again here in close mutual relationship: should the regions be declared as State domains and be protected as State forests with all their familiar weakness and inadequacies? Is expropriation and resettling with compensation a realistic application, or are positive or negative sanction mechanisms imaginable which guaranty an environmentally responsible method of settlement?

2.2.4. Strengthened interrelations between urban and rural areas

Through the zoning of land in towns with a rural character, urban land tenure practices get put into action very quickly in these regions. The consequences are only known initially. The indicators to date show that they alter the social relationship with regard to land utilization rapidly. The zoning of land and the awarding of residential titles acts as a hinge between the two worlds.

The legislation and practical policy must bear considerably more strongly in mind than they have to date this interrelation between rural and urban areas which is growing closer, for example when working out a 'Code Rural' for Benin. Development cooperation can make a contribution here: identifying contradictions and blockages which arise when urban oriented land law and laws for environment protection become effective in the rural context, or when utilization rules overlap in the planned 'Code Rural' or others with urban law.

At the same time, external cooperation should work out and offer instruments just as also in rural areas procedures for land zoning can be dovetailed with programs for the maintenance of natural resources. An example: when land parcelling and village land registers, as is to observed in some cases, encourage an 'enclosure movement' of the owners in planting hedges or trees, then direct resource protection measures as agroforestry systems can be applied, as in the Sahel.

2.2.5. About the necessity of a comprehensive land tenure policy

In view of the presented legislative conditions and ministerial responsibilities, the formulation of a unified land tenure in the framework of a 'Code Rural' which demands an enormous coordination work and would possibly have be enforced against the resistance of interest and pressure groups like mobile livestock keepers (as in Niger). Foreseeable problems are:

• The coordination of interministerial work groups between an urban oriented Ministry of the Environment, which would have to be the advocate of resource protection, and the Ministry of Rural Development (transhumance regulation), the Ministry of Justice and of the Interior (registration of property).

• The identification of areas in which new laws of orientation would be necessary, e.g. the relationship between livestock keepers and agriculturalists. Can the valid, scattered laws and statutes related to resources be integrated? How practicable is an extensive conglomerate of laws, and how can it be transformed into action locally in a country with a (even today) locally centralised administration?

• Do informal titles, as are being pursued by the PGRN with its land tenure component, have a legal status, and what position have they in comparison to the State's land registry (avoidance of parallel development)?

Developmental cooperation should contribute to the rationalisation of discussion at the national and regional levels, establishing and moderating a forum which once again thoroughly and critically analyses the pros and cons of such a comprehensive legal plan. Accordingly, two models form the extremes: further development of the existing legal framework, uncovering of gaps and contradictions as well as, if necessary, supplementing it by new statutes including the institutionalising of a permanent coordination between the actors. Or an externally promoted working out of a comprehensive statute book, in a way which is already being practised in the drawing up of the environmental action plan.

More and more sector comprehensive programs have to be tackled and coordinated between different organisations as Ministries, regional administrative bodies. In view of an increasing demand for highly qualified moderating and facilitating by local staff in high ranking positions development cooperation should further develop specialised intensive training programs and courses for this target group within the framework of the German Foundation of International Development (DSE).