Land reforms and voluntary resettlement: household participation and attrition rates in Malawi

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the factors influencing household participation in and withdrawal from a World Bank-funded voluntary resettlement scheme moving 15,000 low-income farming households within and across rural districts in Malawi. Using a survey of 203 beneficiary households, focus groups and in-depth interviews, we identify a lack of access to land and conflict over land in the area of origin as salient participation factors in resettlement, while withdrawal factors include lower access to infrastructure and poor soil quality in resettlement areas. We also highlight limited prior awareness of actual conditions in resettlement areas, low and biased participation in the decision to move, a greater desire for formal land titles due to loss of customary entitlement as a result of resettlement, and widespread ambiguity and confusion over titles for resettled plots. In this context, we point to a pattern of ‘negative resettlement’, in which households remain resettled despite major grievances, for lack of an alternative option, contrasting with ‘positive resettlement’, where households remain by choice. We suggest that intra-district resettlement is more likely to be successful than inter-district resettlement when there is a risk of informed consent deficiency. These findings point to the relative failures of this particular resettlement scheme, and suggest possible improvements for land redistribution schemes from agro-industrial projects to poor households.

KEYWORDS:

• Voluntary resettlement
• land reform
• food security
• smallholder farmers
• consent
• land grab
• community-driven development
• participation

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our appreciation to the research team and colleagues in Malawi, the families who shared their experiences, and the reviewers for their contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kelly Sharp, at the time of research, was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia at the Institute for Resource Management and Environmental Studies. She focuses on the livelihoods, food security and nutrition of agriculture workers.

Philippe Le Billon is a professor at the University of British Columbia with the Department of Geography and the Liu Institute for Global Issues. He mostly works on linkages between environment, development and security, and notably published Oil (Polity Press, 2017, with G. Bridge) and Wars of plunder: conflicts, profits and the politics of resources (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Hisham Zerriffi is an associate professor in forest resources management at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Zerriffi’s research focuses on energy resources, environment and development using inter-disciplinary research methodologies.

Notes

1 Voluntary resettlement is based on meeting two key conditions: participants must have a choice and they must give informed consent.

2 In its retrospective analysis of large-scale land deals involving foreign companies between 2007 and 2016, GRAIN (2016) identified 2.9 million hectares of abandoned, cancelled or failed land deals as well as 9.8 million hectares with a sold or unknown status, out of a total of 42 million hectares.

3 The World Bank’s historic stance on the topic is outlined in the 1975 Land Reform Policy Paper; they promoted family farming, egalitarian land distribution and secure land rights. Nearly 25 years later, a revised approach added that communal tenure systems can be more cost effective than formal titling and that land reform must be decentralized and use markets to reduce poverty (Deininger and Binswanger 1999). The World Bank’s current approach is that ‘land is a key asset for the rural and urban poor’, and that the association of secure land rights and low land-transaction costs for the poor open economic opportunities and foster development (Deininger 2003, xvii). For a critique, see Borras et al. (2009).

4 Chiefs notably complained that their land allocation authority was usurped by land committees (Mmana 2016). On the negative effects of land allocation by chiefs on agricultural production, see Restuccia and Santaeulalia-Llopis (2017).

5 Detailed data collection and analysis methods can be found in the appendix.

6 Chinsinga (2011, 388) also alluded to diverse forms of attrition: some beneficiaries maintained plots in their district of origin and resettlement site, and others left as soon as project funds ended.

7 Ninety-two percent of beneficiaries who stated that at least one member of their group had left believed those individuals went back to their village of origin; three percent were unsure.

8 After confirming that the group distributions were similar (Leven’s test, p < 0.05), a Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine that the differences in reported attrition rate values between districts of origin are not due to random chance (p = 0.0001). By dividing the Chi-square value by (n − 1), we found that 11.44 percent of the variability in rank scores is accounted for by the district of origin. A Mann-Whitney test was conducted for each of the districts of origin and indicated that the proportion of the reported attrition rates is not equal for participants from Machinga, Mangochi and Mulanje individually, compared to when the remaining three districts are combined (Mann-Whitney test, p = .02; p = .03; p = .00). The probability that the value of the proportion of the reported attrition rate by each district of origin is greater than the other three [P(x) > (w,y,z)] is highest for individuals from Mulanje (P = 0.71), and lowest for those from Mangochi (P = 0.37), indicating that it is more likely that individuals from Mulanje will leave their resettlement site, and individuals from Mangochi are more likely to stay.

9 A voluntary resettlement scheme in China found that participants who moved closer to cities with a diverse economic structure performed better (Merkle 2003, 183).

10 Justification for failing to provide legally recognized ownership is not explicitly explained in project documents, though responses from key informant interviews conducted for this study indicate that the ownership status chosen was presumed to be the most convenient and provided sufficient tenure security.

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful for funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and The Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded Bridge Program at the University of British Columbia.