Publication: Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa : Pilot Evidence from Rwanda
Loading...
Date
2011-08-01
ISSN
Published
2011-08-01
Editor(s)
Abstract
Although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in African land tenure, few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated. The case of Rwanda's nation-wide and relatively low-cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest. This paper evaluates the short-term impact (some 2.5 years after completion) of the pilots undertaken to fine-tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects. Three key findings emerge from the analysis. First, the program improved land access for legally married women (about 76 percent of married couples) and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias. Second, the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures. This effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households, suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity, which the program managed to reduce. Third, land market activity declined, allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people. Implications for program design and policy are discussed.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ali, Daniel Ayalew; Deininger, Klaus; Goldstein, Markus. 2011. Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa : Pilot Evidence from Rwanda. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5765. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3527 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Geopolitics and the World Trading System(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-23)Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their trade policy choices. Now heightened geopolitical rivalry seems to have undermined the WTO. A simple transposition of the previous rationalization suggests that geopolitics and trade cooperation are not compatible. The paper shows that this is only true if rivalry eclipses any consideration of own-country well-being. In all other circumstances, there are gains from trade cooperation even with geopolitics. Furthermore, the WTO’s relevance is in question only if it adheres too rigidly to its existing rules and norms. Through measured adaptation to the geopolitical imperative, the WTO can continue to thrive as a forum for multilateral trade cooperation in the age of geopolitics.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication From Patriarchy to Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Legal institutions play an important role in shaping gender equality in economic domains, from inheritance to labor markets. But where do gender equal laws come from? Using cross-country data on social norms and legal equality, this paper investigates the socio-cultural roots of gender inequity in the legal system and its implications for female labor force participation. To identify the impact of social norms, the analysis uses an empirical strategy that exploits pre-modern differences in ancestral patriarchal culture as an instrument for present-day gender norms. The findings show that ancestral patriarchal culture is a strong predictor of contemporary norms, and conservative social norms are associated with more gender inequality in the de jure legal framework, the de facto implementation of laws, and the labor market. The paper presents evidence for a political selection mechanism linking norms to laws: countries with more conservative norms elect political leaders who are more hostile to gender equality, who then pass less progressive legislation. The results highlight the cultural roots and political drivers of legalized gender inequality.Publication Global Socio-economic Resilience to Natural Disasters(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-22)Most disaster risk assessments use damages to physical assets as their central metric, often neglecting distributional impacts and the coping and recovery capacity of affected people. To address this shortcoming, the concepts of well-being losses and socio-economic resilience—the ability to experience asset losses without a decline in well-being—have been proposed. This paper uses microsimulations to produce a global estimate of well-being losses from, and socio-economic resilience to, natural disasters, covering 132 countries. On average, each $1 in disaster-related asset losses results in well-being losses equivalent to a $2 uniform national drop in consumption, with significant variation within and across countries. The poorest income quintile within each country incurs only 9% of national asset losses but accounts for 33% of well-being losses. Compared to high-income countries, low-income countries experience 67% greater well-being losses per dollar of asset losses and require 56% more time to recover. Socio-economic resilience is uncorrelated with exposure or vulnerability to natural hazards. However, a 10 percent increase in GDP per capita is associated with a 0.9 percentage point gain in resilience, but this benefit arises indirectly—such as through higher rate of formal employment, better financial inclusion, and broader social protection coverage—rather than from higher income itself. This paper assess ten policy options and finds that socio-economic and financial interventions (such as insurance and social protection) can effectively complement asset-focused measures (e.g., construction standards) and that interventions targeting low-income populations usually have higher returns in terms of avoided well-being losses per dollar invested.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Land Tenure for Social and Economic Inclusion in Yemen : Issues and Opportunities(Washington, DC, 2009-12-01)The report, Land Tenure for Social and Economic Inclusion in Yemen: Issues and Opportunities was completed in December 2009. The report addresses the problems of land ownership in Yemen and the various social and economic problems associated with the system of land ownership. Property rights under Yemeni Law are expressed both in custom and statute, but both are informed by shari a (Islamic law), which provides the basic property categories for land in Yemen. There are unfortunately no reliable official statistics for the amount of land within these categories, or how much arable land (a small percentage of total land area) falls within each. It is clear however that certain groups suffer from disadvantages in accessing land and land rights. Daughters are disadvantaged by shari a rules which limit their inheritance shares to only half that of a son. Youth, unable to inherit until the demise of their parents and lacking the capital to buy land, lack access to land and other employment opportunities, which endangers social stability. There are occupational castes (artisans) who are discriminated in land holdings and ethnic minorities, former slaves and immigrants from East Africa, who lack access to land, and especially land ownership, limiting them to the most menial labor. Amongst the recommendations the report addresses are; the law on state land and compulsory acquisition of land by the state are relatively recent and are in general in line with current best practices. There is however some fundamental problems in its legal delineation of state land. First and foremost, there is a need to provide a clearer distinction between state and communal land. In addition, it is clear that implementation of the law concerning state land is badly flawed, and that there are abuses in terms of uncompensated land takings and illegal appropriations of state lands for private purposes. The law concerning private ownership of land is satisfactory in most respects. Yemen has a long tradition of private ownership and land and rental markets. Those markets are clearly quite active, at least in areas where the economic basis for such market activity exists. The right of pre-emption in Yemeni law, a shari a institution, has been criticized by some commentators, but more recent scholarship recognizes its value. Waqf may offend the economic sensibilities of market economists in that waqf land is permanently held out of the land (sales) market, but it does move in rental markets and in the circumstances of Yemen it performs strong social functions. It supports important public functions and provides access to land for the poor but is increasingly negatively affected by weak supervision and corrupt practices. Tenancies are an important means of access to land in Yemen, especially for the poor, and their relatively stable terms stable terms under customary rules have historically provided a reasonable degree of tenure security. Post-land reform issues remain a problem in the southern governorates. Improving the system for recording of land rights has been a focus of law reform discussions in Yemen in recent years. Women are clearly disadvantaged by the terms of inheritance law, and even more greatly disadvantaged by the failure in practice to realize their limited rights under that law. The situation of disadvantaged ethnic groups deserves priority attention. Their lack of secure access to land, especially owned land, is a violation of the humanitarian values of Islam and condemns them to continuing poverty. There is growing competition for land. This is driven in some parts of the country by the development of new water technologies which have enabled larger- scale cultivation and created economic opportunities. It is clear that land dispute resolution mechanisms are not functioning well.Publication Using Administrative Data to Assess the Impact and Sustainability of Rwanda's Land Tenure Regularization(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06)Rwanda's completion, in 2012/13, of a land tenure regularization program covering the entire country allows the use of administrative data to describe initial performance and combine the data with household surveys to quantify to what extent and why subsequent transfers remain informal, and how to address this. In 2014/15, annual volumes of registered sales ranged between 5.6 percent for residential land in Kigali and 0.1 percent for agricultural land in the rest of the country; and US$2.6 billion worth of mortgages were secured against land and property. Yet, informality of transfers in rural areas remains high. Decentralized service provision and information campaigns help reduce but not eliminate the extent of informality. A strategy to test the efficacy of different approaches to ensure full registration, scale up promising ones, and rigorously monitor the effect of doing so is described.Publication Securing Africa's Land for Shared Prosperity : A Program to Scale Up Reforms and Investments(Washington, DC: Agence Française de Développement and the World Bank, 2013-06-03)This is covers land administration and reform in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is highly relevant to all developing countries around the world. It provides simple practical steps to turn the hugely controversial subject of "land grabs" into a development opportunity by improving land governance to reduce the risks of dispossessing poor landholders while ensuring mutually beneficial investors' deals. This book shows how Sub Saharan Africa can leverage its abundant and highly valuable natural resources to eradicate poverty by improving land governance through a ten point program to scale up policy reforms and investments at a cost of USD 4.5 billion. And it`s points out formidable challenges to implementation including high vulnerability to land grabbing and expropriation with poor compensation as about 90 percent of rural lands in Sub Saharan Africa are undocumented, but also timely opportunities since high commodity prices and investor interest in large scale agriculture have increased land values and returns to investing in land administration. It argues that success in implementation will require participation of many players including Pan-African organizations, Sub Saharan Africa governments, the private sector, civil society and development partners; but that ultimate success will depend on the political will of Sub Saharan Africa governments to move forward with comprehensive policy reforms and on concerted support by the international development community.Publication Impacts of Land Certification on Tenure Security, Investment, and Land Markets : Evidence from Ethiopia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-10)Although early attempts at land titling in Africa were often unsuccessful, the need to secure rights in view of increased demand for land, options for registration of a continuum of individual or communal rights under new laws, and the scope for reducing costs by combining information technology with participatory methods have led to renewed interest. This paper uses a difference-in-difference approach to assess economic impacts of a low-cost registration program in Ethiopia that, over 5 years, covered some 20 million parcels. Despite policy constraints, the program increased tenure security, land-related investment, and rental market participation and yielded benefits significantly above the cost of implementation.Publication Land Acquisition in Afghanistan : A Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-06)The purpose of this report is to review and assess Afghanistan's legal framework regulating social safeguards (national and local laws, regulations, procedures and policies) with special reference to the law and practice of compulsory land acquisition, or expropriation. The overall objective of the report is to consider how Afghanistan's legal framework would address social safeguard issues in upcoming World Bank projects which are likely to involve land acquisition and resettlement of those persons whose land is to be acquired in connection with project implementation. The report will consist of a narrative of the context within which the assessment will be conducted and the assessment which will in both narrative and tabular form. Afghanistan is embarking upon a massive programme of public works to improve and upgrade the infrastructure of the country: better roads, clean water; more schools and hospitals in both rural and urban areas are needed to provide a better life for all Afghans. The World Bank is committed to providing assistance towards the realization of this programme. Much of these public works will involve the acquisition of land on which people are at present living and obtaining a livelihood from. It is important to stress at the outset of this report that far from the object of the report being to impede or prevent these necessary public works, the aim of the report and any consequential changes in the law which might result from its proposals are designed to facilitate those public works by providing for a clear and fair system of land acquisition, compensation and resettlement for those people who will be required to leave their homes and land for the greater public good in order that the public works can be carried out. Where people are satisfied that they have been treated fairly, they will be more likely to co-operate in being moved from their homes and this will facilitate the execution of the public works.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008(2009-06-01)This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.Publication Design Thinking for Social Innovation(2010-07)Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.Publication Measuring Financial Inclusion : The Global Findex Database(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04)This paper provides the first analysis of the Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) Database, a new set of indicators that measure how adults in 148 economies save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. The data show that 50 percent of adults worldwide have an account at a formal financial institution, though account penetration varies widely across regions, income groups and individual characteristics. In addition, 22 percent of adults report having saved at a formal financial institution in the past 12 months, and 9 percent report having taken out a new loan from a bank, credit union or microfinance institution in the past year. Although half of adults around the world remain unbanked, at least 35 percent of them report barriers to account use that might be addressed by public policy. Among the most commonly reported barriers are high cost, physical distance, and lack of proper documentation, though there are significant differences across regions and individual characteristics.Publication Governance Matters IV : Governance Indicators for 1996-2004(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06)The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.Publication Government Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996-2002(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08)The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions of governance and use an unobserved components model to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. They present the point estimates of the dimensions of governance as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. The governance indicators reported here are an update and expansion of previous research work on indicators initiated in 1998 (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobat 1999a,b and 2002). The authors also address various methodological issues, including the interpretation and use of the data given the estimated margins of errors.