*4.2. Land Tenure Security, Environmental Conditions, and Stewardwardship*

The link between land tenure security and health is manifest in the complex connection between land tenure security, environmental justice, pro-environmental behaviors, and investment to improve environmental conditions. Urban areas are generators of polluting emissions, vast quantities of solid and human waste that contribute to health risks, and can have serious impacts on public health [99]. People without secure tenure who tend to live near environmentally hazardous facilities feel these impacts disproportionately. This is because either the lack of access to land pushed them to settle for whatever land is available regardless of dangers, or the absence of secure rights made them unable to defend their environmental rights and demand justice from other users of the environment. The insecurity of tenure also means that people are vulnerable to climate shocks and disaster [109,110]. Precarious land rights or land tenure insecurity make people vulnerable to environmental injustice. Without strong or secure land rights, people are unable to resist injustice. When tenure is secure, individuals can push back environmental hazards in defense of their health and environmental rights [111]. Security of tenure is therefore a precondition for environmental justice, the lack of which inhibits the ability of people to take transformative action that can either improve environmental justice or reduce environmental injustices that affect their health [112]. Transformative actions stimulate individuals to undertake investments that improve their environments, to undertake environmental management practices, or to participate in collective environmental activities to reduce their health burden. Secure tenure confers on people environmental rights, responsibility, and restrictions, i.e., rights to enjoy environmental benefits and defend their environments from pollution by others, responsibility to be environmentally accountable to others, and restrictions to act within the confines of environmental laws and other people's environmental rights. The sense of ownership, control, and responsibility that comes with land tenure security is the driving motivation for investing in environmental improvement which fosters good health [52,106,107,113]. Secure tenure also ensures participation in collective activities for better urban environmental conditions, which affects health. Compared to their counterparts who have secured tenure, people without secure tenure lack attachment with their surroundings and do not feel responsible for maintaining healthy environmental practices [114]. Therefore, land tenure security holds an important place in environmental health. First, it provides rights to resist unfair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. Secondly, it confers responsibility on people to invest in their environments and act within environmentally permissible boundaries.
