Property Rights, Land Disputes and Water Scarcity: Empirical Evidence from Ethiopia

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between insecure property rights and land disputes using farm household panel data from the highlands of Ethiopia. Our identification strategy relies on the gradual rollout of a land certification program. We find that tenure security significantly reduces the likelihood for a farm household to experience land disputes. We further document that water scarcity during the rainy seasons is an important determinant of land disputes. However, farm households that have been certified are significantly less likely to experience land disputes triggered by water scarcity than farm households without land certification. 5 We provide a simple theoretical framework in the online supplementary appendix guiding these empirical results. Our theoretical framework is a simple bargaining model with private information. We assume that agents bargain over a piece of land. One agent can illegally use the land, albeit at a (privately known) cost. This cost reflects the strength of property rights in the region: the cost is substantive if tenure security is strong, and low if property rights are ill-defined. When facing adverse weather shocks, the temptation to encroach on the land of the tenant rises along with water scarcity. 6 Ethiopia has implemented one of the largest, fastest, and least expensive land registration and certification reforms in Africa according to Deininger et al. (2008).

How has the new round of farmland certification in China affected farmers’ economic welfare?

“…Specifically, the main causes of farmland certification endogeneity are threefold. First, the time and location of farmland certification are based on government choice, and family and village characteristics will significantly affect the possibility of farmers obtaining a certificate (Di Falco et al, 2020;Holden et al, 2009). The government is likely to choose villages with superior outcomes in the second round of farmland contracts, referring to more fertile farmland and less contradiction between people and farmland, to easily and effectively organise and implement the pilot work of farmland certification.…”

Climate change and armed conflicts in Africa: temporal persistence, non-linear climate impact and geographical spillovers

“…Institutional quality and the endowment of resources also belong to this group of explanatory variables. In fact, institutional and structural capabilities of national government, including the effectiveness of property right regimes, play a key role in reducing the risk that climate-induced resource scarcity (e.g., water and food insecurity) translates into conflict (Di Falco et al, 2020;Jones et al, 2017). Moreover, countries relying on the exploitation of natural resources are more exposed to the risk of armed conflicts (Bodea et al, 2016;Ross, 2004).…”

Land Titling and Litigation

“…2 According to common wisdom, one of the benefits of formalization and a key factor in igniting the virtuous cycle of economic growth is to reduce litigation (Holden, Deininger, and Ghebru 2019). Commentators hypothesize that clearly demarcated plot boundaries and formally recorded legal rights will reduce conflicts between individuals regarding contested boundaries (Di Falco et al 2020), claims over land parcels (Fearon 1998), and larger-scale social and ethnic conflicts over land, which often have devastating consequences (André and Platteau 1998). From this perspective, formal land titling can be seen as a substitute for litigation directed to solve conflicts over land.…”

“…Our article complements those contributions because we collect data on the full set of disputes over land, including those escalating into violence and those resulting in nonviolent contentions. Di Falco et al (2020) compare the rate of land-related conflicts experienced by Ethiopian rural villagers the year before and the year following the rollout of a land-rights-certification program. The authors show that villagers who received formal land certificates experienced significantly fewer land-related conflicts.…”