Planning Land Reform on a Regional Scale: A Case Study from Brazil

Abstract

This article makes a case for using regional planning to improve the social and economic regional impact of land reform policy in developing countries. We focus on rural settlements in the Brazilian north-east, where land reallocation has been approached in a variety of ways over many decades. The study identifies problems deriving from the lack of a plan-led strategy, leading to failures in identifying sustainable areas and designing appropriate policy interventions on a regional scale. Based on the planning literature and our empirical results, it is proposed that different views on land reform should be combined into a broader regional strategy. This involves strategic targeting of specific areas to define a portfolio of investment and spending priorities, combined with intergovernmental and intersectoral co-ordination, running from the early stages of a project's formulation until the final stages of its implementation. Additionally, this paper shows that combining top-down and bottom-up approaches to land reform, and supplementing policy-making at the national level with programme/project design and implementation at the subnational level, allows an effective government response to rural poverty and landlessness.

Keywords:

• land reform
• regional planning
• socio-economic growth
• developing countries

Notes

1. IPEADATA (Brazilian Institute of Applied Economics Database).

2. World Bank's Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation Pilot Project 4147-BR.

3. PCT settlements resulted from large rural estates that were acquired and eventually divided into geographically contiguous plots the size of a typical family farm. The plots were allotted by agreement amongst participating families.

4. Our definition of sustainability relates to a settlement's capacity to endure, as well as its potential for the long-term maintenance of well being, which has social and economic dimensions.

5. World Bank's Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation Pilot Project 4147-BR.

6. PCT settlements resulted from large rural estates that were acquired and eventually divided into geographically contiguous plots the size of a typical family farm. The plots were allotted by agreement amongst participating families.

7. Our definition of sustainability relates to a settlement's capacity to endure, as well as its potential for the long-term maintenance of well being, which has social and economic dimensions.

8. The “third sector” is the term used to describe the range of organisations that are neither public sector nor private sector, e.g. NGOs.