Land and natural resource management policies : political economics, production processes, impacts

Sub-section run by CIHEAM-IAMM and INRA

The analyses presented and discussed in this section endeavour to give an account of the genesis, nature and effects of land policies by examining the social compact that underlies them. Analysing current or past land policies in various regions of the world allows one to better understand their determining factors and impacts as well as their negotiation and definition modalities. This is, therefore, both a subject for research and a tool for the actors involved in discussing and designing land policies.

The purpose of a land policy or a natural resource management policy is to regulate the social forms of land usage (and use of the land’s resources) and its modes of access and transmission. Its objectives can refer to extremely varied stakes that are economic (agricultural performances), social (poverty alleviation), territorial (control of urbanisation), environmental, even cultural, etc. In them, governments display their choices when it comes to social organisation and the types of agrarian structures to promote, and arbitrate between social groups through rules, organisations and procedures. In return, the forms of social land usage influence agricultural and rural development, regional planning and urbanisation, demographic movements, social organisation, etc. A land and natural resource management policy cannot therefore be understood in its genesis and effects independently from the social, economic and institutional structure of the society that implements it. It is the crystallisation, through a historical and political process of more or less long duration, of social relations that go beyond the simple land object and refer to policy choices and logics of interests.

• The orientations and content of land policies and natural resource management policies are to be analysed from the standpoint of their consistency with the situations that they wish to transform and from the standpoint of their impacts on the social or economic fabric. Analysing policy formulation processes, the stages and debates that punctuated them, the actors involved or not, the logics of interests, and the competing visions that are crystallised in them is a key point of entry to understanding policies’ content, orientations, consistencies and inconsistencies.
• Implementing land and natural resource management policies is characterised by a wide diversity of operations. Between the texts that define policies and their concrete application, the issue of policies’ technical, legal, financial and institutional implementation systems is crucial to understanding the practices and impacts of land policies in all their complexity.
• The links between land and natural resource management policies and other sectoral policies and overall policies is also a subject of study in this section. Indeed, land policies cannot be understood without being placed in perspective with states’ political economies, their administrative systems, their local and regional modes of anchorage, and their insertion in supra-national political and economic arenas.

Anne-Marie Jouve, CIHEAM-IAMM

Claude Napoléone, INRA

March 2007

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