**1. Introduction**

Dispute, as defined by sociologists, is a social fact, which involves at least two parties with differences either in interests or in social position [1,2]. Disputes can arise either from actual or perceived competition of interests for resources such as land [3] and can be symmetric or asymmetric according to the power balances between the conflicting parties. Symmetric conflicts are conflicts between relatively similar parties with respect to power, whereas asymmetric conflicts are conflicts between dissimilar parties [4]. Land dispute can be defined as a social fact involving at least two parties in an actual or perceived competition of interests over the property rights to land [5–7]. Conflicts of interests may be "the right to use the land, to manage the land, to generate an income from the land, to exclude others from the land, to transfer the land and the right to get compensation from it" [6,8–10]. Therefore, a land dispute can be understood as misuse, restriction, or dispute over property rights to land [10,11].

Land tenure disputes may occur in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas [12]. Peri-urban areas are those surrounding cities and towns with high rates of land tenure transformation, and often with multiple agents exhibiting various disputing interests [11–13]. Peri-urban areas are focal regions for municipalities, since a considerable percentage of land needed for urban expansion comes from the rural–urban interface [7,14–16]. As such, peri-urban areas have received attention from governmental institutions and industries due to their

**Citation:** Agegnehu, S.K.; Dires, T.; Nega, W.; Mansberger, R. Land Tenure Disputes and Resolution Mechanisms: Evidence from Peri-Urban and Nearby Rural Kebeles of Debre Markos Town, Ethiopia. *Land* **2021**, *10*, 1071. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/land10101071

Academic Editors: Uchendu Eugene Chigbu, Ruishan Chen and Chao Ye

Received: 3 September 2021 Accepted: 8 October 2021 Published: 11 October 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

proximity to the urban centers [15–17]. Nevertheless, peri-urban areas are also primary settings for small-scale agriculturalists who depend on these areas for their livelihood, often on a small-scale or subsistence level [15,18,19]. Given these circumstances, land disputes are typical in peri-urban areas, especially in countries with high rates of urban expansion [10].

Ethiopia is a country exhibiting a high rate of horizontal urban expansion, with 4.1% per annum on average [14,20,21]. Thus, the competition for land between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors is becoming very intense [14]. In Ethiopia, land is owned by the people and the government. Farmers have a constitutional right to use the land for undetermined periods, and they have right of protection against eviction from their landholdings [22,23]. Land required for urban expansion is expropriated by the government upon the payment of compensation to the affected farmers and is transferred to developers. Thus, the government is the sole provider of land for public purposes. Therefore, in peri-urban areas of Ethiopia, at least three parties are competing for the land. These are the government, which is the provider of the land, the private individual/company who needs the land, and the peri-urban landholders who are losing their land rights due to expropriation as a consequence of urban expansion [14]. Land dispute may occur between these three parties or within the same party [14,24,25]. For example, there are land disputes between the rural land administration organization and urban land administration organization, as the two institutions act on behalf of two different land legislations (rural land proclamation and urban land proclamation). Various studies show that land dispute is prevalent in both rural and peri-urban areas of Ethiopia even though there are some differences in the extent and cause [11,26–28]. It is challenging to effectively manage peri-urban zones since different stakeholders are involved with competing interests [29]. However, there are different resolving mechanisms in different jurisdictions which are intended to mitigate such disputes. All the mechanisms can be categorized into formal and informal ways of settling land disputes [1,2,30,31]. Formal dispute resolution mechanisms are state-based dispute resolution mechanisms which are often referred to as judicial dispute resolution mechanisms [21,32–35]. In contrast, there are the informal ways of resolving land tenure disputes, also known as alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms, which propose approaches to resolve disputes without ordinary court proceedings [36]; these include negotiation, facilitation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, community conferencing, fact-finding, and so on [24].

Although many scientific articles examine the impact of title on land tenure security, there is a lack of independent research on land tenure disputes and on the role of informal and formal conflict resolution mechanisms for land tenure disputes in peri-urban and rural areas. Therefore, the assessment of land tenure disputes and dispute resolution systems in peri-urban areas vis-à-vis rural areas in Ethiopia is an increasingly important issue that needs to be addressed when designing appropriate policy interventions to enable the sustainable development of urban areas while considering the property rights of peri-urban subsistence farmers. The purpose of this research paper is to assess the nature, types, and causes of land tenure disputes as well as dispute resolution mechanisms in the peri-urban area of Debre Markos town and the neighboring rural kebeles1 in Gozamin Wereda2 of Amhara National Regional State in Ethiopia. In this paper, Section 2 provides a brief overview of the literature related to the topic. Section 3 documents the study areas and the research methodology applied. In Section 4, the results of the study are presented and then are discussed under Section 5. Finally, Section 6 contains the conclusion and recommendations.

#### **2. Land Disputes and Mechanisms to Resolve Land Disputes**

Land is the basis of all forms of human activity. From it we find everything important for life, i.e., the food we eat, the shelter we need, the space to work, and the room to relax [10,37–41]. The accessibility to land is vital for human life. The need for thoughtful and careful stewardship of the land together with the sustainable use of its resources is crucial both for the present and future generations. As a result, disputes over landrelated issues are prevalent worldwide [2,10]. Land disputes have been a major source of disturbance and civil wars in many parts of the world. Anseeuw et al. [42] documented 71 civil wars and insurgencies in agrarian world states, from which more than 84% were caused by land-related issues. Therefore, land disputes have always been an integral part of all human societies. The instigation of land disputes is closely linked with the competition amongst people for controlling scarce land resources available for consumption [43,44].

Land disputes can take different forms [38,45,46]. In some land disputes, there are only two parties and hence they are relatively easy to resolve. Inheritance disputes between siblings over a particular piece of land and boundary trespassing disputes are the most common two-party dispute types [10]. Land disputes become more complex and difficult to resolve where more parties are involved. Group invasions or evictions of entire settlements are common examples of these types of land disputes [10,47]. Land disputes in rural areas are often found between different interest groups, e.g., between farmers and investors and/or the state, as well as between farmers themselves [48].

In peri-urban areas, there are numerous simple to complex construction works starting from heavy industries to small legal and illegal residential houses [7,20]. In all such situations, the rural land has been transformed to urban land use types [49]. Changes in these areas, caused mainly by urban expansion, make land one of the most controversial issues and the main source of disputes. One of the most important issues is the competition for land for various purposes of urban development, which may lead to changes in land tenure and use [10]. When land is converted from rural to urban use without designing alternative business strategies for the peri-urban subsistence farmers [50], it leads to disputes, contestations, and in some cases to violence. The peri-urban environment may include parts of urban areas or the edges of urban areas, and areas far from the city. The region may also include urban and rural land which is occupied formally or informally [51].

Land tenure disputes in peri-urban areas can be clustered into three dimensions: "dispute of interest", "dispute of power", and "legal and normative dispute" related to the interests of land tenure, power, and domination of beneficiaries under contradictory norms and rules [6]. The fundamental dimension affecting land tenure disputes in peri-urban areas is the dispute of interest, which includes revealed and hidden disputes between individuals, groups, and institutions related to the benefits resulting from land rights, people's relationships with the land, and the mechanisms of the institutions that affect it. It involves a wide range of types of disagreements and inconsistencies that can lead to disputes, violence, or antagonism.

The interests and motives associated with land are so widespread that sometimes disputants are confronted with one another, especially when the two sides are in the same position with respect to different interests [10,33]. These interests can result from human aspirations and motivations. Ignoring the needs of individuals due to limited resources, social status, and power or value systems leads to the hostile and conflicting behaviors of the involved actors. Land disputes have negative effects on individual households as well as on the nation's economy. They increase costs, slow down investments, and may result in the loss of the property of the disputants. Land disputes also increase social and political instability. People lose confidence in the state and distrust each other.

Although land issues are amongst the most prominent causes and driving factors for the outbreak of armed conflicts, there is a lack of adequate attention to address those issues with appropriate approaches and strategies in a timely manner [13,30,48]. Presently, due to growing competition over diminishing land resources, many developing states have found the resolution and management of land disputes to be some of their most critical challenges. This situation is "being further aggravated by environmental degradation, population growth and climate change" [52]. According to Wehrmann [10], the most important prerequisites for resolving land disputes are a comprehensive understanding of the causes of disputes as well as the positions, needs, and interests of the disputing parties. In addition, other factors also play pivotal roles in the successful resolution of land disputes, such as understanding the types of land disputes, the identity of the parties involved in a

particular land dispute and their perceptions on how to resolve it, the complexity of the causes of the land dispute, and the driving factors that escalate the dispute [10].

The experiences of some countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, and many Latin American countries suggest that the leadership, good land policies, and the quality of land institutions and land governance are important factors to prevent violent disputes or to amicably resolve disputes. As an example from another region, in Norway, there are a large number of land boundary disputes compared to other Nordic countries [53]. However, Norwegian farmers use mediation as the first and best mechanism to resolve these land disputes. If unable to resolve the dispute via mediation, the next step is to handle the case by means of the "land consolidation court". Thus, there are bundle of formal and informal mechanisms for resolving land-related disputes. The formal mechanisms of solving land-related disputes follow official procedures guided by government rules, regulations, and laws. They can be administrative and judicial. The administrative methods are applied by semi-judicial organizations, such as government resource offices, police, and local government organs. Judicial mechanisms to solve land disputes are carried out by courts.

Informal procedures comprise the so-called alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms. ADRs refer to the procedure of setting land disputes by means other than litigation. ADR mechanisms normally accelerate the solving of the dispute and prevent future disputes. Therefore, informal mechanisms help to reduce the costs of dispute processing. However, to amicably resolve disputes by using ADR mechanisms, disputants must be willing to participate and they must all feel that resolving disputes by means of ADRM is more valuable than by court proceedings [33]. In addition, for the successful resolution of land disputes, different stakeholders who have concerns with the land have to collaborate rather than focusing solely on their positions [54].

The development of dispute resolution mechanisms is characterized as pragmatic and political rather than theoretical and scientific [34]. In the United States of America, in the mid-twentieth century, the legal and academic communities began to be seriously concerned about the pitfalls of increasing litigation because, although the laws of the day granted a wide range of rights and personal protections, seeking remedies for these rights while they were being violated by the legal system became a complex exercise [55].

There are many potential ways to resolve a dispute, ranging from the formality of legal proceedings to physical violence [34,56]. The law deals with all these means, but not all means of dispute resolution are "legal" in form or acceptability. Litigation as used in many areas of traditional law is too costly, creates divisions, is inaccessible or inefficient, and requires long hours spent in court [57]. As a result, alternatives to litigation are often so regulated or perverted by litigation-oriented lawyers, courts, and lawmakers that they become alternative methods of litigation rather than alternatives to litigation. Instead of the alleged gulf between 'legal' and 'non-legal' dispute resolution methods, a unified dispute settlement theory that establishes the types of disputes in which each alternative dispute resolution method is most effective is essential [58]. One of the tasks of a unified dispute settlement theory is to integrate the various alternative dispute resolution methods into a coherent framework. Sometimes physical violence is an appropriate way to resolve a dispute, other times it is not; furthermore, sometimes a dispute can be resolved by negotiation between the involved parties only, other times it cannot. Sometimes a dispute can be resolved with what Felsteiner calls avoidance, which means the parties sever the relationship. Sometimes one party forms an alliance with a third party. Therefore, this paper is framed by the above concepts of dispute settlement mechanisms [59].

Land disputes arise in all property regimes, though the extent differs. There are four types of property regimes: private property, state property, communal property, and open access property [60]. Ostrom has described what each one means. Private property is a privately owned property regime which relies on the availability and enforcement of rules describing the control, use, and exclusion rights of the landowner, whereas communal property is a property regime owned by groups and its use and appropriation depend on the rules invented by communal property users. On the other hand, a state property regime is a property type owned and controlled by the state mostly in the form of national reserves and parks. Open access is a property regime type when the property is open to all, and no one has the exclusive right to forbid others. In an open access property regime, users try to maximize their private interest at the expense of others.
