IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v75y2018icp661-672.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risks to the sanctity of community lands in Kenya. A critical assessment of new legislation with reference to forestlands

Author

Listed:
  • Alden Wily, Liz

Abstract

Important new legislation protects community lands in Kenya. Delivery is principally dependent upon each community securing formal collective entitlement to its land. Many factors may impede this. While some are experienced in all titling programmes, others are specific to Kenya, exacerbated by low confidence in the readiness of the state to embrace new approaches to property after a century of subordination of traditional land rights. Forestlands, customarily shared by members of a community, are a likely early casualty, needlessly retained by the State. This paper focuses upon loopholes in new laws that could exclude forested lands from collective entitlement, impairing constitutional advances in the process. Ambiguity within the Constitution itself plays a role. Therefore, while lesser impediments to land justice may be remedied through clarifying regulations and parliamentary removal of offending clauses, judicial interpretation of constitutional intentions is required. This is better sought sooner than later to limit wrongful land takings and evictions of vulnerable forest communities, active until the present.

Suggested Citation

  • Alden Wily, Liz, 2018. "Risks to the sanctity of community lands in Kenya. A critical assessment of new legislation with reference to forestlands," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 661-672.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:75:y:2018:i:c:p:661-672
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.02.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837717300091
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.02.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony Mushinge & Sharon Mulenga, 2016. "Legal Pluralism and Tenure Security: Exploring the Relationship between Statutory and Customary Land Tenure in Zambia," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 4(3), pages 7-17, March.
    2. Daniel Bromley, 1992. "The commons, common property, and environmental policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 2(1), pages 1-17, January.
    3. Bromley, Daniel W., 2008. "Resource degradation in the African commons: accounting for institutional decay," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(5), pages 539-563, October.
    4. Jayne, Thomas S. & Chamberlin, Jordan & Traub, Lulama & Sitko, N. & Muyanga, Milu & Yeboah, Felix & Nkonde, Chewe & Anseeuw, Ward & Chapoto, Anthony & Kachule, Richard, 2015. "Africa's Changing Farmland Ownership: The Rise of the Emergent Investor Farmer," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212028, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Lenyeletse V. Basupi & Claire H. Quinn & Andrew J. Dougill, 2017. "Pastoralism and Land Tenure Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Conflicting Policies and Priorities in Ngamiland, Botswana," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-17, December.
    6. Liz Alden Wily, 2018. "The Community Land Act in Kenya Opportunities and Challenges for Communities," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-25, January.
    7. Agrawal, Arun, 2001. "Common Property Institutions and Sustainable Governance of Resources," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(10), pages 1649-1672, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schürmann, Alina & Kleemann, Janina & Fürst, Christine & Teucher, Mike, 2020. "Assessing the relationship between land tenure issues and land cover changes around the Arabuko Sokoke Forest in Kenya," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    2. Jemaiyo Chabeda-Barthe & Tobias Haller, 2018. "Resilience of Traditional Livelihood Approaches Despite Forest Grabbing: Ogiek to the West of Mau Forest, Uasin Gishu County," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-22, November.
    3. Liz Alden Wily, 2018. "Collective Land Ownership in the 21st Century: Overview of Global Trends," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-26, May.
    4. Casiano Flores, Cesar & Tan, Evrim & Crompvoets, Joep, 2021. "Governance assessment of UAV implementation in Kenyan land administration system," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Theesfeld, Insa, 2004. "Constraints on Collective Action in a Transitional Economy: The Case of Bulgaria's Irrigation Sector," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 251-271, February.
    2. Sikor, Thomas, 2002. "The Commons in Transition," Discussion Papers 18880, CEESA: Central and Eastern European Sustainable Agriculture International Research Project.
    3. Senda, Trinity S. & Robinson, Lance W. & Gachene, Charles K.K. & Kironchi, Geoffrey, 2022. "Formalization of communal land tenure and expectations for pastoralist livelihoods," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    4. Ma’Mun, Sitti Rahma & Loch, Adam & Young, Michael D., 2021. "Sustainable irrigation in Indonesia: A case study of Southeast Sulawesi Province," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    5. Felix Lamech Mogambi Ming’ate, 2016. "A framework for linking forestry co-management institutional arrangements with their associated livelihood outcomes," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 16(4), pages 329-347, October.
    6. Purnamita Dasgupta, 2007. "Common Property Resources as Development Drivers: A Study of Fruit Cooperative in Himachal Pradesh: India," Working Papers id:917, eSocialSciences.
    7. Gani, Azmat & Scrimgeour, Frank, 2014. "Modeling governance and water pollution using the institutional ecological economic framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 363-372.
    8. Maryati, Sri & Firman, Tommy & Humaira, An Nisaa Siti, 2022. "A sustainability assessment of decentralized water supply systems in Bandung City, Indonesia," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    9. Arts, Bas & de Koning, Jessica, 2017. "Community Forest Management: An Assessment and Explanation of its Performance Through QCA," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 315-325.
    10. Boscow Okumu & Edwin Muchapondwa, 2017. "Determinants of Successful Collective Management of Forest Resources: Evidence from Kenyan Community Forest Associations," Working Papers 698, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    11. Chervier, Colas & Le Velly, Gwenolé & Ezzine-de-Blas, Driss, 2019. "When the Implementation of Payments for Biodiversity Conservation Leads to Motivation Crowding-out: A Case Study From the Cardamoms Forests, Cambodia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 499-510.
    12. Dinesh Dhakal & David O’Brien & Peter Mueser, 2021. "Government Policy and Performance of Agricultural Cooperatives: A Case Study in Chitwan District, Nepal," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-20, November.
    13. Schultz, Bill, 2020. "Resource management and joint-planning in fragmented societies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    14. Rout, S., 2008. "Institutional and policy reforms in water sector in India: review of issues, concepts and trends," Conference Papers h042926, International Water Management Institute.
    15. Yujun Sun & Khambay KHAMPHILAVONG, 2013. "People’s Participation in the Production Forest Management in the Middle Part of Lao," International Journal of Sciences, Office ijSciences, vol. 2(12), pages 22-29, December.
    16. Song, Andrew, 2018. "Reconstructing Governability: How Fisheries Are Made Governable," MarXiv zavwc, Center for Open Science.
    17. Li, Jiaxin & Wang, Zihan & Cheng, Xin & Shuai, Jing & Shuai, Chuanmin & Liu, Jing, 2020. "Has solar PV achieved the national poverty alleviation goals? Empirical evidence from the performances of 52 villages in rural China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    18. Andersson, Krister, 2013. "Local Governance of Forests and the Role of External Organizations: Some Ties Matter More Than Others," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 226-237.
    19. Stefanie Engel & Charles Palmer & Alexander Pfaff, 2013. "On the Endogeneity of Resource Co-management: Theory and Evidence from Indonesia," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 89(2), pages 308-329.
    20. Wichelns, Dennis & Oster, J.D., 2006. "Sustainable irrigation is necessary and achievable, but direct costs and environmental impacts can be substantial," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 86(1-2), pages 114-127, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:75:y:2018:i:c:p:661-672. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.