Author: Amrit Bhandari

Guest Commentary by Provash Budden, Mercy Corps’ Colombia Country Director.

This week, Mercy Corps Colombia and Guatemala are hosting the 14th regional exchange between government institutions of Guatemala and Colombia. This exchange aims to share knowledge to improve public policies and public and private institutional responses aimed at the rural sector in both countries and the opportunity to share best practices that address the processes of individual and collective certification of public and private property. Mercy Corps is also facilitating the exchange of ideas about the challenges to achieve lasting peace by addressing the structural problems of the rural sector, land use and the victims and minority ethnic groups affected by armed conflict.

Throughout the week you can follow the conversations and activities of this exchange in Bogota and also in Tolima where participants will travel to learn more about Mercy Corps’ work with coffee farmers who are formalizing property, improving coffee production and protecting natural resources. Blogs, pictures, video and activities will be posted on Mercy Corps’ Red Tierra web site. This site is managed in Spanish but comments in English are welcome.

Participating in the exchange are 10 officials from Guatemala who include the Director of the Land Fund, the Director of the RIC, six managers of these two institutions, two Senators of the Republic of Guatemala who are involved in the commission of land and two officials from Mercy Corps Guatemala. These officials will meet with high-level delegates of the Colombian State including the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Director of INCODER, the Director of IGAC, the Managers of the Land Restitution Unit and other entities responsible for Rural Development, Collective Territory Titling and Rural Property Formalization.

Mercy Corps has been working on property rights, conflict resolution and natural resource management for over 10 years in Colombia and Guatemala with support from USAID and continues to support South-South exchanges to connect public policies and practical actions that address land issues in Latin America.

On April 29, 2014, the United Nations Security Council voted to lift a long-standing ban on diamond exports from Côte d’Ivoire. Ending the nine-year-old ban will encourage greater transparency in Côte d’Ivoire’s diamond sector and potentially move an estimated $12 to $23 million annually from the illicit diamond trade into the formal economy.

To lay the groundwork for the removal of the ban, USAID supported the Government of Côte d’Ivoire to develop the systems and procedures necessary to comply with the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme—the international program to certify shipments of rough diamonds and prevent conflict diamonds from entering the world’s markets. As part of USAID’s Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) project, USAID sent a technical adviser in March 2013 to work with the Ivorian government to establish a system to eliminate conflict diamonds from the import/export stream of rough diamonds, create a legal and regulatory framework to support compliance with the Kimberley Process (KP), and establish appropriate penalties for transgressions. Through a new iteration of the PRADD program, which commenced in September 2013 and is financed together with the European Union, USAID hopes to expand trade and reduce conflict in this critically important sector. These efforts fit squarely within the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, which seeks to improve the enabling environment for trade and investment, prevent transnational criminal threats, and promote poverty reduction (among other goals).

“A year ago, Côte d’Ivoire was still a diamond trouble spot,” said Terah U. DeJong, the technical adviser who is now Country Director of the Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD II) project, recently launched in Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea. “The government was able to integrate best practices and lessons learned from PRADD’s earlier work. The challenge now is to build on that foundation.”

At the latest Kimberley Process Plenary session, Ivorian Mining Minister Jean-Claude Brou expressed thanks to the United States and other countries that assisted Côte d’Ivoire in becoming compliant. He noted that compliance was not an end in itself, but a key step in the long-term goal of ensuring that mineral resources benefit the country and the mining communities.

PRADD II will continue to support the government as it addresses challenges and issues that are expected to include:

• ensuring responsiveness from the Ministry of Mines in continuing key reforms;
• establishing diamond-buying houses and needed law enforcement actions;
• preparing for diamond buyers who are likely to descend on the country when the embargo lifts.

PRADD II will clarify and strengthen property rights in areas where diamond mining is occurring in order to minimize the potential for land use conflicts as the diamond economy recovers. To help improve transparency in the diamond value chain, the project will map supply chain actors and distribute diamond weighing scales to active artisanal mining cooperatives to improve the accuracy of KP production statistics. The project will also help rehabilitate former mining areas by teaching local people how to convert exhausted mine sites to fish ponds.

By creatively using radio programming, PRADD II is raising awareness about the diamond industry. The project is also engaged with the government to consider additional support for local communication campaigns on the Kimberley Process—especially law enforcement issues—as it will be important to respond to the possibility of an increased interest from diamond buyers and prospectors in the coming months.

As Côte d’Ivoire’s diamond sector transitions from a black market to a legal industry the value of its rough diamonds should rise, bringing more buyers to the country and, it is hoped, greater prosperity to miners and their families.

Guest commentary by Robert Primmer, Land Tenure and Climate Change Specialist, Evaluation, Research, and Communication (ERC) Project.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recently released report draws on research from academics across the globe and concludes that the impacts of climate change are no longer a future possibility, especially for the world’s poorest communities. Climate change is already causing real-time effects including sea ice melt, Arctic permafrost thaw, coral reef death, heat waves, heavy rainfall patterns and mega-disasters. All prediction models in the report indicate dramatic, negative changes across the globe even in best case scenarios, such as an 80% reduction in man-made emissions. The potential humanitarian crises flowing from these changes will have a disproportionate impact on the poorest communities, who have much higher levels of vulnerability to environmental impacts on health, wealth and other factors, and much lower levels of capacity for coping with environmental change.

The report draws a clear line connecting climate change to food scarcity, conflict and displacement. It provides examples of recent and predicted climatic impacts on economic sectors, natural resources, ecosystems, livelihoods and human health across the globe and the resulting displacement of people. In particular, the report refers to the 2008 displacement of 90,000 people in Mozambique and the approximately 1 million people living in the Zambezi floodplain where “temporary displacement is taking on permanent characteristics”(IPCC WGII AR5 Technical Summary, 2014). In a similar vein, in 2009 the Global Humanitarian Forum issued a report on the global human impact of climate change, estimating more than 300,000 deaths and about $125 billion in economic losses each year. The report indicated that most climate change-induced mortality is due to worsening floods and droughts in developing countries. This also raises questions of climate justice, since the 50 least developed countries of the world account for no more than 1% of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases, which is less than the CO₂ emissions created by just the population of the state of New York.

We as land tenure and property rights practitioners must consider the links between conflict over resources (including land and water) and the mass migrations expected to be caused by sea rise, flooding and drought. We need to foresee and examine the land tenure impacts of climate induced migration. Opportunities for this discussion exist, such as the recent World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, which brought together 1080 participants to discuss land as it relates to the spectrum of development scenarios. Conspicuously absent, however, was any meaningful discussion of predicted scenarios related to a changing climate and its effects on secure land tenure and property rights, food security, poverty and conflict. Mitigation and resilience were discussed, but what happens when resilience is not developed or mitigation is not an option?

Given the dire consequences of the IPCC’s predictions, we need to consider how we can help communities become resilient when the ocean is rising and portions of the earth are drying. We need to assess the options for preventing conflict and creating housing when millions of people lose their homes and move to lands that are already claimed. Land tenure and property rights programming solutions must be based on climate modelling predictions. Given the profound impact that a changing climate will have on land use and land tenure systems, we must consider the full scale of the problem and imagine what land governance, conflict remediation, housing and service provision institutions and solutions are needed.

On this Earth Day, make sure to read the IPCC report and post your thoughts on the LinkedIn Land Tenure Professionals group.

Last week, USAID hosted three experts in the urban land tenure sector at a launch event of its new issue brief on Land Tenure in Urban Environments. Consultant Geoffrey Payne, Habitat for Humanity International’s Liz Blake, and UN-Habitat’s Remy Seitchiping all spoke about the importance of addressing land tenure challenges in cities to solve development challenges across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. The conversation builds on the many urban tenure presentations at the World Bank Annual Conference on Land and Poverty two weeks ago, and those taking place this week at the World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia.

Remarks by the panelists and narrative in the issue brief reinforce the idea that land tenure issues present complex challenges. Solutions to these challenges are often nuanced, but do not need to be large – in terms of scope or money. In many cases, incremental activities are effective at increasing the perception of tenure security, which is often enough to improve lives and livelihoods.

Solutions for increasing tenure security include leveraging training, information awareness, organization and technology. Secure land tenure and property rights generate benefits for vulnerable communities, private sector investors, government and civil society advocates. These efforts also build greater municipal capacity and improve the provision of key services, which are priorities in USAID’s Urban Services Policy.

Together with its partners, USAID will work to address land tenure and governance issues in the increasingly urban developing world. Read the issue brief on Land Tenure in Urban Environments and if you have any questions, contact us or send a tweet via @USAIDEnviro or @USAIDEconomic.

Congressional Briefing hosted by Congresswoman Betty McCollum on March, 28 2014
Remarks by Dr. Gregory Myers, Land Tenure and Property Rights Division Chief, USAID (as written)

First, I would like to thank Congresswoman McCollum for hosting this event and ActionAid for organizing and bringing all of us together for this important briefing. I would also like to thank Congresswoman McCollum’s staff for their attention to these critical issues.

Background
For 18 months, I had the honor to Chair, on behalf of the United States, the Open-Ended Working Group that negotiated the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (commonly known as the VGs). The VGs were negotiated through a broad and inclusive participatory process – under the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) – that involved governments, civil society organizations and the private sector. The VGs were unanimously endorsed by 96 member countries in May 2012. With endorsement, the global community demonstrated their recognition that improving land and other resource governance systems is a strategy for improving food security, promoting sustainable development, limiting conflict, and reducing extreme poverty.

While the development and endorsement of the VGs represents an important achievement, their ultimate value will be determined by their implementation and by measured improvements in the lives and livelihoods of women, men, children and other vulnerable people around the globe.

Where we are now
Having had the opportunity to participate in these negotiations, and managing the largest global bi-lateral program supporting the VGs, I would like to offer an assessment of what has been achieved thus far and what remains to be done.

In the almost two years since the VGs were adopted, much progress has been made. The VGs have become ‘the’ guiding doctrine for emerging economy governments to develop laws and policies that strengthen the protection of property rights for women and men. Donors and development agencies, including USAID, are beginning to align their land and resource governance programs more closely with the principles and practices outlined in the VGs.

Today, in 32 programs across 25 countries, USAID is deploying over $300 million in programs that implement many of the principles and practices outlined in the VGs. These programs help to clarify and strengthen the land tenure and property rights of all members of society — enabling broad-based economic growth, gender equality, reduced incidence of conflicts, enhanced food security, improved resilience to climate change, and effective natural resource management.

For example, in Ethiopia, USAID is building on the success of a series of programs that strengthened property rights of smallholder farmers by expanding the program to a traditionally vulnerable group: pastoralists. Over the past six years under this program, USAID-supported certification efforts led to the issuance of more than 500,000 land certificates to over 230,000 households. Under these programs, boundaries are clarified and validated by neighbors and community members prior to certification, reducing the likelihood of future disputes. The certificates, which can be transferred to descendants, give holders the right to use and profit from the land. This arrangement represents an important shift from the previous system, which was marked by frequent land seizures, redistribution, and declining agricultural productivity. Evidence from evaluations by the World Bank and the Government of Ethiopia suggests that household productivity increased measurably in areas where certificates were issued. In one region where the certification program was implemented, crop yields increased by 10 to potentially 40 percent per acre with no other inputs. USAID’s Ethiopia program is closely aligned with the principles outlined in the VGs.

The brief and infographic that we handed out have additional information about how USAID is supporting implementation of the VGs and making secure land tenure and property rights a reality for people and communities around the world.

The way forward
What comes next? While USAID and other development organizations have made progress supporting implementation of the VGs, more remains to be done. At the global level, we need, first, more specific guidance on how to implement the VGs. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is contributing to the development of technical guides and training programs that support VG implementation. This is a good start.

We also need better coordination and information sharing among development partners. All too often our development efforts are hampered by a lack of coordination among relevant partners striving toward common goals. The VGs represent an ambitious global agenda; achieving success will require coordinated action by civil society, governments and the private sector.

Last year more than 25 donors and development organizations came together to form the Global Donor Working Group on Land. One of our first objectives was to develop a common platform for sharing data and best practices on land programs that support the VGs. USAID led this initiative. Over the past year, we managed a project that collected information on the land and resource governance programs funded by members of the Global Donor Working Group on Land. The result of this effort is a comprehensive database of 445 programs, funded by 16 donors and development agencies, being implemented in 119 countries, with a total value of over $2 billion.

This information can help stakeholders identify opportunities to coordinate activities and leverage resources for greater impact. The database initiative also provides stakeholders with a platform to share knowledge and best practices, potentially improving the efficiency and effectiveness of current and future programs that support the VGs.

We can bridge the gap between what the global community has agreed to and what is understood and pursued at the ground-level in developing countries. At the local level, we need to experiment with new investment models that will promote smallholder agriculture and/or create opportunities for smallholders to link with commercial investors in ways that are secure and profitable for all.

The development community should also recognize that the private sector plays a key role in the success of implementing the VGs. The private sector is moving forward—in consultation with civil society, host country governments, and donor organizations—to develop better practices for acquiring land for commercial agriculture, extractives, and biofuels. Last year, The Coca-Cola Company negotiated an agreement with Oxfam to respect local property rights along its supply chain, and PepsiCo has recently agreed to do the same. The global community, with U.S. leadership, is in the process of developing guidelines for the private sector: the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (known as the RAI), which are also being developed under the UN Committee on World Food Security. These principles will provide a framework to guide global corporate social responsibility initiatives, and individual investment contracts covering all types of investment in agriculture. In other words, the RAI will provide a framework for the private sector – much in the same way the VGs provide a framework for the public sector. Responsible investment in agriculture can lead to improvements in food security and economic growth.

Another possible next step could be the development of a globally-accepted certification standard – as was done with Fair Trade Coffee or the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. An industry certification, whether added to existing commodity standards or organized as a stand-alone initiative, could set an acceptable expectation for how companies will invest and conduct business with respect to land rights in emerging economies. Certification of land-based investments could also help build the private sector expertise required to effectively manage land throughout supply chains. Such a scheme could also empower civil society to monitor investments in a more systematic way and allow consumers to reward companies that behave responsibly and apply pressure to those that do not.

Conclusion
USAID appreciates civil society organizations bringing the issue of land tenure to the attention of policy leaders in the US. We welcome this opportunity to share progress and challenges with you and our colleagues on the Hill. To help ensure a stable world — where market-based democracies thrive and trade expands, where we create jobs- at home and abroad — we must focus on empowering every global citizen to make individual decisions about how they will acquire, use, enjoy, and dispose of property. The Voluntary Guidelines help all actors design and implement policies and programs that make secure property rights a reality.

USAID Land Tenure and Property Rights Division Chief Dr. Gregory Myers’s Remarks from Partners’ Support to the Voluntary Guidelines & Land Governance: Exploiting Synergies & Measuring Impact. Remarks posted as written.

The United States Government’s contributions to Ethiopia’s land administration reform began in 2004 with methodologies to promote more precise second level registration. During the course of two pilot projects, USAID-supported certification efforts led to the issuance of more than 500,000 land certificates to over 230,000 households. These certificates give holders the right to use and profit from the land. Evidence suggests that household productivity increased measurably in areas where certificates were issued. In one region where the certification program was implemented – the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR) region – crop yields may have increased between 11 percent and 40 percent per acre with no other inputs.

In fact, these certification programs were so successful that the Government of Ethiopia scaled up the programs nationwide and solicited the investment of other bilateral and multilateral donors, including the UK – who are investing in the expansion of second level certification in Ethiopia. (Our partner, the U.K. is investing + or – 50 million pounds, while Germany with the EU is investing $3 million euros).

Thus far, the US has focused on improving property rights for smallholder farmers in the highland regions. For the US, the next challenge is to extend this same type of security to pastoral communities in the lowlands. Through USAID’s new Land Administration to Nurture Development (LAND) project, we will develop experimental approaches to secure the property rights of up to 15 pastoral communities by 2019. In addition the program will focus on training and capacity building for land administration.

The United States believes the new multi-stakeholder partnership between the governments of Ethiopia, Germany, the UK, and the US provides a model for greater coordination that will improve the effectiveness of our investments in securing land tenure and property rights in Ethiopia. We believe that this will accelerate progress toward achieving food security. We applaud the Government of Ethiopia for its commitment to strengthen rural land governance, and experiment with new models. We also welcome the opportunity to collaborate more closely with our partners, and we hope to see more of these partnerships developed in other countries in the future.

USAID Land Tenure and Property Rights Division Chief Dr. Gregory Myers’s Remarks from Partners’ Support to the Voluntary Guidelines & Land Governance: Exploiting Synergies & Measuring Impact. Remarks posted as written.

Madam Chair (Rachael Turner), thank you for the opportunity to speak today. On behalf of the United States, I would like to thank the U.K. Department for International Development for their excellent leadership as the inaugural Chair of the Global Donor Working Group on Land. We look forward to working with the incoming Chair of the Working Group—the Government of Germany.

I am here to introduce a new initiative: a comprehensive database and map of land governance programs that are funded by members of the Global Donor Working Group on Land. As we have heard, The Global Donor Working Group was officially launched last year to promote greater coordination on land and resource governance.

One of the primary goals of this group is to support implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. From 2011 to 2012, I had the honor to Chair the negotiations of these Guidelines. Some of you in this room were part of those negotiations and know the efforts required to produce an agreement that was endorsed unanimously by 96 member countries, civil society and the private sector.

While the development and endorsement of the Voluntary Guidelines was an important achievement, their ultimate value will be determined by their implementation and measured in improved development outcomes for women, men and children around the globe. Delivering on this ambitious agenda in countries across the developing world will require coordinated action by donors and development agencies, civil society organizations, governments and the private sector.

In order for the Global Donor Working Group to identify opportunities for synergy and achieve greater coordination, we had to first develop a clear understanding of who is doing “what – where” in the land sector. To that end, the United States worked with the Global Donor Platform and members of the Global Donor Working Group on Land to lead a data collection and visualization initiative on the land and resource governance programs from 16 bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors and development agencies, including the development agencies from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the European Commission, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, as well as the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the World Bank.

The result of these efforts – negotiated through the Global Donor Working Group on Land – is a database of approximately 231 active programs in 103 countries with a total value of approximately $2.9 billion. The database contains information on the location, duration, funding, and scope of each program, as well as information on what specific aspects of the Voluntary Guidelines are addressed by each program’s activities. The database also allows donors to include links to supplemental resources, such as reports or program websites, and points of contact for each program.

An interactive map of the information in the database clearly displays where different donors and development agencies are working and what they are working on with respect to land and resource governance. This information can help us and other stakeholders better coordinate these programs and leverage our collective resources for maximum impact. As we have heard throughout this session, better communication and coordination among development partners can help us avoid unnecessary duplication, share lessons learned, leverage limited resources and most importantly amplify the impact of our development efforts.

While this initiative is an important step in the right direction, it is only one step. Our next endeavor could be to consider how we link this data to other sources of information: such as demand for land tenure reform, and/or capacity to address land tenure challenges, or with data sets illustrating the locations of large-scale land transactions or overlapping land use rights. Several data sets like this already exist, however, these data systems often use different standards and are incompatible with each other. One vital task we should consider is how to develop common data standards and shared platforms for all types of land and resources rights data and tools. If we do this, we may more fully realize the benefits of the Voluntary Guidelines, resulting in more robust economic growth, better food security and nutrition, and reduced conflict.

A guest post by Robert Oberndorf, Resource Law Specialist, Tenure and Global Climate Change Project.

Recent rapid changes in Burma have led to concerns related to the land tenure and property rights (LTPR) of smallholder farmers and communities throughout the country. The limited harmonization and dated nature of the overall legal and governance frameworks related to land use management and tenure security in the country adds to these concerns. The Government of Burma is well aware of the concerns being raised, and recognizes that issues relating to LTPR threaten the fledgling democracy in Burma and the social stability of the country.

In order to properly assess and begin addressing the problems relating to land use management and law harmonization in the country, the Government established a multi-ministerial Land Use & Land Allocation Scrutinizing Committee (Land Scrutinizing Committee) in 2012. One of the primary tasks of the Land Scrutinizing Committee is to develop a comprehensive Land Use Policy for the country, which would ultimately help to guide effective implementation of existing legal frameworks and also lead to the development of an “umbrella” Land Law for the country that would address many of the law harmonization issues that currently exist. It was a very promising sign that, in late 2012, the Land Core Group of the Food Security Working Group, in cooperation with Government, donor and private sector representatives, conducted a multi-stakeholder National Dialogue on Land Tenure and Land Use Rights. This multi-stakeholder dialogue resulted in recommendations being generated for inclusion into the National Land Use Policy.

USAID, in close coordination and cooperation with other donors and civil society stakeholders, has provided technical assistance to the Land Scrutinizing Committee during the development of the National Land Use Policy. As part of this assistance, USAID has been helping the Committee capture lessons learned and experiences with land tenure reform processes from regional neighbors in ASEAN. Guidance has also been provided on ways to incorporate international best practices, such as those reflected in the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, into the National Land Use Policy. It is hoped that the efforts of donors, NGOs, CSOs and other stakeholders working on land issues in Burma and elsewhere in the region will be used to inform the ongoing National Land Use Policy development process without jeopardizing the development of a policy that is carefully tailored to the unique cultural, historical, political and legal traits of the country.

This research is presented as part of a session on interventions to improve governance and sustainable management of land at scale during the 2014 World Bank Land and Poverty conference on Tuesday, March 25 at 10:30 am.

Further Reading

• Read more on the Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) Project
• Read more on Burma

A guest post by Dr. Steven Lawry, Global Lead, Land Tenure & Property Rights, DAI

A recent systematic review—funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID)—of quantitative and qualitative literature on the effects of tenure formalization in developing countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, confirmed theories that formal registration of individual land rights increases investment, productivity, and household consumption.

However, productivity did not rise as much on African farms as on farms in Asia and Latin America. Differences in short-term gains were considerable, with 5 to 10 percent average gains in Africa, compared to 25 to 35 percent gains in Latin America and Asia.

The muted impact of formal registration of individual land rights in sub-Saharan Africa might have to do with pre-existing institutions, wealth effects, and a lack of investment in complementary institutions and reforms. Future research should examine whether the observable implications of these hypotheses are evident in cases of reform in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, keeping in mind broader welfare considerations. A modest productivity gain in the Africa studies does not in itself mean that there are not positive welfare effects associated with formal registration of land rights. For example, in Africa, tenure security may have increased agricultural investment for food for the household, but not enough to generate agricultural products to sell in the marketplace. There may also be social benefits associated with the reduction in land-related conflicts or validation of the property rights of women and other vulnerable individuals. Of course, a thorough assessment would evaluate such benefits in comparison to those associated with alternative modes of property rights recognition, including statutory recognition of customary tenure.

The presentation of this research is at 8:30 – 10:00 am on Tuesday, March 25 during a session on impact evaluation of land tenure interventions at the World Bank’s annual Land and Poverty conference.

Read Impacts of land property rights interventions on investment & productivity: A systematic review.

A guest post by Zemen Haddis Gebeyehu, Senior Agriculture Policy Advisor, USAID/Ethiopia

With 83 percent of its population living in rural areas, Ethiopia is one of the least urbanized countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Agriculture remains the main economic activity of the rural workforce. However, migration from rural areas to cities has been increasing in recent years. This week, I will present a paper that examines the relationship between migration and the land and rural development policies of Ethiopia. The study tests the hypothesis that Ethiopia’s land and rural development policies influence the dynamics of rural-urban migration in ways unanticipated by the policies.

The Constitution of Ethiopia vests all land in the Government of Ethiopia. While rural residents are entitled to indefinite-term use rights to land, the existing land laws discourage landholders from pursuing non-agricultural livelihood strategies away from their holdings. The laws restrict land rental markets and mandate that landholders farm their land or risk losing it through redistribution or expropriation.

As in many countries in the region, farm sizes in Ethiopia are decreasing as a result of population pressure, which results in increased subdivision to allow successive generations’ access to at least a small plot for farming. On the one hand, limited rural land availability may incentivize rural-urban migration, but, on the other hand, land rental restrictions may reduce incentives to migrate by increasing the costs of leaving rural areas. Nonetheless, the combination of improved job and income opportunities in urban areas and deteriorating living conditions in rural areas appears to favor migration.

Despite diminishing farm size and increasing population pressure, the agriculture sector has continued to heavily dominate the rural economy. Notwithstanding attempts to diversify, the lack of capital and skills in rural areas constrain the promotion of non-agricultural activities. At the same time, although the country’s development policy emphasizes the agriculture sector, the available arable land is not able to provide a sufficient livelihood for the growing rural population. Moreover, the rural areas have been deprived of critical infrastructure, such as roads, markets, electricity, communication technologies, and skills development institutions. Absent significant reforms, this lack of investment in rural areas and competition for increasingly scarce arable land is likely to result in increased rural-urban migration.

Although further research is needed, this work suggests the need to consider removing or reducing restrictions on land transfers. Support for land rental markets that is combined with investments in capacity building and rural infrastructure could reduce land pressure and combat the unsustainable subdivision of farmland. Over time, these reforms could both increase investment and job creation in rural areas and reduce rural-urban migration by allowing successful farmers to expand their landholdings through rentals and helping others to successfully transition into non-agricultural livelihoods in rural areas.

If you are attending the World Bank’s annual Land and Poverty conference, the presentation takes place at 1:00 – 2:30 pm on Monday in a session on country level implementation. Read Rural-Urban Migration and Land and Rural Development Policies in Ethiopia.