Document(s) 5 of 10

After being relegated to the margins of development debates for over a decade, land policy has moved rapidly up the international agenda in recent years. In Latin America, a wave of market-oriented land policy reforms were adopted in the 1990s, from Mexico through Honduras and Nicaragua to Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. At the same time less visible yet important innovations were taking place on a number of fronts: joint titling to couples to promote gender equity; the regularization of Indigenous Peoples’ titles to communal lands; resettlement and institutional reforms in post-war contexts; and local initiatives to enhance communities’ ability to manage land in sustainable ways.

Yet by the turn of the century frustrations at the uneven pace of change led certain social movements and political parties to revive the banner of redistributive land reform as an urgent policy objective. Events in Brazil, particularly the rise of agrarian social movements such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra and the election of the Partido dos Trabalhadores on a platform that included a historic commitment to land reform, are a dramatic expression of this new tendency in Latin American politics.

There has also been a flurry of international activity on land issues in recent years. In Latin America, Vía Campesina and the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo are coordinating efforts by peasants and other popular movements that are pushing for land reforms. Partly in response to these social pressures, USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other official agencies are sponsoring meetings on land policy and administration in the Hemisphere, in addition to their portfolios of grants, loans and technical cooperation in this domain. The recent policy research report (PRR) on land policy by the World Bank may mark a turning-point in this activity.¹ The PRR synthesizes accumulated learning and draws the following conclusions:

• improving land tenure security, access and socially desirable use are essential for growth, poverty reduction and good governance
• approaches must be tailored to country circumstances, and governments should develop coherent national strategies in consultation with civil society
• there is a menu of options for promoting greater tenure security and access, from legal and institutional reforms to liberalize markets, to redistributive land reforms
• while redistributive land reform may be an instrument of last resort in some parts of the world, it may be more urgent in Latin America given the extreme patterns of land concentration in the region; yet history suggests that such reforms should be carried out in new ways to avoid the sub-optimal outcomes of the past
• research can be an instrument for evidence-based policy innovation and ongoing learning in this domain.

Is Latin America moving toward a new generation of pro-poor land reforms? What are the real openings and constraints with regard to such policies — at the local, national and international levels? What role is research playing and what role might it play, in tracking efforts and illuminating policy options? These are the questions driving this study.

The study was commissioned by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) as part of its review of corporate programming options for 2005-10. A leading funder of research on international development, IDRC has supported a modest amount of research on land issues in the Americas. Through its engagement with research partners mainly in the Andes and Central America, as well as with international donor agencies, IDRC concluded that it would be useful to review the major tendencies in land policy debates in the region, look at how research is contributing to practice, and identify options for future policy research. This document has been be used for IDRC planning. It is also being published to stimulate informed action in the broader community.

In brief, the paper suggests that Latin America may not be poised for a radical shift in land policy and administration, but it is home to some worrisome trends and a rich array of initiatives on land issues. Researchers have a crucial role to play in illuminating policy alternatives and monitoring outcomes. The study identifies a host of issues on which fresh research could inform practice. These can be grouped under four headings:

• tracking market-oriented reforms — by monitoring initiatives to modernize cadastres and property registries; liberalize land titling and regularize ownership by Indigenous Peoples; liberalize land sales and rental markets; create new land funds; and change land tax regimes — and looking carefully at their outcomes for the poor, women and Indigenous Peoples in particular
• exploring options beyond market-oriented reforms, including redistributive land reforms and production cooperatives
• studying efforts to articulate local and national land policy initiatives in areas like titling, credit, taxation and conflict management
• revisiting the links between land policy and armed conflict, including the conflict implications of trends toward re-concentration of land ownership in certain countries, and options for articulating short-term measures, such as the resettling of ex-combatants through to the structural changes needed to prevent the recurrence of war.

There is a need for research on these issues in most countries of the region, but Brazil stands out as a context where political will, social pressure, international engagement and a diversity of approaches offer an enabling environment for influential research over the coming years. Many of these issues also call for cross-national comparisons.

A few caveats are in order. This is a scoping study, not an in-depth analysis of any particular country, donor or research theme. We aim to provide an overview of the main contexts, issues, actors and openings for policy research. Yet, given time and space constraints, our geographic focus is on Brazil, the Andes and Central America. Substantively, we focus on debates regarding land tenure, access and use in rural settings. We only touch on related debates about rural development, decentralization, trade and so on. Finally, this is a desk study, though the authors conducted some interviews and corresponded with selected informants. Some of these gaps are addressed in the literature cited in the paper. Others will hopefully be filled by future studies.

Endnotes to Introduction

¹ Deininger (2003).

Document(s) 5 of 10