Land tenure what is

It is estimated that 2. Since land forms the foundation of rural lives, tenure security often equals sustained food security, improved nutrition and predictable sources of income.

Secure land rights also enable the use of land as collateral to access other opportunities, such as credit markets. Moreover, when tenure leads to increases in land investment, agricultural productivity, and food security, it removes incentives for economic migration. Land degradation and climate variations together with land tenure insecurity threaten to exacerbate resource conflicts. There are a number of reasons. Westerners take it for granted, but establishing and enforcing formal rights over land is not always easy.

In countries with weak institutions, less effective governments, or shoddy record-keeping, it can be a struggle to settle who controls what in the face of competing interests, conflict, and ethnic or cultural differences.

Other questions abound. How do you establish land tenure for indigenous groups that are nomadic? How do you settle land tenure in places as vast and inaccessible as the Amazon rainforest, where national laws struggle to reach?

I see. Recent evidence suggests that communities the world over face a growing number of bureaucratic and technical obstacles to land ownership. You want to protect that biodiversity, you need to work with them: Indigenous peoples and local communities tend to have deep roots in their lands, and as such they develop an intimate knowledge of how best to protect and manage it. Second, these territories are also crucial for fighting climate change — protecting tropical forests, for example, can provide 30 percent or more of the greenhouse-gas emission abatement needed to halt climate change.

It appears so. Studies have shown that areas under the secure management of indigenous peoples are typically better protected and better managed than those under government control. Land tenure may also vary by gender, ethnicity, class, and political affiliation. Different land tenure systems have their advantages and disadvantages. Customary systems, which are often based on traditional, unwritten, and locally relevant rules about how to use and allocate land and resources, facilitate social cohesion, but they may not be able to withstand increasing pressure on land and resources both from within the community and from the outside compared with statutory systems which provide written legal rules or written case law about these issues.

Individual land ownership may put land to the most economically efficient use, but it may exclude disadvantaged populations, such as the poor, and limit state land management options. Public or state land ownership may withhold land for conservation purposes or public land management and facilitate more equal access to prime locations, but it may lead to poor land use and land management outcomes as a result of bureaucratic inactivity and corruption.

For inclusive and sustainable land governance, it is important that land systems are evaluated holistically, to understand how and why decisions on land and natural resources are made, implemented and enforced in both formal and informal settings. Security of tenure is the perception by people that their rights to land will be recognized by others as legitimate and protected in the event of specific challenges. Land tenure is the name of the particular legal regime under which land is owned.

It can be defined as the manner in which a party holds or occupies an area of land. The general principles of land ownership are detailed in 'common law' and have long been established in the Courts of Australia.

It is important to note, however, that the extent of ownership has changed significantly in interpretation over the last century, with many details now incorporated into federal, State and Territory legislation. Land tenure can also be referred to as the relationship between people and land.

The Office of Northern Australia has useful information about land tenure and the opportunities and challenges for investment in northern Australia.