Land Tenure and the “Evidence Landscape” in Developing Countries

Abstract

The utility of landscape as an important component of cultural geography continues to evolve. This article demonstrates the utility of the landscape concept in reconciling informal and formal land rights. Land tenure has proved to be one of the most perplexing issues in the developing world. The inability of formal and customary property rights systems to effectively connect in ways that provide for tenure security creates dilemmas not easily overcome. Typical manifestations of this incompatibility involve problems relating to land claims and disputes, which rest upon proving access and ownership rights. Such proof is at the heart of both the capital-poverty-property rights argument and the rights recognition approach, as well as noncommodity, identity-based, and service attachments to lands. This article argues that evidence proving (attesting to) rights to land is an important but overlooked domain of interaction for formal and customary tenure systems and is where opportunity resides for a potential contribution to effective cooperation between tenure regimes. Moreover, this evidence is embedded in the same landscapes that are and have been of interest to cultural geography. This “evidence landscape” is examined in the context of its utility and connection to customary tenure and formal law and how it plays a role in attending to tenurial incompatibility in three cases: Mozambique, East Timor, and the Zuni of the United States.

Key Words:

• cultural geography
• evidence
• landscape
• land tenure

Notes

Source: Unruh (1997).

Note: n=total number of households in the village set.

Source: Unruh (1997).

Note: Between-village set average values are significantly different at the 0.05 level between all three village sets for “Agroforestry trees as important evidence” and for “Average number of trees per household” for the western Nampula and Monapo sites; and for “Possess trees” between Montepuez and the other two sites.

Note: The villages of Emera and Manatuto are located in the northwest and north-central parts of the country, respectively.

Source: Nixon (2004).