Collective Land Access Rights for Enhancing Smallholder Livelihoods
The research studies the cases of Peru and Kenya and analyse to what extent these lessons can be applied to other countries
Abstract
This paper is a working document, and the first stage in joint research on the topic of collective land access rights for enhancing smallholder livelihoods. The research will study the cases of Peru and Kenya and analyse to what extent these lessons can be applied to other countries in Africa and Latin America.
Land liberalisation policies and programmes based on giving individual property rights implemented in the last decades have not produced the expected results in improving rural peasant and/or native livelihoods in Andean and African countries. Previous studies have found mixed results, with more recent literature showing that these programmes were ineffective in increasing productivity, input use or access to credit. On the contrary, emerging literature suggests that maintaining collective land access rights may have positive effects on rural livelihoods in particular for indigenous and peasant communities. The proposed research will investigate the effect of collective land access on smallholder livelihoods, by comparing different sorts of collective land access rights functioning in four territories in Peru and Kenya to see under which conditions they achieve positive performances in improving livelihoods.
Citation
Njagi, T.; Kirimi, L.; Damonte, G.; Glave, M. Collective Land Access Rights for Enhancing Smallholder Livelihoods. Practical Action, Lima, Peru (2015) 24 pp.
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