Multiple interests in urban land: disaster-induced land resettlement politics in Kampala

ABSTRACT

One of the actions that many local authorities take in to reduce exposure of informal settlements to disaster risks and the impacts of climate change is to move people out of high-risk areas. This is usually enacted through resettlement, relocation or evictions. This article argues that local authorities recognizing and validating multiple interests in land offers an innovative advantage to cities in equitably responding to risks, and adapting to climate change. More specifically, we focus on how multiple interests in land in Kampala influenced processes associated with the resettlement of people within the context of trying to reduce exposure to disaster risks. In this instance, authorities seeking to resettle people were more inclined to negotiate than impose resettlement and these negotiations opened up the possibilities for more equitable outcomes to emerge, such as staying in their existing communities. The experience of Kampala’s authorities offers lessons for other cities confronting resettlement challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• property rights
• legal pluralism
• resettlement
• disaster risks
• flooding
• Kampala

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Resettlement is a major integrated, comprehensive movement of people and families which involves not only new housing and services but also new social and economic relations (Ferris, 2012). Relocation refers to non-systematic movements of families or individuals from hazard-prone locations to nearby areas (Ferris, 2012). Eviction is the "permanent or temporary removal against their will of individuals, families and/or communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to, appropriate forms of legal or other protection and with or without state sanction” (The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, CESCR, General Comment 7: The Right to Adequate housing - forced evictions (20/05/97)).

2 Our analysis builds on research project: ‘Reducing relocation risk in urban areas’ (February 2015–December 2016). In the initial research, we conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with policy-makers in Kampala and 70 in-depth interviews with household heads and small enterprise owners affected by the resettlement plans related to the infrastructural upgrading process. Through an open coding of the interview transcripts, we identified that multiple interests in land were a key issue explaining why people continue to settle in flood prone areas. The current article builds on this analysis and reflects on it from an angle of property rights and the equity of climate change adaptation.

3 In Uganda, resettlement occurs through financial compensation due to eviction. That is, the process of resettling is left to the discretion of the evictee with their compensation.

4 This in itself creates ambiguities.

5 Official mailo is land originally allocated to the Kabaka and royalty at the time of the 1900 Buganda Agreement.

6 There is a fourth kind of property constituted by multiple interests that is communal or co-operative ownership. We do not discuss this further because it was not a property right encountered in the example discussed below.

7 The Kampala City Council was changed into the Kampala Capital City Authority through the Kampala Capital City Act (2010).

8 The source of multiple interests in land is interesting in itself. The possibility that rights for squatters are recognized was created by the World Bank’s Policy on Involuntary Resettlement OP/BP/4.12 and not by Ugandan statutory law.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network [grant number RSGL-1302].