The Multifunctional Character of Agriculture and Land. A Framework to Empower the Rural Poor

Transcription

1 The Multifunctional Character of Agriculture and Land A Framework to Empower the Rural Poor A Presentation to the FAO/Netherlands Conference Cultivating Our Futures Maastricht, The Netherlands November 1999 The Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty Secretariat International Fund for Agricultural Development Rome, Italy

2 The Multifunctional Character of Agriculture and Land A Framework to Empower the Rural Poor Searching for a Common Agenda Over the past 25 years, international leaders and Heads of State have searched for a common global agenda through the well known series of Summits. The inaugural Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972 was followed by Habitat in 1976, the Earth Summit in Rio, the issues of population and development in Cairo, the empowerment of women at Beijing, the Convention to Combat Desertification and the World Food Summit in Each Summit examined a pending crisis - the environment, development, energy, and food. Of the many conclusions, the one of most significance is that there are no separate crises. They are all one and the same. An analysis of the Summit declarations finds that the single most important and common cause and effect is poverty resulting from the unequal access and use of natural resources. If the protocols were blended into one international plan, the call would be for action on the inequitable distribution of wealth, the lack of access by the poor to productive resources, insufficient participation by the poor in decisions which affect their daily lives and the need for reforms in macro-economic policies that adversely affect the poor. Making Rural Life Liveable Poverty is the daily challenge for 800 million people struggling to meet their basic food requirements. Sixty percent are rural people who live in environmentally sensitive areas of low productivity. For the 350 million who are landless or near landless, access to land provides the most realistic opportunity for them to improve their livelihoods. In their quest for food security, the rural poor often have little choice but to use their limited resources extensively. Their negligible natural and capital assets compel them to adopt survival strategies with short time horizons. They become excluded from productive opportunities by ill-defined or non-existent property rights, limited access to financial services and markets, inadequate security against natural disasters and the lack of participation in decision-making. Understandably, their immediate household food requirements take precedence over longterm requirements for sustainable land use management and agriculture planning suited to the local agro-ecological conditions. Achieving household food security and improving rural livelihood systems is complex. The multifunctional character of agriculture and land provides an inclusive framework for re-focusing the development agenda on building sustainable rural communities. The economic, social and environmental functions of agriculture and land provides the elements for a more holistic approach to empowering the rural poor to become agents of their own well being. The framework effectively sets forth the potential and multiple benefits of an integrated approach to agriculture and land management. However, the challenge is to overcome the constraints that have historically excluded the rural poor. The rural poor must be empowered with access to the productive resources by which they can participate in these economic, environmental and social benefits. There are many interconnected features to the multifunctional framework for agriculture and land. Among these, the manner by which land is regulated, rights are assigned and conflicts are resolved pre-determines the incentives and opportunities for the rural poor to: 2

3 ensure their household food security; access financial services; earn income by producing marketable surpluses; accumulate capital and assets; use their own labour and investments to sustain the natural resource base; build reserves to cope with drought and preserve their assets during periods of agricultural stress; and, Invest in alternate livelihood options. Putting People at the Centre The vicious cycle that links hunger and poverty to agriculture and land can be broken, in large measure, by ensuring that the rural poor gain secure access to land, water, credit and technology. Pro-poor policies and people centred investments in agriculture and land can improve the livelihood systems and widen the food security and employment options of the rural poor. Sustainable agriculture and rural development is essentially about people and the way they organise their social, economic and political systems to make the critical decisions on who has the rights to use which resources, in which ways, for how long and for which purposes. From the standpoint of the poor, the past failures of trickle down economics must give rise to bottom up participation. Empowering the poor means supporting them to achieve secure resource rights and fostering their direct participation in the integrated planning and management of land. Understandably, when property rights are lacking or insecure, farmers can not be sure they will receive the benefits and thereby lack the incentives to make investments requiring longer gestation periods. Access to Productive Resources The interactions between poverty, land rights and the sustainable use of natural resources is leading toward a re-focusing of national and international agendas on the revival of land tenure and resource rights. The potential for property rights to break the cycle of poverty and improve the management of land resources is not new. The commitments by governments to the 1979 World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD) acknowledged that this understanding was global. The IFAD sponsored Conference on Hunger and Poverty in 1995 that created the Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty and the World Food Summit in 1996 affirmed that meeting the future food needs of a growing planet will require intensification of production on land already under cultivation. These prior events highlight the importance for the Eighth Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development to be focusing on The Integrated Planning and Management of Land Resources. Empowering the rural poor through access to land and related productive assets is the theme that weaves together such seminal documents as the Earth Charter. The report from Rio gives emphasis to land tenure in successive chapters including those on Combating Poverty, Management of Land Resources, Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development, and Strengthening the Role of Farmers. With similar importance, the World Food Summit Plan of Action repeatedly draws attention to the inadequate access by the rural poor to the means of production such as land, water, inputs, appropriate technologies and farm credit. These elements are reinforced by the creation of the Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty, a coalition of civil-society and intergovernmental organisations whose mandate is to revive agrarian reform. The Popular Coalition is fostering this revival through a holistic approach that incorporates land tenure, support services and participation by the rural poor in the formulation of public policies affecting their communities. Today, agrarian reform is re-appearing on national and international agendas based on the recognition of its importance to economic, social and political stability. Asset ownership by the rural poor is being recognised as an essential requirement for broad based economic growth. Social equity is gaining the stature of a global value. And, good governance and 3

4 political stability are being recognised as prerequisites to economic growth, the eradication of poverty and environmentally sustainable development. Making Difficult Choices Land tenure and property rights touch on the fundamental inequities in rural societies. Much of the cultivated, fertile land is held by a small number of powerful landowners and elites. It follows that tenurial security and property rights can reduce landholding inequalities, prevent rural conflicts, contribute to improved food security and increase the incomes of the rural poor. Secure access to land can catalyse practices of sustainable resource use and land management including combating desertification. Despite these convincing reasons, few countries have undertaken land tenure reform. In many countries, the political and economic difficulties associated with land access, management and reform have been formidable. Fortunately, new opportunities are emerging that can create more favourable enabling conditions. The efforts of civil society, the rise of democratic institutions and increased political awareness of the consequences of continuing to neglect rural populations is leading to the re-appearance of property rights in government policies. Economic liberalisation is eliminating the subsidies that formerly favoured large farmers. Governments are increasingly challenged to develop a tax base that includes land. Where large landholding have served as a hedge against inflation, continuing to hold land for speculative purposes is becoming more costly. The underlying concept is for land to be redistributed to the poor through land markets. In country after country smallholders and the landless are side-by-side with commercial farmers and large-scale ranchers. When commercial ventures and large landowners are allowed to encroach on the private and common property of traditional land users the result is often the destruction of forests, marshes and water resources and the overuse of crop lands and range lands. In the absence of land rights for the poor, powerful elites frequently expand onto these area. This removes the capacity of traditional users to meet their daily needs and to cope with drought and the effects of low soil productivity. Examining the causal relationships between access to resources and the environment involves understanding the demands of these different resource users. The poor have a direct effect while those with ample land and water have an indirect but often more decisive effect. Their land use behaviour pushes the poor onto marginal lands. In a world struggling to feed a growing population, it would be expected that agriculture intensification would occur on the most resilient lands - those large tracts of fertile lands that have access to water and other inputs. However, the better lands are frequently used less intensively and marginal lands more intensively. These more fragile lands are often in drought stressed areas or on hillsides that are highly vulnerable to erosion. These areas suffer from low levels of inputs, technology, markets and public services. The Tenurial Security Approach The debate at CSD-8 on land resources will encounter by two competing forces. One is access to land to meet household food security needs. The other is access to land to produce food for the international market. Household food security is a daily issue of survival for the landless and the rural poor; whereas integrated land use planning serves to increase yields in the future and increase the value of land as a capital asset. Understandably, when property rights are lacking or insecure, farmers can not be sure they will receive the benefits and thereby lack the incentives to invest in sustainable land use practices. Instead they mine the soils and then move deeper into the frontier. On the other hand, food is an international commodity that competes for export markets on the basis of low cost production. It 4

5 therefore competes to acquire or assemble increasingly large parcels of high quality land suited to mechanised production. As profitable as commercial farming might be, studies examining food security consistently reveal that there is an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. Large farms produce lower outputs of food per unit of land than do family operated farms. Instead of intensifying production to meet the needs of growing populations, large farms tend to increase the pressure on fragile lands by displacing labour. Agriculture and land management strategies in the past tended to neglect social, economic and institutional factors and concentrated on the technical aspects. Today, agrarian reform incorporates these factors. The two pillars are farm size and land tenure. Smallholder farms use family labour. Large farmers, finding labour to be their highest costs, revert to mechanisation and higher levels of chemical inputs. Large farms displace labour where as the affinity and nature of family farming absorbs labour. The greater level of labour in smallholder agriculture supports a more ecological approach to agriculture sustainability. Human labour versus mechanisation permits greater intensification because each unit of land can be managed with more direct attention. The tenure security approach of the Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty is built on the incentives that tenure provides to use land in a sustainable manner and to invest in sustainable practises. The behavioural incentives that have already been outlined are the primary pre-contributions to sustainability. Furthermore, property rights provide the collateral needed by the poor to access credit for capital and agro-inputs. In addition, secure property rights are crucial for land markets. Poorly functioning land markets tend to lower land values because effective demand is limited. Lower land values reduce the incentives to invest in conservation because farmers cannot realise the benefits of investments if they sell the land. Low land values also reduce the value of the land as collateral since the lender can not easily sell the land to recover lost credit. Credit therefore tends to be more expensive when land markets function poorly. In summary, land management is attributable to natural resource characteristics, climatic variations and human factors. In the absence of land rights it is exceedingly difficult to establish sustainable land management practices. On the contrary, human induced desertification results from the expansion of rainfed cultivation onto unsuitable lands, continuous cultivation that depletes nutrients, excessive use of ground water, overgrazing, deforestation linked to fuelwood needs and expansion of agricultural land. The resulting sparse vegetation cover sets off soil erosion, thus accelerating the desertification process. Policies and programmes to strengthen sustainable land use must engage all parties that rely upon or benefit from the land in question. Participatory planning and decision making is essential if projects are to avoid elites, outside traders and moneylenders from appropriating the benefits. Legislative, regulatory and judicial systems for the transfer and protection of the land rights of the poor must include the landed and the landless, governments officials and absentee landowners. Today, agriculture and land management is returning to the agenda based on a recognition of its importance to economic, social and political stability. Asset ownership by the rural poor is increasingly recognised as being essential to sustained and broad based economic growth. Social equity is a driving global value. Good governance and political stability are recognised prerequisites to economic growth and the eradication of poverty. Agrarian reform is most often considered to define property relationships since it involves a wide range of essential technical elements. However, it is primarily about changing relationships. First, it aims to change land 5

6 tenure relationships. Second, it aims to change the current culture of exclusion so that the poor gain access to credit, technology, markets and other productive services. Third, it aims for the poor to be active participants in the development of government policies and programmes affecting their communities and livelihoods. The history of agriculture sector reform has shown that civil society movements without institutional and public support or government led reforms without the support of civil society have both failed. Similarly, the record from development assistance and official aid emphasises that sustainability requires that people be empowered to be the agents of their own development. Accordingly, there can not be empowerment of people if they do not participate in the decisions that affect them. At the same time, participation is meaningless if it does not result in improved access to productive resources. Building a Common Agenda The past has shown that approaching agriculture and land issues through narrow interventions, as a means to initiate broader policy dialogue and programme support, was generally not successful. It has also been recognised that the parallel work of civil society, governments and the intergovernmental community often becomes trapped in the differences between these sectors. For some time, there has been a recognised need to foster new forms of partnership between civil society, governments and international organisations. The need is for information sharing, to promote dialogue among affected groups and to contribute to consensus building. There is also need for joint pilot projects that can build new ways of work and better target existing resources to the poor. At the 1995 Conference on Hunger and Poverty, sponsored by the International Fund for Agriculture Development, a diverse group of stakeholders, including inter-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, NGOs, government officials, bilateral agencies and international financial institutions produced a consolidated analysis on the constraints to sustainable human development. They committed themselves to form a Coalition of equals that would unite their common concerns into one agenda to empower the rural poor through improved access to productive assets. The Coalition partners currently include the International Fund for Agricultural Development which serves as the international focal point, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Food Programme, the World Bank, the European Commission and seven regional civil society / NGO networks. The Popular Coalition aims to build strategic and innovative alliances between diverse development organisations giving particular emphasis to the role of civil society in gaining access to land and water and by increasing their direct participation in decision-making from the local to the international level. The Coalition is not a new organisation. It is a mechanism for innovation, dialogue and pilot activities in agrarian reform. The strength of the Coalition is the different spheres of influence of its partners. The Coalition has significant capacity to make a difference by bringing the existing resources of its partners into coherent and well-targeted country programmes. The vision is that the partners will incorporate into their own organisations the successful results and lessons learned from the initiatives jointly undertaken through the Popular Coalition. There is a convergence between the programme of action of the Popular Coalition and the benefits that can be derived from the multifunctional character of agriculture and land. Among others, this convergence is linked to many of the driving forces and factors with positive impacts on the multiple functions of agriculture and land including: land tenure policies and systems; development of autonomous peoples and producer organisations; mechanisms to negotiate conflicting land use needs; decrease in rates of land degradation; and, Management of land resources. 6

7 As stated in the issue paper prepared for the FAO/Netherlands Conference on the Multifunctional Character of Agriculture and Land The reinforcement of the capacities of local institutions to ensure the sustainable management of local resources is crucial. In order to stimulate investment and longer-term planning, farmers must be confident that they have adequate rights of ownership, managed access or other tenure arrangements. The multifunctional character of agriculture and land is about people. For the Popular Coalition, it is about fostering the social relationships by which the rural poor are empowered with the resources to develop sustainable livelihoods. In so doing, the natural resource base upon which current and future generations depend will be managed more sustainably because the poor will be the beneficiaries of the economic, social and environmental benefits inherent in agriculture and land. The convergence of the concept of multifunctionality with the nature and mandate of the Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty presents an important opportunity for action. The Popular Coalition seeks to identify practical ways and means by which the potential synergy can be captured and translated into practical community level innovations to strengthen the access by the rural poor to the resources and opportunities inherent in the multifunctional framework of agriculture and land. For further information: Bruce H. Moore - Coordinator The Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty Secretariat - IFAD, via del Serafico 107, Rome, ITALY Tel <coalition@ifad.org> 7