Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Vietnam’s recent policy of “community-based natural resource management” devolves management of some forest resources to local officials, who in turn manage the provision of crop and forest land use rights to households. A household with long-term forest use rights can be granted a long-term use rights registration certificate (LURC) which can be sold, traded, inherited and mortgaged. The implementation of this pseudo-property rights regime has been nearly completed among non-forest land users, but it remains incomplete among forest users. This paper uses national household survey data from 2002 to examine the characteristics of forester-farmer households that have been granted pseudo-property rights to agricultural and forest land and tests the hypothesis that the socio-economically and politically advantaged households are more likely to have been granted formal use rights. Because property rights to land are often associated with improved economic opportunity for the land holder, this paper addresses the important prior question of who is able to seize these benefits earliest under the local management scheme. The paper finds that income quintile, ethnic status, household head age, gender and education, and location in the north all affect access to land and tenure security. The effects of most of these variables are stronger in the case of forest resources.

Publication Type: Oral Presentation
Abstract: Upper Midwest tile-drained lands, by acting as a direct conduit, contribute significantly to nutrient loadings to surface waters . Solving the problem of Gulf Hypoxia and other major water quality problems will require improved conservation efforts targeted to these lands. Reducing these loadings is, however, complicated by the need for measures affecting most if not the entire drainage system and thus more than one field or farm. Wetland restoration within tile-drainage systems has been demonstrated to significantly reduce nitrate loadings, but also provides a suite of ecosystem services. Targeting the restoration of an array of ecosystem services, rather than focusing on just water quality improvement alone could, in part, offset the costs of intervention. An ecosystem services approach, however, will likely require a bundling of government cost-share assistance for land management practices with targeted land retirement—conservation measures that are adminstered by two different government agencies. Using the example of a major drainage district in the Midwest, the cost and the effectiveness to an array of ecosystem services of management practices associated with targeted land retirement are estimated. Potential sources of funding to cover their installation and maintenance costs are identified and policies and procedures to improve cross program coordination are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: It can be difficult to explain how and why small, institutionally disadvantaged and excluded groups with few political or economic resources are able to win concessions and victories from the powerful. In the United States, despite a history of repeated dispossession, American Indian tribes have been able to win sometimes highly valuable land claims settlements and transfers of land title from the federal and state governments. This paper covers the changes that brought about the institutional opening for such claims to be considered as well as offering a causal argument for the varied outcomes of land claims cases. Settlements will only be a real possibility when there is strong legal pressure for the state and/or federal government to evaluate the claim. Further, while the costs of settlement terms are a large determining factor in whether or not a claim will reach settlement, there are other important variables involved. Stereotypes of the tribe as well as the social perceptions of the claim itself are significant in understanding settlement outcomes. Most important may be the tribal or claimant group cohesion, which is a strong indicator of the group's ability and willingness to pursue claims and negotiate to a settlement.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The issue of land reform in
South Africa is compelling not just as a crucial threat to democratic
consolidation, but also as a challenging case for the psychology of
justice. In land controversies in transitional regimes around the
globe, the unfairness of the past confronts the fairness of the present
as alternative principles of justice collide and conflict. For
instance, to what degree should land rights secured under a prior
illicit regime be recognized and honored by the newly formed democratic
system? Land reconciliation presents prototypical problems of
transitional justice. Based on a survey of a large national sample of
South Africans (conducted in October/November 2003), this paper
investigates the means by which ordinary people adjudicate conflicts
between alternatives principles of justice. The survey includes a
formal experiment, based on a vignette in which the dependent variable
is perceptions of fairness in a land dispute in which a squatter is
evicted from private property. Judgments of the fairness of squatter
evictions are hypothesized to be a related to the perceived need and
deservingness of the squatter (distributive justice), the due process
of the eviction (procedural justice), and the nature of the current use
of the land (individual land rights, rule of law). Thus, this analysis
promises to yield important insights into the role of justice
considerations in contemporary land conflicts.