Population Pressure Land Tenure and Natural Resource Management in Selected Areas of Africa and Asia Keijiro Otsuka Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development October 2001 The author is indebted to Yujiro Hayami Frank Place Alain de Janvry Elizabeth Sadoulet Peter Hazell Agnes Quisumbing and Jonna Estudillo for their useful comments on the case studies in Ghana Uganda Malawi and Indonesia Sumatra on which this article is based INTRODUCTION Massive degradation of natural resources including forests rangeland and irrigation water has been taking place in the Third World The growing population has increased demand for land trees and water which coupled with tenure insecurity or the absence of clear property rights has resulted in the over exploitation of these natural resources e g Deacon 1994 This in turn has threatened the sustainable development of agriculture forestry and livestock sectors The critical question is whether the current trend will continue and result in further degradation of natural resources and ultimately significant deterioration of human welfare Boserup 1965 argues that population pressure does not necessarily result in disastrous consequences as it will lead to the evolution of farming systems from land using or natural resource using systems such as shifting cultivation to land saving and laborintensive farming systems such as annual cropping systems 1 Her argument however is incomplete While investment is required to establish intensive farming systems e g investment in the construction of irrigation facilities terracing and tree planting insufficient attention is paid to incentive systems which ensure that the appropriate investments are made It is widely recognized that investment incentives are governed by the land tenure or property rights institution as it affects the expected returns to investments accrued to those who actually undertake them Besley 1995 In sparsely populated areas of Sub Saharan Africa and islands in the South Pacific land is often owned and controlled by the community where individual land rights are severely restricted and benefits are shared widely among members of extended families Johnson 1972 If such 1 communal ownership of land prevails and persists investment incentives are likely to be weak and thus investments necessary for the intensification of farming systems may not be made Besley 1995 Johnson 1972 Then the extensive and natural resource using farming systems may continue to be practiced contrary to the Boserupian hypothesis Hayami and Ruttan 1995 argue that not only technologies but also institutions are induced to change in response to the changing resource endowments in order to save increasingly scarce resources This would imply in our context that land tenure institutions will change towards individual ownership so as to provide appropriate investment incentives to save the use of natural resources Consistent with the induced innovation thesis a theory of property rights institution developed by Demsetz 1967 and Alchian and Demsetz 1973 asserts based on the historical experience of hunting communities in Canada that property rights institutions evolve from open access to private ownership when natural resources become scarce In many parts of Sub Saharan Africa it is known that the system of communal property rights on cultivated agricultural fields has been considerably individualized Bruce and Migot Adholla 1993 Yet no systematic research has been made as to the effect of population pressure on land tenure institutions and the effect of possible changes in land tenure institutions on the investment in land improvement towards the intensification of farming systems and the preservation of natural resources Based on the recently completed project on land tenure and the management of land and trees in Asia and Africa Otsuka and Place 2001 this article attempts to identify the process by which population pressure leads to the individualization of land rights and its consequences on the management of land and trees A particular focus will be placed on 2 the development of agroforestry systems growing commercial trees such as cocoa coffee cinnamon and rubber which are becoming important farming systems in agriculturally marginal areas where people are particularly poor and natural forests have been degraded rapidly Otsuka 2000 2 The conceptual framework is discussed in the next section which is followed by the examination of the results of case studies on the management of trees and cropland Policy implications of this study are discussed in the final section CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Communal Ownership In this study the focus is on communal ownership 3 as it is prevalent in our study sites including southwestern Ghana the north and east of Uganda all regions of Malawi and western Sumatra Under the communal ownership regime uncultivated forestland woodland and rangeland are owned communally and controlled by an authority such as a village chief whereas exclusive use rights of cultivated land are assigned to individual households of the community and its ownership rights are held traditionally by the extended family The uncultivated portion of communally owned land can be regarded as common property which is defined as the joint ownership and use of property by a group of people e g for hunting and extraction of trees and minor forest products 4 This area is however generally characterized by open access for the community members almost without exception Thus uncultivated forests and woodlands have been rapidly cleared for cultivation with population growth in our study in our sites 3 While the individual use rights on currently cultivated lands are established the rights to transfer including inheritance sales and leasing are often vested in the village community or the extended family The ownership of cultivated land however has evolved towards more individualized ownership over time e g through a shift from the ownership of extended family to a single family Ault and Rutman 1979 Bruce and MigotAdholla 1993 This has led to the development of agroforestry systems in hilly and mountainous areas where annual crop farming does not have a comparative advantage 5 An Evolutionary View of Land Tenure Institutions Following Hayami and Ruttan 1985 a simplified version of our theoretical framework can be illustrated by assuming that there are only two factors of production i e land and labor Land represents natural