This paper revisits the World Bank's land law reform agenda in Africa by focusing on two central issues: (1) land law reform as a tool for resolving land conflicts, and (2) the role of land law reform in addressing gender inequalities. While the Bank's recent land report provides insights for improving land governance in Africa, it fails to acknowledge the exploitative and contentious politics that often characterize customary land tenure systems, and the local power dynamics that undermine the ability of marginalized groups to secure land rights. Using insights from recent fieldwork, the paper analyses the links between land law reform and conflict in Ghana, and the gendered dynamics of reforming land governance in Tanzania. These “crucial cases” illustrate how land law reform can provoke conflicts over land and threaten the rights of vulnerable populations (e.g. migrants and women) when customary practices are uncritically endorsed as a means of improving land governance. As such, the paper concludes with a series of recommendations on how to navigate the promise and perils of customary practices in the governance of land.
This paper synthesizes current empirical evidence on how women experience, shape and influence small‐scale fisheries (SSF) governance. Our synthesis addresses an important gap in the literature, and helps highlight the opportunities to improve women's participation in governance and advance gender equality. We identified, characterized and synthesized 54 empirical cases at the intersection of gender and SSF governance, which comprise the relevant body of literature. Our review confirms the need to embed gender in the empirical examination of SSF governance towards expanding the current evidence base on this topic. We found that the institutional contexts within which women participate reflect a broad spectrum of arrangements, including the interactions with rules and regulations; participatory arrangements such as co‐management; and informal norms, customary practices and relational spaces. We also synthesized a typology of governance tasks performed by women in SSF. The typology includes leadership roles and active participation in decision‐making; relational networking and collective action; exercising agency and legitimacy; resource monitoring; knowledge sharing; meeting attendance (with no/less participation in decision‐making); and activism and mass mobilization. Furthermore, we drew broader insights based on the patterns that emerged across the literature and highlighted implications for improving women's meaningful participation in SSF governance. For example, exploring the breadth of governance arrangements to include all governance spaces where women are active, adjusting governance arrangements to respond to current and emerging barriers, and recognizing how women's efforts link with societal values may help legitimize their representation in SSF governance. Findings of this review should be of interest to the scholarly community, practitioners and policymakers alike and inform future research agendas, policy dialogues and practice intervention.
Coastal tourism has been supported by the growth of middle-class tourist markets, promoted by governments who view it as an important avenue for economic growth and backed by environmental organisations who regard it as an alternative, more environmentally sustainable livelihood than capture fisheries. How policymakers and households in coastal areas negotiate the challenges and opportunities associated with growing tourism and declining capture fisheries is increasingly important. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork from the Philippines between 2006 and 2018, this paper examines the transition from fishing to tourism and the consequences for one coastal community. I focus on land tenure as a key variable that shapes the effects and opportunities associated with livelihood transitions from fishing to tourism. While tourism has not been inherently positive or negative, the ability of local households to negotiate the boom and obtain the full benefits out of it is questionable. Many fishers have switched their primary livelihood activity to tourism, including the construction of tourist boats, working as tour guides or providing accommodation. However, the growth of tourism has prompted several attempts to evict the community, including from local elites who aimed to develop resorts on the coast and a recent push by the national administration to 'clean up' tourist sites around the country. I argue that land tenure in coastal communities should be more of a focus for researchers working in small-scale fisheries, as well as for researchers working on land rights.
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