Commons or Communal Land?
A Framework for Understanding
Property Rights in Practice
Ruth Meinzen-Dick
Senior Research Fellow
International Food Policy Research Institute
2015 World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty
Washington DC, March 23-27, 2015
Classic Property Regimes
aka “The Big Four” (Benda-Beckmann)
• Public property
• Private property
• Common property
• (Open access=no defined property rights)
Bundles of Rights
Classic Property Rights Systems
Bundles of
Rights
Access
Withdrawal
Management
Public
Property
Common
Property
Private
Property
Exclusion
Alienation
?
State
Collective
Holder of Rights
Individual
Holders of Rights
• “Public”
• “Collective” or “Community”
• “Individual”
Holders of Rights
• “Public”
– Global public, e.g. Ramsar convention
– National public, e.g. Public Trust Doctrine
– “The State”
– Particular agencies, e.g. Forest Department
– Local government, e.g. Panchayats
• “Collective” or “Community”
• “Individual”
Holders of Rights
• “Public”
• “Collective” or “Community”
– All residents of an area
– Defined user group, e.g. Forest User Group
– Tribe, clan, or lineage
• Does chief hold land as individual or as
custodian for a collective?
• “Individual”
Holders of Rights
• “Public”
• “Collective” or “Community”
• “Individual”
– “Legal individual”, e.g. corporation or firm
– Household
• Extended family
• Nuclear family
• Does “head” of household hold rights as individual or
as custodian for members?
– Individuals within household
• By gender
• By age/generation
“Communal Property”
…primary forests and uncultivated woodlands
are owned communally and controlled by an
authority such as a village chief,
whereas exclusive use rights of cultivated
land are assigned to individual households of
the community,
and its ownership rights are held traditionally
by the extended family
(Otsuka and Place, 2001:12)
Communal Tenure – W/out Commons
Bundles
of Rights
Access
Withdrawal
Management
Cultivation
Regulation of
wetlands, etc.
Overall land
management plan
Land management on own land
Exclusion
Allocation to
non-members
Transfer within
group
Alienation
State
Collective (CLA)
Individual
CLA members
Holder of Rights
Communal Tenure – With Commons
Bundles
of Rights
Access
Grazing
Off-season
Withdrawal
Cropping
Management
Land use
decisions
Cropping
choices
Planting trees
Exclusion
Allocation to
members
Alienation
State claims
Sales to outsiders
State
Collective
Holder of Rights
Individual
Variations
• Rights defined under different legal
systems (statutory, customary, etc.)
• Drawings by season
• Changes over time
• Impact of policies like decentralization
(how many bundles of rights shift)
Access to
archaeological
sites (guiding
tours)
Access
Extraction of timber
under management
plan
Illegal logging
Withdrawal
Management
Allocation &
Regulation of
concession rights for
timber and nontimber extraction and
petroleum and gas
Customary
settlement rights
(40ha / family)
Forest management
& use decisions for
timber and nontimber agriculture
and pasture
Management of
agricultural
plots and
pasture
Extraction of
NTFPs
Agro-cultivation &
pasture , hunting
(subsistence)
Illegal land grabs
and market for land
improvements
Allocated to
concession
holder
Exclusion
State maintains
Alienation
StateEnviro agency/
Energy Ministry
Cooperativee
COCODE
Collective community concession
Carmelita
Holders of Rights
Individual
Potential Applications of the
“Tenure Box”
• Identifying right-holders in more nuanced way
– Realistic picture of actors and institutions
• “state” not homogeneous
• “collective” at different levels, different bases of identification
• “individuals” within “households”
• Comparison of different views
– By season, over years, under different legal claims
• Landscape-level analysis
• Tool for communities to deal with claims,
deliberation, accommodating overlapping use
• Gaining recognition for overlapping rights