**Part 3: Land Property Rights and Governance**

### **Evolution of the Land Consolidation System in China**

**Kaiwen Zhang and Rong Tan**

#### **1. Introduction**

It is widely accepted that fragmented land ownership tends to decrease farmland productivity (Pašakarnis and Maliene 2010; Latruffe and Piet 2014; Jürgenson 2016; Zang et al. 2019). As a result, the concept of land consolidation appeared in the 14th century in Europe (Demetriou et al. 2012; Liu and Zhao 2017). It was originally designed as an agriculture-oriented policy tool and defined as readjustment and reallocation of arable land parcels to improve their quality and quantity (Vitikainen 2004; Pašakarnis and Maliene 2010; Hiironen and Riekkinen 2016; Zhou et al. 2020).

However, this traditional understanding of land consolidation has evolved due to the development of the modern society. Alongside the urbanization and industrialization processes, a large extension of land is in need of urban infrastructure construction and urban planning, which gives incentive to reorganize the rural land (Tan and Zhou 2015; R. Wang et al. 2019). Besides, rural–urban inequity also raises the demand for modernization in rural areas (Crecente et al. 2002; Liu 2014). Furthermore, the protection of the living conditions and ecological environment calls for an urgent care of rural land use (Foster et al. 2003). All these issues can be solved also by means of land rearrangement. In the 1990s, some western European countries started to regard land consolidation as a tool to fulfill public demands (Pašakarnis and Maliene 2010). Then, land consolidation was promoted as an indispensable measure for integrated rural development (Thomas 2006).

Though many developing countries have implemented land consolidation policies, not all of these practices achieved the expected results (van Dijk 2007; Janus and Markuszewska 2017). Policy-makers may face heterogeneous social obstacles such as lack of public participation, overregulation by the government, lack of government capacity, food security issues, or problems related to undeveloped rural regions (Lisec et al. 2014; Djanibekov and Finger 2018; Ahmed et al. 2018; Nguyen and Warr 2020). This makes cross-regional policy comparisons extremely difficult. The literature is clear that certain land consolidation policies can play an important role in the rural society. However, further study is still in need to illustrate the mechanisms of different policies. Then, is it possible to find an

effective medium to estimate and compare the economic, social, and ecological functions of multi-purposed land consolidation policies under a similar background in stimulating sustainable development? Interestingly, as a transitioning country, China has experienced a complex situation in land management, and may provide suitable examples.

China has a long history of land consolidation, dating back to the 10th century BC, and land consolidation programs started soon after the funding of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s (Lu 2002; Huang et al. 2011). However, for decades, land consolidation in China was only regarded as an agriculture-focused instrument without considering its social, economic, and ecological functions. For example, in the era of planning economy, farmland consolidation was widely implemented as a supporting policy of people's commune. That is to say, modern land consolidation in China did not exist until the 1980s (Jiang et al. 2015; Long et al. 2019; Zhou et al. 2020). Since the reform and opening in 1978, rapid urbanization and industrialization in China have greatly changed the traditional small-farmer society in rural areas. Thus, land consolidation is no longer a simple agricultural approach, and new technologies and administrative methods have emerged. In the past 30 years, land consolidation in China, guided by the central government and implemented nationwide, has evolved greatly and faced different issues, including food security, rural development, political trade-off, and environmental problems.

The transition of the land consolidation system in China provides insights into the patterns of institutional change and policy performance. During the past 30 years of urbanization, China encountered similar social problems as many other countries, including food security, rural decline, and environmental loss (Liu 2014; Long 2014; Liu and Li 2017; D. Wang et al. 2019). The land consolidation policy was altered over time, whereas the basic institutional framework has remained unchanged. Under these circumstances, the evolution of certain policies reflects not only the purpose of policy-makers but also the response of the society. Hence, different policies can be discussed in the same context, especially to examine their working mechanism and driving force. By illustrating the evolution process of China's land consolidation system and contrasting the motivation, characteristics, and performance of each stage, this study aims at answering the following two questions: (a) how the land consolidation policy worked and performed in China; (b) why the previous system shifted to another one and what the characteristics of the institutional change are.

With these tasks, this research traces back the formation and evolution of the land consolidation system in the past 20 years. The form and method of land consolidation in China varies by region and by time. It is therefore inappropriate to

compare local practices directly across time periods. Instead, a temporal-sequence study of country-level policies can abstract the perception and target of central decision-makers. Based on official laws, policies, and reports, this paper adopted a qualitative policy analysis approach. The institutional changes of land consolidation system were identified and characterized to find the internal mechanism of rural land use-related policies.

In an international perspective, it is also necessary and worthwhile to clarify how the Chinese land consolidation system works and why it changed through time. On the one hand, the problems and demands that China faced are applicable to many developing countries, such as agricultural decline and the social-ecological land use problem. The policies implemented in China can serve as a "toolbox" which can be used by policy-makers to formulate rural land plans. On the other hand, the transition experience of industrialization, urbanization, privatization, and marketization in China is also beneficial to other transitioning countries, especially in South Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. With economic growth and social transformation, those countries should tailor their land management policy accordingly. Likewise, the pattern of institutional change in China can also provide a learnable example to avoid social conflict and maintain a sustainable rural development.

#### **2. Literature Review**

The function of land consolidation is tightly linked to the arable land fragmentation issue. Many studies pointed out that unfavorable size and unsuitable shape of farmland are detrimental to agricultural production, as they increase the cost of organization and production and decrease the possibility of agricultural innovation (Thomas 2006; Latruffe and Piet 2014; Hartvigsen 2014; Sklenicka et al. 2014). Some other researchers illustrated that the fragmented farmland and property right may be tragic for the commons and reduce the investment incentive of farmers (Zang et al. 2019). On the other hand, some researchers argue that proper land fragmentation can increase the biodiversity and reduce risks for farmers (Ciaian et al. 2018; Ntihinyurwa et al. 2019). However, it is still widely accepted that the land fragmentation issue should be governed especially in developing countries including Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa (Hartvigsen 2014; Zang et al. 2019), which calls for the implementation of land consolidation.

In land fragmentation research, land consolidation studies mainly focus on the evaluation of procedures and effects. Many researches have primarily concentrated on its influence on agricultural productivity, using a quantitative method. Wan and Cheng (2001) estimated that the exogenous addition of one plot results in a reduction

of annual crop output of 2 to 10 percentage points. Rahman and Rahman (2009) analyzed the rice production in Bangladesh by means of the stochastic production frontier framework and indicated that a 1% increase in land fragmentation would reduce the rice output by 0.05%. Hiironen and Riekkinen (2016) estimated the expected cost and benefit of a land consolidation program in Finland which reduced the average production cost by 15% and fulfilled a positive net value. Lai et al. (2015) indicated, through an econometric analysis of north China, that the consolidation of 2.28 plots into 1 plot can increase machinery use by 10% and crop output by 0.5–1%. Most of these studies revealed a positive relationship between land consolidation and crop yield. Colombo and Perujo-Villanueva (2019) indicated that land consolidation brought about a more stable property structure and saved production costs by 5.8% to 15.3% (Colombo and Perujo-Villanueva 2019). Janus and Markuszewska (2019) proved that land consolidation can still improve farmland quality and reduce land abandonment in the long term.

While land consolidation policies have become increasingly diverse, more and more scholars are setting their sight on rural transition and non-farm sector development, especially in Eastern and South Asia. Otsuka et al. (2013) suggested that Asian governments should support land consolidation programs to decrease the average production costs according with wage growth (Otsuka et al. 2013). Nguyen and Warr (2020) used panel data for Vietnam to figure out that land consolidation encouraged more rural labor to participate in non-farm sectors, which stimulate rural development. Many studies in China also presented similar results. Tan et al. (2008) observed that the separate land property right gave rise to rural labor price, and land consolidation may motivate rural resident to move to urban areas. Liu and Li (2017) found that under the trend of urbanization and attendant rural decline, rural workers and immigrants might suffer from limited knowledge and low income, while land leveling and assorted agricultural infrastructure construction projects improved rural conditions and provided more chance in rural area.

Other researchers focused on the social effect of land consolidation programs. In Eastern and Central Europe, communism during the national land privatization process influenced farmers' attitude towards land consolidation (Pašakarnis and Maliene 2010). van Dijk (2007) demonstrated the relationship between personal identity, social emotional bonds, and land property right in Central Europe and pointed out the inadequacy of traditional land consolidation policies. A research in Estonia also supported this view, indicating that land consolidation transactions violated the non-economic motivations of farmers and prevented the conservation of social capital (Grubbström 2011).

Recently, the ecological system is becoming a new perspective of land consolidation studies. A study in Galicia showed that land consolidation which increases the use of fertilizers and pesticides is harmful to the local landscape (Crecente et al. 2002). In recent years, many researches estimated the ecological influence of land consolidation by landscape ecology methods. Guo et al. (2020) indicated the long-term ecological benefit of land consolidation programs based on remote sensing. Zhong et al. (2020) implied that land consolidation programs can improve soil conservation services in Southeast China. Meanwhile, some scholars also argued that the ecological equality in China will degenerate in the overall process, even though restoration approaches of land consolidation can improve the ecological performance in certain periods (Shan et al. 2019). These inconsistent conclusions reflect the diverse ecological impact of land consolidation programs in different natural–social context.

Moreover, the topic of the organization and institution of land consolidation programs is also widely discussed. Lisec et al. (2014) figured out that a better perception of the landowner increases the possibility of land consolidation, which calls for better public participation. Haldrup (2015) introduced an agreement-based land consolidation mode which granted non-state sectors including NGOs and landowners a stronger voice in negotiation in order to satisfy the local interest. Ahmed et al. (2018) indicated that chiefs in Ghana played a negative role in achieving the public interest, going beyond a legal land management system. In Uzbekistan, the cotton production-oriented land consolidation process was controlled by the state, which increased the production risk and reduced farm incomes (Djanibekov and Finger 2018). Zhang et al. (2019b) provided evidence from China to prove that the internal opportunity and ability of farmer decides the performance of land use, while self-organization with sufficient government facilitation can effectively stimulate land consolidation projects. Another research in southwest China introduced a new consolidation method, in which agricultural companies can lease scattered farmlands from farmers and implement land consolidation projects to develop a mechanized agriculture (Zhang et al. 2019a). Besides the discussion of centralization and decentralization, these researches further provide a glimpse into the relationship between local background and institutional arrangement.

Virtually, it can be concluded that land consolidation projects all over the world have experienced three stages, from an agricultural focus to a rural society focus and eventually concentrating on ecosystem conservation. This is apparently according to the demands in different developing countries. However, though the international literature on land consolidation provides a possibility to compare the performance of different policies, it is still difficult to compare cases in heterogeneous backgrounds. For example, weak government power, lack of property right rules, and insufficient technology are the main obstacles in Africa (Ahmed et al. 2018), while East Asian countries are facing the process of urbanization and rural decline (Liu and Li 2017), and South Asian countries are facing the conflict of a growing population and a limited non-farm labor demand (Rahman and Rahman 2009; Nguyen and Warr 2020). Hence, the mechanisms and characteristics of different land consolidation institutions have not been investigated. However, the different stages of development of China's land consolidation policy happen to provide an opportunity for comparing results from different systems.

In the Chinese context, the land consolidation issue has attracted increasing attention in recent years. The related literature is continuously growing. Research has discussed in depth the relative performance of the Chinese land consolidation system mentioned above, including agricultural output (Wan and Cheng 2001; Jiang et al. 2015; Liu and Li 2017), rural development (Tan et al. 2008; Liu and Zhao 2017; R. Wang et al. 2019), soil erosion (Fan 2006; Gao and Liu 2010), and ecological service (Liu et al. 2019; Zhong et al. 2020). Newly emerging local practices have also been introduced, such as collective self-organization and market-led transactions (Zhang et al. 2019a, 2019b). However, most of these studies are limited at the regional level in a certain period and lack a comprehensive investigation at the national level. In other words, after 20 years of implementing a land consolidation policy, it remains to be discussed how the national system has influenced rural land utilization and why this system has been significantly modified. It is vital to clarify the impact by different institutions at different stages, considering the significant institutional changes that occurred in the past. A few studies have tried to identify different stages of the Chinese land consolidation policy (Long et al. 2019; Zhou et al. 2020), but the feature and developing path of each stage remain unclear. This study therefore argues that previous land consolidation studies have focused on the impact on single aspects and may ignore how the land consolidation system itself was planned and transformed.

#### **3. Background and Concept**

#### *3.1. Understanding the Modern Land Consolidation System*

Land consolidation can achieve several sustainable development goals (SDGs) to face the risks of food, security safety, environment, and poverty (United Nations 2015) (Table 1). Although land consolidation projects always take place in rural areas, they influence both the urban and the rural society (Louwsma et al. 2017; D. Wang et al. 2019). While clean, safe, and sufficient food provisions are threated by urbanization and industrialization, land readjustment and rearrangement increase the productivity of arable land and contribute to SDG 2 (Zero huger) (Jin et al. 2017). The vitalization of agriculture not only increases the income of farmers, but also promotes an equal distribution of benefits among the relative stakeholders, which supports SDG 1 (No poverty) and SDG 10 (Reducing Inequity) (Pašakarnis and Maliene 2010). Moreover, since land consolidation reshapes the rural society, the rural living environment and social welfare (SDG 3, 4, and 6) improve (Lu et al. 2019). In urban development, land consolidation also provides an economized way of land assembly in order to facilitate peri-urbanization and urban redevelopment (SDG 11) (Louwsma et al. 2017). Notably, a proper land use arrangement can also contribute to SDG 15 (Life on land) by reducing land degradation and conserving biodiversity (Liu et al. 2019).

There are multiple cases to verify the relationship between land consolidation and sustainable development. In Ghana, the government advocated an agricultural reform to combine small parcels into a mechanized farmland, which continuously increased the rural production efficiency and diversity, eradicated extreme hunger, and reduced poverty by half (Ecker 2018). In Vietnam, land consolidation projects encouraged farmers to participate in the off-farm labor market and increased off-farm income, which could contribute to the rural–urban equity (Nguyen and Warr 2020). In Latvia, the implementation of land consolidation projects led to the improvement of the rural living conditions, including less soil erosion, better draining facilities, less air pollution, and better biodiversity conservation (Jankava and Geˇcaite˙ 2017). In Western Europe, land consolidation projects stimulated rural recreation and agro-tourism during water governance, serving as an auxiliary approach to developing rural economy and infrastructures (Sta ´nczuk-Gałwiaczek et al. 2018). In north India, land consolidation not only created the conditions for the construction of rural hospitals, educational facilities, and affordable housing, but also protected and restored natural habitats through planning and provided rural public transportation facilities (Munnangi et al. 2020).


**Table 1.** Sustainable development goals (SDGs) and land consolidation. Source: Own illustration.

Therefore, in recent years, the concept of land consolidation has been comprehensively expanded, covering economy, administration, engineering, and legislation (Long 2014; Zhou et al. 2020). Multiple land financing initiatives and the property market expand the possibilities of consolidation programs (Hartvigsen 2014). Besides, the abundant technological approaches, including assessment, planning, construction, and ex-post evaluation, enable land consolidation projects to improve the machinery, ameliorate land production conditions, and conserve the ecosystem (Liu and Zhao 2017; Mika et al. 2019; Shan et al. 2019). Moreover, the diverse legislation and administration modes, such as state-led, market-led, and self-organized, can inspire farmers to participate in land consolidation (Tang et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2019a, 2019b).

The modern land consolidation system has already been applied all around the world not only to improve agricultural efficiency but also to achieve other goals including agricultural modernization, interregional equity, and sustainability (Long et al. 2019). Even though land consolidation in different regions has diverse

purposes, empirical practice shows that it is an effective tool to improve the agricultural output, promote the local economy, and protect the environment. (Demetriou et al. 2012; Janus and Markuszewska 2019; Zhou et al. 2019).

#### *3.2. China's Concerns on Land Issues*

As the most populous country in the world, China has a comparatively limited land resource. The arable land area per capita is only one-fourth of the world average. Moreover, the rapid economic growth and urbanization gave rise to the decline of cultivated land and fragmented land holdings (Xu 2004; Lai et al. 2015). Both the expansion of urban area and the blowout of township enterprises created more demands for construction land. As a result, while the urbanization rate grew from 17.92% to 24.52%, 3.13 million hectares of farmland quickly disappeared between 1980 to and (National Bureau of Statistic of China 1987). In addition, the increasing population and the changing diet structure might even exacerbate the existing pressure on food demand (Wang et al. 2018). This phenomenon has soon attracted the attention of the central government, mainly because of the food security issue associated with the shrinkage of agricultural land.

Notably, the decline of arable land is closely related to the Chinese public land ownership system, which is characterized as a rural–urban dual management system (Long et al. 2010; Tan et al. 2011). The government monopolizes the construction land resource in the primary land market, which means the central and state governments are the only legal providers of new urban construction land. Hence, to meet the demands of the rapid economic and urban growth, local governments tend to implement a large numbers of land acquisition programs (Y. Li et al. 2018; L. Wang et al. 2019). In addition, since the compensation for farmers is comparatively much lower than the price of land, local governments as the main operators can obtain an enormous financial income in the acquisition process. As a result, some policy-makers transferred more cultivated land, exceeding the real demand of development, for local governments' interest (Tan and Zhou 2015).

In the pursuit of preventing the over-occupation of arable land, a series of policies were introduced. In 1986, the State Council of China determined "cherishing and rationally using every inch of land and protecting the cultivated land" as a basic state policy (State Council of People's Republic of China 1986) and set up the Land Administration Bureau which is responsible for national land management affairs in China. In June of the same year, the first special law on land, the Law of Land Administration (LLA), was approved by the central government. For the first time, land consolidation was defined as farmland development and reclamation. In 1987, based on these strategy and policy, a land development meeting was held in Liaoning, advocating more land development to maintain the area of arable land, followed by pilots projects carried out by several provincial governments. From then on, even though most of the consolidation processes were still conducted at grassroots level, arable land protection started (Yun et al. 2016).

However, even though the central government had already noticed the advantage of land consolidation in resuming agricultural production, improving agricultural infrastructure, and keeping farmland area, there was no specific law or related department to govern the national land consolidation process. For a long time, land consolidation in the LLA was just a principle definition without any compulsory requirement or practical guidance (Huang et al. 2011).

The public opinion and social problems in the middle 1990s further magnified the government concerns on food security. In 1994, Lester Brown wrote his famous article "Who will feed China" to express his worries about China's food self-sufficiency and the potential global food crisis (see Brown 1994). The aerial picture of 31 main cities in China in 1996 showed that non-agricultural construction land had expanded rapidly, and arable land had been unexpectedly over-occupied. Consequently, the central government was eager to strengthen a centralized control on land.

#### *3.3. The Formation of the Modern Land Consolidation System in China*

China's truly modern land consolidation system was established in 1997. After 10 years of practice, over 400 counties had operated land consolidation by the end of 1997 (Land Rehabilitation and Consolidation Center 2014). Considering their comparatively limited scale, these practices did not affect the whole picture of the reduction in arable land. Having said that, local rulers developed some successful strategies and accumulated a lot of experience from them.

Three major events marked its birth. At the administrative level, the former Land Administrative Bureau was reorganized into the Ministry of Land and Resources of China (MLRC), and a specified department for land consolidation was established. The new department, the National Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Center, which has also provincial and municipal branches, is responsible for all the related affairs, including initiating national land consolidation projects, providing technical guidance for local land consolidation, managing land consolidation and restoration funds, and conducting engineering and technical research.

At the institutional level, the land use planning system, also known as the land use regulation system, was formulated. The beginning of this system was in 1997, when *The Notice on Further Strengthening Land Management and Practically* *Protecting Cultivated Land* called for the implementation of a policy that "links the occupation of cultivated land with development and rehabilitation" (State Council of People's Republic of China 1997). In 1998, this *Dynamic Equilibrium of Total Farmland* system was set up. To further illustrate it, it states that the amount of cultivated land transformed into construction land should not exceed the amount of land reclamation in that region. Based on it, China adopted a set of planning policies which constituted a unified and top–down land use quota system (Tan and Zhou 2015). Three main quotas were designed by the central government and allocated to governments at different levels, covering the maximum of construction land, the minimum of cultivated land, as well as the annual amount of land-use change from farmland to construction land (Tan and Beckmann 2010). All of these quotas focused on farmland. To put it in another way, in this nationwide top-down land planning system, the number of farmlands was the crucial factor which strictly constrained urban expansion and rural modernization. As a key part of restoring and even developing new arable land, land consolidation was soon accepted and implemented.

At the legal level, the LLA was amended in 1998. This document stated that "the State encourages land consolidation", and indicated land consolidation as an indispensable part of the land use planning system. The *Land Management Law Implementation Regulations,* amended later, required that "county- and township-level governments should set up rural collective economic organizations to formulate land consolidation programs in accordance with the overall land use planning" (State Council of People's Republic of China 1998). During this period, MLRC established the first batch of land development and demonstration zones in 20 provinces. Therefore, land consolidation has become an important part of the land use planning system and is gradually evolving into a mature administrative system.

Nowadays, land consolidation has been a comprehensive approach to managing cultivated land. Even though different scholars may have diverse definitions, it is widely accepted in the Chinese academic circle that land consolidation is far beyond simple agricultural production (Zhang et al. 2014; Long 2014; Wang and Zhong 2016; Yun et al. 2016). According to the LLA of 1998, land consolidation is defined as

the governments at the county and township (town) level, who should organize rural collective economic organizations to comprehensively develop farmland, water, roads, forests, and villages, improve cultivated land quality, increase the effective arable land area, improve agricultural production conditions and the ecological environment in accordance with the overall land use plan. (National People's Congress of People's Republic of China 1998, article 41)

Obviously, both researchers and governments notice the social-economic and ecological functions of land consolidation, such as rural growth, environment protection, and sustainable development. There are some key characters of modern land consolidation: multiple elements including administration, economy, law, and engineering transform and optimize local land use, in accordance with multiple goals and land use planning or urban planning.

#### *3.4. Key Factors of China's Modern Land Consolidation System*

While the socio-economic environment changed greatly in the past 40 years, land use in China has also faced a significant change, which has diversified the motivation of land consolidation. Besides the traditional aim of food production, there are five main motivations that play important roles in the establishment and evolution of the modern land consolidation system (Table 2).

Firstly, the demand for industrialization and urbanization still exists, and the sufficient supply of construction land is a crucial reason of the economic miracle of the past 40 years (Ding 2003; Liu 2014). Under the red-line control of land use planning in China, the only possible way to provide enough urban land is to dig the potential of rural land (Liu et al. 2014; Tan et al. 2020). It means that land consolidation should not only rehabilitate more arable land but also create more space for urban expansion.

Secondly, the inefficiency of rural land use in China severely restricts the economic development in rural areas. Rural decline is gradually becoming significant worldwide (Liu and Li 2017). According to the China Statistic Yearbook, the housing area per capita of rural residents increased by 38.6 square meters from 1978 to 2017. While the rural population migrates to urban areas, a large number of rural housings emerge and expand, at the cost of reducing farmland (Mullan et al. 2011; Tang et al. 2017). This phenomenon is known as "village hollowing" (Liu et al. 2019). The paradox of extensive construction land and intensive arable land implies that there is a need to rearrange and renew rural land. Besides, agricultural mechanization should also play a vital role in improving farm efficiency and release labors in the first sector (Tan et al. 2008; Lai et al. 2015; Nguyen and Warr 2020).

Additionally, the wealth gap between rural and urban areas is still huge (R. Wang et al. 2019). Likewise, the infrastructure and public services are comparatively insufficient, leading to worse living conditions for villagers. As the physical carrier, the land resource is both the most important resource of rural vitalization and the most valuable asset for economic growth. Therefore, to promote rural–urban integration and realize a sustainable rural development, rural land must be efficiently managed and utilized.

Moreover, the economic and social structures in rural China are being reshaped due to the great transformation in labors, capital, technology, and institutions (Li et al. 2014; Yang et al. 2016). These changes inevitably affect the spatial arrangement of rural land (Long 2014). Consequently, current land property arrangements and land use plans may not be suitable for the demand of a new form of rural living. That is to say, land consolidation can be implemented as a spatial method in the process of restructuring of the rural society.

Finally, degradation of land quality and environment also exists (Foley et al. 2005; Fan 2006; Gao and Liu 2010). Notably, the lack of effective governance on farmland contributes to problems such as soil erosion, pesticide overuse, nutrition imbalance, and pollution, which have long restricted China's agricultural development. On the other hand, land use is also an important factor for the sustainability of the ecological system. For example, the increase in the area of arable land usually comes from the reclamation of unutilized land and will finally affect the local carrying capacity and biodiversity (Zhang et al. 2014). In general, since the governance of land resource will influence the environment in a complex way, comprehensive land consolidation is needed to reduce negative externalities and provide ecosystem services.


**Table 2.** Key factors of modern land consolidation in China. Source: Own illustration.

Thus, the internal driving factor of land consolidation is the demand of optimization, adjustment, and transformation of the rural socio-economic structure during the industrialization and urbanization processes. This transformation in rural China is so significant that numerous social relationships and values have been reshaped. For rural residences, land consolidation may provide an opportunity to embrace modern lifestyles (Long 2014; R. Wang et al. 2019).

Yet, land consolidation today in rural China has not fully achieved its aims; for instance, the concern about the ecological effect of land consolidation is limited (R. Wang et al. 2019). Another example is the quota system. Many people criticize this policy for over-emphasizing the increase in the amount of cultivated land, which makes the number of cultivated area growth become the main or only criterion when evaluating land consolidation (Du et al. 2018).

One possible reason for this deviation may be the Chinese context. The land consolidation system is shaped by the incentives and constraints in the current political structure. Those who conduct local land consolidation projects are usually more interested in economic rewards, and the decision to start a project is based on a financial trade-off. Furthermore, though the central government has strong incentives to guarantee food security and protect the environment, the decision process and vertical regulation are always costly and difficult (Tan and Zhou 2015). Despite this, the hierarchical management system is not always to be blamed, because the current land planning system still establishes a reallocation and monitoring mechanism among multi-level governments and provides essential financial support for rural development. Above all, it is more important to readjust the existing consolidation system to meet the demand in the real world.

#### **4. The Evolution of the Land Consolidation System in China**

Though the land consolidation practices before 1997 were mainly adopted at the local level and did not operate as well as expected, it is obvious that the increasing efforts allowed the central government to accumulate experience and confidence. After that, a national land consolidation system was gradually established and was developed in three main steps (Table 3)


#### **Table 3.** Main developing steps of land consolidation in China. Source: Own illustration.

#### *4.1. Exploring Period of Land Consolidation (1997–2004)*

Consistent with the description in the LLA, land consolidation in this period mainly focused on constructing agricultural infrastructure and promoting the quality and quantity of farmland (Tan et al. 2006; Tang et al. 2019). In other words, the central government aimed at increasing enough arable land by means of reclamation and rehabilitation at first, to cover the decrease of cultivated land (Liu et al. 2014; Zhou et al. 2020). Low- and medium-yield farmland consolidation, as well as abandoned industrial and mining land reclamation were the main source of increasing cultivated land in that period (Fan 2006). The main reason might be the strong concerns on food security, and most of the land consolidation projects were implemented around crop production. Meanwhile, since 2000, the Chinese government has launched a large-scale national *Grain to Green* program, which aims at controlling soil erosion and land desertification by converting 146.7 million hectares of arable land into forest and grassland (L. Wang et al. 2019; Yan 2019). This ecological restoration program further stimulated the demand of maintaining arable land. It can be assumed that land consolidation from 1997 to 2004 was somehow a continuation of the traditional agriculture-oriented land consolidation practice. However, two main differences distinguish the traditional and modern approaches.

The first characteristic is the national spatial planning system. In 1999, the State Council promulgated the *Outline of the National Land Use Plan (1997–2010)*. Authorized by the newly amended LLA, this outline had unprecedented authority and importance and emphasized the protection of arable land and the practice of the *Dynamic Equilibrium of Total Farmland* system. The primary purpose of this plan was to preserve the 120 million hectares of arable land. This planning and quota system has strong hierarchical characteristics, since it establishes that the central government decides, allocates and monitors land use change as well as the operation process of land consolidation. As a result, a nationwide multi-level system was built, which can better balance the regional supply and demand and provide a public resource for local operators.

Besides, the *10th Five-Year Planning* from 2001 to 2005 that guided all aspects of the national economy was also highly concerned with land rehabilitation and consolidation. In 2001, the *National Land Development and Consolidation Plan (2001–2010)* which advocated to replenish 2.76 million hectares of arable land until the end of 2010 was issued, and then the first batch of land consolidation projects supported by nation-level finance were set up.

Another initiative of this period was the quota incentives of the land planning system. The LLA tried to advocate local land consolidation, but no incentive mechanism was adopted at first. However, in response to the central government advocating on land consolidation, Zhejiang Province created a new construction land quota in its provincial area in 1998. Specifically, when a land consolidation project was implemented and a certain extent of arable land was created, a construction land quota equal to 72% of its area was also created. Therefore, the local government in Zhejiang could convert an extra amount of rural land into urban construction land after land consolidation, offsetting the cost of land consolidation projects by the rent of the additional land. Because the demand of construction land in Zhejiang was abundant, the local government could at the same promote local development and get financial income time by means of land consolidation. In the end of 2003, over half of the new construction land in Zhejiang came from the extra quota system.

Actually, the institution innovation in Zhejiang broke the regulation of the central government. The MLRC first required that the extra quota of municipal government should be taken into account in the total provincial quota, which meant that the extent of cultivated land occupation was still under the cap of central planning. However, later in 2000, several documents such as the Regulation of Land Consolidation extended this quota system to the central level. Therefore, land consolidation projects could exceed the limitation on construction land while in line with the land use planning. The MLRC cancelled all these systems in 2007, but a supplementary system which will be introduced later was issued soon.

By the end of the five-year planning in 2005, China had arranged over 2200 national investment consolidation projects from 8 batches, with a total investment of nearly 29 billion yuan, and a total of 25 billion yuan had been issued. About 1.58 million hectares of cultivated land were developed and reorganized through those projects (Wu 2015).

At this stage, land consolidation plays a very important role in ensuring that the extent of cultivated land does not decrease (Liu et al. 2018). As of the end of 2005, China had supplemented 1.4267 million hectares of arable land, while the area occupied by construction and subjected to disasters during the same period was 1.348 million hectares. All provinces achieved a dynamic equilibrium of total arable land (Fan 2006). During this period, land consolidation effectively realized the core task of arable land protection by mainly reclaiming undeveloped land, while reclaiming constructed land as a supplement (Lichtenberg and Ding 2008; Du et al. 2018). However, despite the fact that the farmland area remained stable, the newly reclaimed and supplemented land had comparatively a low quality and contributed little to crop production (L. Wang et al. 2019).

#### *4.2. Developing Period of Land Consolidation (2005–2012)*

With the successful completion of the *10th Five-Year Planning*, the red line of cultivated land in rural areas was effectively protected. However, due to the development and utilization of undeveloped land resources in the past decade, it was increasingly difficult to further reclaim farmland in order to increase its extent (Yun et al. 2016). At the same time, the gap between urban and rural areas had

further widened. Therefore, how to solve urban–rural equity problem and realize rural development had become an important issue for maintaining social stability.

Around 2005, the strategy of land consolidation was updated from "number management" to "rural comprehensive management" (Tang et al. 2019). On the one hand, while food security was still one of the core issues, the improvement of rural infrastructure with the main purpose of increasing the quality of farmland and increasing food productivity had gradually become the mainstream. On the other hand, the improvement of rural areas, which includes both agricultural land and rural construction land, had become an important approach to rural land improvement.

In 2004, based on the protection of the cultivated land quantity, China proposed that "the quantity and quality of supplementary cultivated land should be converted into grades, to prevent replacing more with less and replacing the good with the bad" (State Council of People's Republic of China 2004). In other words, after arable land is occupied by urban construction, not only the area of arable land cannot decrease, but also the productivity of arable land cannot reduce. Since 2005, MLRC issued several policy documents, taking the improvement of comprehensive agricultural production capacity as the starting point for land consolidation. Nonetheless, clear requirements and standards of quality-oriented land consolidation were set up, regarding soil, irrigation, spatial distribution, and pollution. To further carry out the practice of preserving and promoting the quality of cultivated land, in 2006, MLRC established demonstration areas for basic farmland protection in 116 counties nationwide. Through the implementation of land consolidation to build "high-standard basic farmland", it achieved large-scale, high-yield, complete infrastructure, and disaster-resistance agricultural goals. Though food production growth still mainly depended on the increase of arable area, quality control remained indispensable (Du et al. 2018). From 2006 to 2012, 1.484 million hectares of cultivated land were supplemented, which corresponded to the amount of farmland occupied by urban construction, and all followed the rule of quality and quantity equilibrium.

Notably, village rearrangement and renewal associated with land consolidation rapidly developed in this period. In contrast, the reclamation of rural construction land had started a little earlier. In 1999, the MLRC formulated a policy of *Land Exchange*, which allowed rural residents to swap the land use of their farmland and housing land without changing the area. Considering the cost of demolition, reconstruction, and reclamation, this policy was rarely implemented. Likewise, in 2000, Zhejiang updated its extra quota system, which originally only allowed farmers to increase cultivated land area by farmland consolidation, to covering construction land reclamation. According to this, if the local government got some

increasing farmland through demolition and consolidation of former construction land, it could obtain the same amount of construction land quota and then spend it in urban expansion or trade in quota market. Though Zhejiang was soon ordered to abolish this policy because of the risk of social and political instability, its experience attracted the interest of the central government.

After the State Council proposed in 2004 that "the increase in urban construction land should be linked to the reduction in rural construction land" (State Council of People's Republic of China 2004), MLRC began to gradually implement the pilot work of a new quota system called *Linkage between Urban Land Taking and Rural Land Giving (LUTRG)* in 2005. Similar to the exploration in Zhejiang, this national system allows local governments to preserve land, cultivate more arable land during the land consolidation process, and use the related profits for local development. Importantly, different from the system in Zhejiang, this LUTRG system should be approved by the central government, thus land use can be vertically controlled. As a result, LUTRG encouraged local governments to improve the efficiency and intensity of land use in rural settlements (Tan et al. 2020).

The LUTRG pilot project achieved very significant results. In 2012, the LUTRG quota reached 57,360 hectares nationwide. Especially, the Chinese government stimulated the domestic economy through monetary policy during the 2008 economic crisis, which indirectly played a strong role in increasing the urban construction land price. The rapid growth of urban land rent had caused a huge gap between agricultural land and construction land prices. As a result, the financial benefits that LUTRG programs could provide far exceeded the cost of adopting land consolidation, which soon became an important incentive for local governments. Discovering this opportunity, many local governments in China began to implement LUTRG to reorganize rural areas. Therefore, the inefficient rural construction land use was improved.

#### *4.3. Comprehensive Period of Land Consolidation (Since 2013)*

The report of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) in 2007 proposed eco-civilization as a main strategy. As an important approach to optimizing and managing natural resource, land consolidation was also updated to *Comprehensive Land Consolidation*, which was given a rich ecosystem connotation.

This comprehensive concept was raised in 2012 when MLRC formulated the *National Land Development and Consolidation Plan (2011–2015)*. It was defined as a systematic project aimed at improving rural production, living conditions, and the

ecological environment by comprehensively consolidating farmland, water, roads, forests, and villages. Moreover, later in 2017, the *National Land Development and Consolidation Plan (2015–2020)* further illustrated the purpose of comprehensive land consolidation including large-scale agriculture, population concentration, industrial agglomeration, and urban–rural integration. Another similar idea is the *Overhaul Land Consolidation*, which emphasizes that land consolidation and rural governance should link together all the factors of a socio-ecological system, reinforcing the diverse actors and intensifying a cross-regional cooperation in resource management. In December 2019, the central government launched a pilot project for *Overhaul Land Consolidation* nationwide and planned to set more than 300 pilot projects in 2020. Another policy design was the *Ecological Redline*, referring to the spatial boundary between natural ecological service functions, environmental quality and safety, and natural resource utilization. Until the end of 2018, 15 ecologically important provinces had already formulated their ecological redline. The remaining provinces were required to complete the redline by the end of 2020. Apparently, the rural society and ecosystem structure are facing a tremendous change under this new round of comprehensive consolidation.

Besides, another main change took place in the rural–urban relationship (Liu 2014). Several reforms of the current rural–urban land dual system were adopted, when a large number of large-scale land consolidation projects were implemented at the provincial level according to the overall reform plan. In 2015, the MLRC launched a new round of urban–rural land property reform, selecting 33 county-level pilot areas throughout the nation for reform of land acquisition, housing land, and commercially used construction land in rural China. So far, over 150,000 villages have participated in the reform, which includes the marketization of the rural property right, the decentralization of land management, the diversification of land use, and the support to rural industry. These reforms have achieved significant success in giving farmers land property rights, coordinating multiple plans, innovating urban–rural market mechanisms, and optimizing the allocation of natural resources (Cao and Zhang 2018; Tan et al. 2020; Xie et al. 2019).

In 2016, the Chinese central government introduced *China's National Plan on Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development*, which aimed to achieve SDGs through political, economic, social, and ecological construction. In response to the SDG 15 (Life on land), this agenda especially emphasized the *Grain to Green* program and ecological restoration of land. Therefore, against the backdrop of land degradation and ecological loss, comprehensive land consolidation projects were implemented with afforestation, grass planting, and ecological engineering projects such as the prevention of soil erosion. Later in 2017, the Chinese government proposed the idea of *Ecological Redline* which refers to areas in which development is prohibited. Until now, land consolidation has corroborated its sustainable development function of green and clean food provision, rural infrastructure construction, and environmental protection.

Nowadays, land consolidation is more than engineering method for agricultural purpose. First, at the method level, land consolidation involves multi-dimensional governance tools such as economics, administration, and engineering. Secondly, at the institution level, relative formal institutions, for instance the land planning and quota transactions system, have become an integral part of land consolidation, and vice versa. At the target level, land consolidation has a richer connotation in pursuing more non-agricultural and non-economic objectives. Nevertheless, at the spatial level, both urban and rural systems are involved in the implementation of land consolidation.

#### **5. Influence of Land Consolidation**

#### *5.1. Food Production*

Land consolidation has played a vital role in ensuring China's food security (Lichtenberg and Ding 2008; Zhang et al. 2014; Jin et al. 2017). From 1997 to 2018, China invested 76.17 billion dollars on national land consolidation projects, and 42.7 million hectares of developed farmland (35% of national farmland) were constructed (Bryan et al. 2018). Through land leveling, field roads, farmland irrigation and drainage, and farmland forest network projects, land consolidation increased the potential of farmland production, increased the provision of infrastructure in rural areas, promoted the development of mechanized agriculture, and effectively increased the amount of food while retaining the amount of cultivated land productive forces. Since the implementation of land consolidation nationwide in 1997, while the total area of arable land has gradually decreased because of urbanization, China's total grain output has increased from 504 million tons in 1997 to 664 million tons in 2019, which thoroughly compensated the loss of farmland (Song and Pijanowski 2014). Although the increase is also closely attributed to other relative factors such as technological progress and scientific management, there is no doubt that the land consolidation policy, represented by high-standard basic farmland construction, has huge significance for improving land productivity and realizing a modern agricultural production (Du et al. 2018). As its primary goal, land consolidation has to some extent alleviated the threat of food security resulting from the reduction in the

amount of cultivated land and effectively promoted the efficient use of agricultural land and is the fundamental way to ensure national food security.

This is consistent with the SDG of food security. According to the Report on China's implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015), China has reduced the portion of malnourished population from 23.9% in 1990 to 10.6% in 2014, halving the population suffering from hunger (Ministry of Foreign Affairs People's Republic of China and United Nations System in China 2015). In 2019, China achieved 470 kg of food output per capita and a grain self-sufficiency rate of over 95% (National Bureau of Statistic of China 2019). As a country with a huge population, China solves the food provision problem for 20% of the international population with only 9% of global arable land, which alleviates the international food provision pressure. Therefore, the land consolidation program has made a remarkable contribution not only to diminishing hunger in China, but also to ensuring global food security.

#### *5.2. Spatial Arrangement*

Rural space is the basic carrier of rural vitalization and rural–urban integration development. Currently, land consolidation projects have deeply reshaped the rural spatial structure of China (Long 2014). On the one hand, land consolidation directly changes the spatial arrangement of land use. While the productivity of cultivated land improves, the physical characteristics of farmland is also altered. For instance, intensively organized cultivated land may not only provide a better yield, but also change the terrain and land use, which will affect the lifestyle and human–nature relationship in rural areas. Consequently, in those rural construction land use cases of comparatively higher density which resulted from land consolidation and LUTRG projects, village's spatial forms, farmers' production methods, and lifestyle have also changed dramatically (Lo et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2018).

In this process, land consolidation programs serve as the primary way for contemporary China to solve the problem of inefficient land use in both rural and urban areas. With the help of market mechanisms, land consolidation successfully meets the demand for new construction land of urbanization and industrialization and realize the optimal allocation of urban and rural land. For example, LUTRG, through the transformation and redevelopment of rural residential areas, has concentrated the resettlement of previously excessively extensive rural construction land without threatening the red-ine of cultivated land. Furthermore, the land quota created by means of land consolidation can also supply the necessary construction land for urban development, easing the pressure of urban expansion. Additionally, agricultural

infrastructures, health and education facilities, affordable housing, and roads are offered and promoted, which greatly improves the living conditions in rural areas (C. Li et al. 2018). In this way, land consolidation optimizes the allocation of the rural land resource and promotes sustainable development. This rural village renewal along with land consolidation can improve the health, education, and living conditions of rural residents, meeting the SDGs of rural sustainable development.

Spatial changes in rural China are the inevitable consequence of socio-economic development (Zhou et al. 2013). Considering the migration of labor, flow of capital, and spread of technology between the rural and the urban areas during the process of urbanization and industrialization, there is a need for a modern spatial distribution. In certain areas of China, land consolidation projects lead to social conflict, because the over-agglomeration of villages violates the plans of farmers. Rural residents have to live uncomfortably in the new rural communities, while their economic sources and lifestyle remain unchanged, and they suffer from higher costs of production and living (Lo et al. 2016). To achieve the goal of rural development, operators should establish favorable rural production, living, and ecological spaces in the land consolidation process.

#### *5.3. Rural–Urban Equity*

As an important policy instrument to promote rural vitalization, land consolidation is essential to improve rural productivity and living standards, which is beneficial for achieving the SDG of reducing the rural–urban gap. For a long time, rural development has been one of the first topics of concern of the Chinese government. A large number of related policies such as those related to rural renewal and new rural construction have been formulated. In fact, the function of land consolidation is highly consistent with the needs of rural renewal, which determines that land consolidation can be implemented as an important work platform for rural development.

The most direct impact of land consolidation is to increase farmers' income and improve the rural living environment (Wu et al. 2005; Du et al. 2018). Undoubtedly, because land consolidation can effectively increase the agricultural production, farmers will also benefit from it and augment their economic income. However, considering that the share of agricultural income in the income of rural residents is decreasing, more economic benefits farmers receive from land consolidation come from quota transactions. Due to the high price of construction land in recent years, the construction land quota generated by the land consolidation project can get a generous return in the land property market. In addition, farmers are property owners of rural land, which means that after deducting the development costs,

a considerable portion of the profit from the land consolidation quota transaction will be distributed to villagers or rural collectives. In addition, rural roads, houses, landscapes, and supporting facilities have also been developed and improved during the land consolidation process. For example, high-quality houses with masonry and concrete structures have already become common in rural China.

The land consolidation also brings indirect opportunities for sustainable rural development. In the past two decades, China's rural economy has developed vigorously, with modern agriculture, tourism, and processing industries in rural areas developing especially rapidly. The reason is that the land consolidation policy effectively revitalizes those inefficient rural lands and at the same time allows rural residents to obtain the capital necessary for development through the redistribution of land market revenue. Both of them stimulate the development of rural industries. This is why the land consolidation project is widely supported in rural China. In recent years, the central government has also implemented the land consolidation project as an important way to boost the rural economy and reduce the urban–rural inequality.

#### *5.4. Ecology Conservation*

The purpose and function of land consolidation from an ecological perspective have changed significantly over time. If the previous consolidation approaches ignored the ecological impact, the first two stages of the modern land consolidation system in China still put environment conservation and restoration in a secondary position. Consequently, environmental issues including soil erosion, water pollution, and biodiversity decline have emerged (Shan et al. 2019; Zhong et al. 2020; Guo et al. 2020). This caused a confusing paradox: the restoration programs such as the *Grain to Green* sacrificed arable land to improve environmental services, meanwhile land consolidation projects reclaimed undeveloped land to supplement arable land, which decreased the rural ecosystem capacity. This contradiction weakened the significance and effectiveness of the land consolidation system.

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the ecological conservation function of land consolidation projects. The relevant comprehensive consolidation framework has also provided solutions to environmental issues linked to land resources utility in rural areas. Due to the relatively short period of policy implementation, the results of these initiatives are still unclear. However, despite this, the approaches for water governance, mine rehabilitation, and farmland ecological improvement in some pilot projects partially reflect the ecological tendency of the comprehensive land consolidation approach. This provides the possibility to conserve and restore the rural environment to meet the demand of SDGs.

#### *5.5. Institutiol Establishment*

Land consolidation is an indispensable part of China's land use planning and regulation system. The implementation of nearly every rural land-related policy, whether it is about cultivated land preservation, rural construction land reclamation, or ecological land protection, should be ultimately settled on land. Therefore, land consolidation is an inseparable policy tool to govern rural issues. Actually, since the *10th Five-Year Planning*, the continuous improvement of the land consolidation system has been synchronized with the development of the land control system. The land consolidation management framework including project management, supervision, acceptance, quota control, and market-based transactions has become one of the foundations of China's rural land governance system. More importantly, thanks to the land consolidation project, China's land planning system can introduce a more flexible mechanism of quota market into the hierarchical administrative process. By this mean, the spatial rearrangement and readjustment of cultivated land can be implemented under a cross-regional context, which can better balance and coordinate the multiple demands from different actors. Currently, under the triple requirements of cultivated land protection, economic development, and ecological civilization, the land use regulation system is still the institutional basis of China's land management, in which land consolidation will continue to play an irreplaceable role.

#### **6. Conclusions**

Given the goals of sustainable development, this research reveals three main developing steps of Chinese land consolidation system and summarizes its background, characteristics, motivations, and effects. Two main findings result from this research:


From a traditional agricultural approach to a modern comprehensive system, Chinese land consolidation has extended its multiple goals and introduced diverse methods, which are related to changes in the national interest and focus. The potential crisis of food security in the end of the 1990s urged the Chinese government to put forward land consolidation programs. Later in the early 2000s, the rapid urbanization

brought about the imbalanced development between rural and urban regions, which further called for economic and social promotion in rural areas. Recently, the space for urban and rural development further shrank, so it has been necessary to utilize land resources in a more efficient and economical way in place of the extensive land use model in the past.

In addition, in coordination with rural changes during the urbanization and industrialization process, land consolidation projects have been widely implemented to improve farmland productivity, rural infrastructures, construction land supply, and eco-system services. Meanwhile, even if there are still some negative externalities, such as over-agglomeration of rural villages and ignorance of biodiversity, this current modern system is running effectively with respect to food supply, rural vitalization, and urban development. Besides, environmental improvement related to land consolidation projects is gradually beginning to appear.

Additionally, other developing countries can learn from this experience that land consolidation and readjustment can exert a great influence on many aspects of economy and society, from food production to sustainable rural development and efficient urban development. These purposes can be pursued intensively at the same time by land consolidation because of its multifunctionality. Notably, one possible solution is the quantity policy, such as land quota. It can well guide local actors in participating in land consolidation activities to a proper degree, especially when supervision and regulation abilities are limited. Secondly, spatial policies, for example plans by the state or the federal government, can be implemented for issues with strict constraints. This requires a comparatively stronger government, as well as local actors who can express their interest through public participation. However, there is no rule that fits every case. More importantly, because of the the complexity of each situation, all initiatives should be decided carefully, and their side effects such as ecological loss, should be considered.

**Author Contributions:** K.Z. and R.T. conceived of the present idea and performed the analysis. K.Z. collected the data and wrote the manuscript with support from R.T. Both authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript. R.T. supervised the project. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research has received financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of China through project No. 71573231 and the 4th batch of National Young Top-notch Talent of *Ten Thousand Talent* Program of China.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

Ahmed, Abubakari, Elias Danyi Kuusaana, and Alexandros Gasparatos. 2018. The role of chiefs in large-scale land acquisitions for jatropha production in Ghana: Insights from agrarian political economy. *Land Use Policy* 75: 570–82. [CrossRef]

Brown, Lester. 1994. Who will feed China? *World Watch* 7: 10–19.


© 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Combating Pasture Degradation in Central Asia and the Caucasus—A Review of Approaches** †

#### **Regina Neudert**

† Section 3 draws on the synopsis part of the author's Ph.D. thesis entitled *Pasture Use of Mobile Pastoralists in Azerbaijan under Institutional Economic, Farm Economic and Ecological Aspects*. University of Greifswald.

#### **1. Introduction**

Degradation and unsustainable land use are recurring topics in pastoral systems. Grassland degradation incurs costs of USD 6.8 billion globally, only accounting for the loss of milk and meat production (Kwon et al. 2016). Le et al. (2016) found that, around the globe, 33% of grasslands, 25% of shrubland and 23% of sparse vegetation, which is often used for grazing, are degraded. Thus, globally, grasslands are assessed as the ecosystem type with the most widespread degradation. Improving rangeland management could make a crucial contribution to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15: "Life on Land" for dryland and mountain ecosystems. The topic is especially relevant for goal 15.3: "By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world" (UNDP 2020).

Land degradation is commonly understood as a reduction or loss in biological or economic productivity resulting from land uses or a combination of processes involving human activities (UNCCD 1994). Degradation typically is characterized by a persistent decrease in ecosystems to deliver ecosystem services (MEA 2005). Degradation involves reductions in vegetation cover, species changes, erosion or sedimentation, as well as disruptions in biogeochemical cycles in soils (Reynolds et al. 2007). Typically, degradation processes in drylands have multiple drivers producing diverse pathways depending on regions and time periods (Geist and Lambin 2004). While most processes are linear, non-linear, discontinuous processes may also occur (Suding and Hobbs 2009), making it difficult to formulate a clear definition of degradation that is applicable in all cases (Behnke and Mortimore 2016). In Central Asia, drivers of land degradation are mainly salinization, soil erosion and soil fertility depletion in croplands, whereas livestock-induced changes are most

frequent for rangelands (Mirzabaev et al. 2016). While the existence of degradation processes in Central Asian rangelands is uncontested, assessments of the extent and severity vary widely depending on the definition of degradation and methods used (Jamsranjav et al. 2018; S. Robinson 2016).

In Central Asia and the Caucasus region (CAC)<sup>1</sup> rangelands are the dominating land use and are thus relevant for achieving SDG 15.3 globally. The enormous importance of rangelands for land use in the CAC region countries is illustrated by their land cover: 56% of the total land area or 78% of the agricultural land is grassland (FAOSTAT 2020). This comprises 22% of the total grasslands worldwide (FAOSTAT 2020). Recent field data on grassland degradation in the CAC region are scarce compared to the Soviet period and often poorly documented, making it difficult to provide detailed and scientifically sound assessments on the current extent of degradation (S. Robinson 2016; Kerven et al. 2012). Based on global remote sensing data, Le et al. (2016) estimate that in Asia, 24% of grasslands, 33% of shrublands and 43% of sparse vegetation are degraded. In addition, in Central Asia rangeland, degradation is estimated to incur the highest costs compared to other forms of land degradation, such as desertification, deforestation and abandonment of croplands (Mirzabaev et al. 2016).

Different definitions for rangelands exist, but most of them emphasize that rangelands are dominated by grassy or shrubby vegetation and primarily support land uses associated with grazing animals (Lund 2007; Briske 2017). In the CAC region, rangelands are typically found in marginal areas, where arable farming is not possible due to cold or dry climate (Khazanov 1984). I define mobile pastoralism as a land use form using different livestock species, ranging from goats and sheep to horses, cattle, yak and camels, and involving nomadic or transhumant mobility between pasture sites (Dong 2016). Grazing areas in the CAC region can comprise steppes and semi-deserts, open areas in the forest zone as well as alpine and subalpine meadows in high mountain regions. Making use of marginal lands under extreme climatic conditions involves well-adapted livestock keeping practices, relatively large herds and special forms of human organization. This characterizes mobile pastoralist systems as closely interlinked social–ecological–technical systems (Scholz 1995).

A crucial aspect for sustainable rangeland management is the governance of rangeland access and use (Herrera et al. 2014a; Bedunah and Angerer 2012).

<sup>1</sup> I define the CAC region as comprising the post-socialist countries in the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and in Central (Middle) Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia) and as a special case, Inner Mongolia, China.

Rangeland governance is a multi-faceted concept comprising regulations pertaining towards rangeland use and the resulting interaction of stakeholders at various levels. This encompasses international and government regulations in addition to the interactions of various stakeholders, community-based management as well as informal norms and practices of interaction between rangeland users (Herrera et al. 2014b). The governance regime has a huge impact on the practices of pastoralism, enabling, enhancing or precluding secure access to rangelands, cooperation among herders, mobility and flexibility in rangeland use. These practices decisively influence direct drivers of rangeland degradation, such as high stocking rates, lacking mobility and lacking maintenance of infrastructure (Mirzabaev et al. 2016). The mobile and flexible nature of pastoralism thus requires balancing the contradicting needs of security and flexibility of access and use, which is known as the "paradox of pastoral land tenure" (Fernandez-Gimenez 2002). Balancing these needs in land tenure is challenging, as it requires a suitable legal framework for rangeland governance complemented by informal norms.

Present-day pastoralism is also shaped by more recent political, social and economic influences. The CAC countries share a common history of socialist influence, trying to deeply transform pastoral organization, land access and management (Verdery 2004; see Shaumarov and Birner 2016 or Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003 for examples). Large-scale, input-intensive systems of pastoralism with reduced mobility evolved until the 1980s. Starting in most states with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990, the countries are characterized by an ongoing process of post-socialist transition, comprising a deep change in political, social and economic organization and practices (Roland 2000, 2012; for China: reforms in the "post-reform period": Yu and Kasymov 2020) involving for mobile pastoralists a complete reorganization of pastoral groups, operation under the conditions of the market and the reorganization of land access and management. With formal independence or reforms in the political system, each country has begun its individual socio-political transition decisions and processes with regard to the general economy and pastoral land use. These policies are outcomes of complex negotiation and decision-making processes influenced by various stakeholders and interests (Cairney 2019; Kasymov et al. 2016). In pasture governance in many CAC countries, decisive roles are attributed to national level governments and international development organizations (Kasymov et al. 2016; Jaborov et al. 2017). Thus, starting from a similar history of socialist influence, transition policies and trajectories of the individual countries have varied in the last 30 years.

The fact that all CAC countries are characterized by a combination of ecological occurrence of temperate grasslands, heritages of mobile pastoralism, similar socialist influence and now diverging paths of policy making and economic development makes the region an interesting showcase for comparative studies on the impact of different policies in resource governance and sustainable land use. Policies range from a near privatization of pastures to approaches involving open and common access to pastures (Behnke 2008; S. Robinson 2020).

When taking a closer look (or sometimes clearly spelled out by stakeholders themselves or in analyses of policy processes), these policies are motivated by implicit paradigms of how rangelands should be managed and degradation can be avoided. These paradigms are also relevant for general discussions on resource and land governance beyond pastoralism. In this contribution, I review these paradigms and link them to policies of rangeland governance in the CAC countries. In addition, qualitative evaluations of socio-economic and ecological outcomes in relation to the governance regime as provided in the scientific literature are reviewed. Socio-economic outcomes assess the impact that the governance regime has on social organization, mobility and the management of herds. Ecological outcomes target the impact of the governance regime on rangeland conditions, i.e., differentiated use pressure and evidence for degradation.

The analysis is based on a narrative literature review (Galvan and Galvan 2017). The literature on governance approaches for the different CAC countries was acquired by keyword searches in the English-language scientific literature databases Web of Science and Google scholar, combining the keywords pasture, rangeland, mobile pastoralism, governance, land tenure, property rights and degradation with specific country or region names. Due to the scarcity of literature in this specific field, the literature obtained was complemented by snowball searches of citing and cited literature, expanding the literature body also to book articles and reports (Bailey 1978). Priority was given to the most recent and most detailed literature sources, ideally drawing on first-hand or empirical information from the specific countries.

In this contribution, the analysis starts with characterizing forms of pastoralism in CAC (Section 2) and depicting four paradigms of rangeland governance (Section 3). Rangeland governance approaches in the ten CAC countries are reviewed, their relation to the paradigms of rangeland governance is characterized and socio-economic and ecological outcomes are depicted (Section 4). Results are summarized and discussed (Section 5) and conclusions are drawn (Section 6).

#### **2. Forms of Pastoralism in the CAC Region**

Pastoralism occurs in many forms in the CAC region. I distinguish pastoralism according to the extent of household mobility into nomadic and transhumant forms, then according migration type into horizontal or vertical types and then characterize agropastoral forms. Forms of stationary livestock keeping and systems dominated solely by enclosed pasturing ("ranching") are excluded, although some traditional pastoral land uses might involve tendencies to stationary livestock keeping or ranching (e.g., in Kazakhstan: Kerven et al. 2016b). The different forms (nomadic vs. transhumant, or horizontal vs. vertical) should be rather seen as dimensions of a continuous space rather than clear-cut classifications (Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1980).

#### *2.1. Nomadic and Transhumant Pastoralism*

Nomadic pastoral groups are characterized by extensive mobility. This may comprise migration patterns with up to 1000 km per year, several single moves per year and the absence of a permanent home base for the pastoral household (Dong 2016). In the CAC region, e.g., pastoralists in the desert-steppe in Mongolia covered 1992 in up to 20 moves more than 200 km (Mearns 1993). Pre-socialist movement patterns of Kazakh nomads covered up to 700 km (Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003). Movements mostly follow a seasonal pattern according to climate and vegetation differences in the region, but exact locations and move timings vary according to the weather conditions in each year. With this land use pattern, nomadic pastoralism is well adapted to variable rainfall patterns, especially under arid and semi-arid conditions, making use of scarce forage resources variable in space and time (Mearns 1993). Nomadic movements in the CAC region are also motivated by low temperatures and snowfall (e.g., Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003; Mearns 1993). Housing constructions adapted to mobility emerged as yurts or tents in traditional forms (Dong 2016).

Nomadic pastoralism was historically (and partly still is) widespread in Central Asia, especially in Mongolia (Fernandez-Gimenez 1999), China (Inner Mongolia) and high elevations of Tibet (Thwaites et al. 1998; Manderscheid 2001), but also in Kazakhstan (Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003).

The integration of nomadic pastoral peoples into state structures was historically difficult, having often led to a suppression of mobility and forced settlement (Amitai and Biran 2005). In modern times, there is a tendency towards shorter migration and the transformation of nomadic to transhumant pastoralism (see below) due political changes and the amenities offered by permanent housing locations

(such as access to infrastructure: running water, permanent electricity and education; Ehlers and Kreutzmann (2000); Mearns (1993)).

In transhumant pastoralism, the livestock-keeping household has a permanent home base and conducts seasonal migrations to other rather fixed pasture locations (Dong 2016). The pastoral household spends at least one season in the permanent home. In other seasons, the whole household or parts of it live on other pastures. Collective herding practices enable that only a single member of the household or only the livestock under care of another herder is on migration, while the household resides in the permanent home.

More specific classifications of transhumant pastoralism are set up according to the location of the permanent home base in the migration pattern or the number and persons involved in the moves (Beuermann 1967; Ehlers and Kreutzmann 2000).

#### *2.2. Vertical, Horizontal and Radial Mobility*

Horizontal or vertical mobility can occur in principle with nomadic and transhumant pastoralism. Horizontal migration occurs along climatic zones more or less in a similar elevation and characterized by more southern or northern locations. In the CAC region, horizontal migration occurs mainly in Mongolia and Kazakhstan (Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003; Fernandez-Gimenez 1999). As horizontal migration involves longer distances, it occurs more frequently with nomadic pastoralism.

Vertical migration allows livestock to use different vegetation zones along an altitudinal gradient in mountain regions. Seasonal pastures are thus mainly characterized by a higher or lower elevation and (sometimes) exposition. While lower elevations are used during the winter months, subalpine and alpine pastures provide seasonal forage during summer. Due to the compact occurrence of vegetation zones along altitudinal gradients, migration distances are mainly shorter (a few to hundreds of kilometers). Vertical migration occurs more often with transhumant pastoralism (Dong 2016). In the CAC region, vertical migration systems occur virtually everywhere, where altitudinal differences exist: in the Caucasus as well as Altay and Tien Shan mountains (Stadelbauer 1984; Mestre 2019; Kreutzmann et al. 2011; Hauck et al. 2016).

A special form of mobility occurs when pastoralism is constrained by key resources, such as water points or wells. In this case, the movement pattern resembles a concentration of livestock and camps under strong resource constraints and a wider dispersion in the surroundings in less constrained seasons. In the CAC region, this mobility pattern occurs among pastoralists in Turkmenistan (Ferret 2014).

Mixed forms of migration may also exist, e.g., nomadic migration patterns in Mongolia.

#### *2.3. Agropastoralism*

In agropastoralism or combined mountain agriculture, pastoral groups combine mobile livestock keeping with arable farming, though they still receive a significant part of their income from livestock. While among pastoral groups sowing cereals in winter/spring locations is also conducted for improving the forage base of young or weak livestock (Suttie and Reynolds 2003), agropastoralism involves arable farming for harvesting crops directly for consumption or sale (Kerven et al. 2012).

Arable farming is often combined with transhumant pastoralism and vertical movements. Crops are grown at the permanent home base of the household or at intermediate steps during migration (Kerven et al. 2012; Ehlers and Kreutzmann 2000).

#### **3. Paradigms of Rangeland Governance and Use**

This section presents four paradigms of resource use and governance with relevance for rangelands. The paradigms include, in most cases, a characterization of rangelands and explanations for unsustainable use often termed "degradation" or "overstocking". A central part is recommendations for a rangeland property rights regime and how a sustainable management of rangelands can be achieved.

Central for the understanding of paradigms of rangeland governance is the discussion on equilibrium or non-equilibrium ecosystem dynamics in rangeland ecology. Before turning to the governance paradigms themselves, equilibrium and non-equilibrium understandings of rangeland ecology are presented.

The equilibrium model of rangeland ecology rests on the theory of plant succession. It assumes a climax state, which depends on the physical characteristics of a particular site (Clements 1916; Meiners et al. 2015). In grazed rangelands, plant succession is hindered, and instead a subclimax establishes according to the grazing intensity of herbivores (Todd and Hoffman 1999). Range management under equilibrium conditions is aimed at regulating the stocking rate of livestock in order to balance grazing pressure with forage supply in a limited area (Westoby et al. 1989). Thus, degradation occurs on the rangeland plot if the stocking rate is not adapted to the regeneration potential of the vegetation. Large-scale mobility of livestock is not taken into account. To date, this paradigm has been successfully applied in range management in Northern America and Australia, while development measures based on it led to devastating effects in African rangelands (Dijkman 1998).

Based on evidence from rangelands in the Sahel zone, the non-equilibrium paradigm was developed, which emphasizes the influence of abiotic factors on ecosystem states, particularly precipitation, and the limited capacity for internal regulation of those ecosystems (Behnke and Scoones 1993; Ellis and Swift 1988; DeAngelis and Waterhouse 1987). From the perspective of the non-equilibrium paradigm, the equilibrium paradigm of rangeland ecology was criticized mainly for lacking empirical evidence for the existence of equilibrial ecosystems and insufficient recognition of dynamic ecosystem processes (Briske et al. 2003). Instead of a close coupling of livestock and vegetation dynamics as suggested by the equilibrium model, under non-equilibrium conditions, ecosystem changes are driven by periodic and stochastic climatic events. Recurring droughts reduce livestock numbers to such an extent that livestock-density-dependent regulation mechanisms are of minor importance. Thus, under extreme non-equilibrium conditions, livestock-induced degradation processes are irrelevant. Instead, a flexible adjustment of stocking rates to the variable forage supply is recommended in order to improve rangeland management (Scoones 1994; Scoones 1992). The recommendations include temporal and spatial tracking of forage availability with flexible movements and possibilities for the sale and rebuying of livestock in drought events (Behnke and Kerven 1994; Ellis and Swift 1988; Illius et al. 1998).

The comparative testing of equilibrium and non-equilibrium models led to a synthesis of both approaches. Rangeland ecologists now predominantly assume a continuum between equilibrium and non-equilibrium characteristics, which depends on physical site conditions as well as spatial and temporal scales (Briske et al. 2003; Fernandez-Gimenez and Allen-Diaz 1999). Inappropriate rangeland use and degradation may even occur in non-equilibrium systems in key resource areas or following infrastructural developments, such as the provision of water points or external fodder (Illius and O'Connor 1999). The supply of these resources allows the exploitation of previously inaccessible forage, increases livestock numbers and thus can result in deteriorating rangeland conditions (Campbell et al. 2006).

#### *3.1. Classical Economic Theory—Privatization (P1)*

Classical economic theory does not distinguish rangelands from other natural resources. Thus, it implicitly draws on equilibrium rangeland ecology, assuming a predictable forage supply and aiming at the regulation of stocking rates. The explanation for unsustainable rangeland management is mainly found in Hardin's often cited "Tragedy of the Commons" (Hardin 1968).

According to Hardin (1968), under a common management, overstocking and degradation are nearly inevitable due to individual interests of herders. To ensure sustainable management of resources, privatization of common resources was recommended. Thus, for decades, private property was regarded as superior for the conservation of resources and agricultural development (Demsetz 1967).

This logic motivated policies of rangeland governance aiming at privatization, e.g., in the CAC region, the de facto privatization with long-term lease contracts under the "household responsibility system" in China (Banks 1997; Bauer 2005).

#### *3.2. Legacy of the Soviet System: Strong State Control (P2)*

Under Soviet rule, degradation was a side effect while aiming for maximum production goals. All land and production assets were owned by the state. Management plans on state and collective farms were set up by livestock production specialists (Verdery 2004; Shaumarov and Birner 2016) while local and traditional knowledge was regarded as old-fashioned. The provision of supplementary feed released production constraints, which would have normally limited livestock numbers and their impact on the pasture vegetation (Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003; Robinson et al. 2003). After initial forced settlements of nomads failed, a system of reduced, regular mobility was allowed on collective and state farms (e.g., in Kazakhstan: Robinson and Milner-Gulland (2003), or in Azerbaijan: Baberowski (2003), Loomis (1989) on various Central Asian states).

For combating degradation, management was carried out according to a scientific-technical knowledge base building on expert studies since the 1920s (Shaumarov and Birner 2016). A fine-scaled monitoring system for agricultural land called "Bonitirovka" was set up, rating the quality and production potential of soils (Gavrilyuk 1974). A remedy for degradation problems caused by intensive use was seen in technical measures, such as winter feeding, rotational grazing, reseeding of pastures or inputs of mineral fertilizers (Liechti 2012; Loomis 1989; Shaumarov and Birner 2016).

#### *3.3. Common Property Scholars: Common Management (P3)*

Hardin and the Tragedy of the Commons paradigm were criticized from the 1980s for two major points: First, the narrative mixes common property regimes, where a well-defined user group jointly uses and manages a resource, and open access, where virtually everybody has access and rules are non-existent or not enforced. Second, the narrative refers to a situation without regulations in which individuals

follow solely their self-interest. Thus, the possibility of groups to craft and enforce rules is neglected (Feeny et al. 1990).

Common property scholars have been able to show convincingly that a "Tragedy of Open Access" is not inevitable. In contrast, human societies are able to manage resources collectively and sustainably over a long time (Ostrom 1990; Baland and Platteau 1996; Bromley 1992). However, research also showed that not all societies are able to ensure effective mid- and long-term solutions for collective action problems (Kellert et al. 2000). Rather, the stability of common property regimes and the prevention of resource depletion depend on certain factors, which are summarized in the design principles for common property institutions (Ostrom 1990) and their slight modifications (e.g., Agrawal 2001).

For pastures, the boom in common property resource management research induced interest in the "traditional" collective pasture management institutions of mobile pastoralists and a discussion on common property in rangelands in the CAC region (Behnke 2018; Li and Huntsinger 2011; Gongbuzeren and Li 2015). In countries with former socialist influence, a reluctance towards common management approaches is noted since the management by a group is seen as similar to the former collective management, which is associated with negative experiences (Mearns 1996). Although it is often argued that traditional resource management of pastoralists is a common property regime, Ostrom's design principle of "clearly defined boundaries" is violated in many traditional systems. Nevertheless, the mounting evidence for sustainable common property management led researchers and policy makers to recommend approaches of "community-based natural resource management" for pastures (Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2012; Crewett 2012; Robinson et al. 2010; Ykhanbai et al. 2004).

#### *3.4. New Rangeland Science: Open Property Regimes (P4)*

The development of the non-equilibrium paradigm of new rangeland ecology led to a novel view on rangeland management in pastoral systems. In variable environments, herders try to adjust stocking rates to the variable forage supply by using tracking strategies and opportunistic livestock management. These management strategies are enhanced by a high degree of mobility, flexibility in spatial and temporal resource access as well as effective livestock marketing systems that allow the quick destocking and restocking of rangelands. Thus, the sustainable use of ecosystems as well as human welfare are threatened, if a flexible adjustment of stocking rates is hindered by institutional and economic factors (Scoones 1994, Behnke and Kerven 1994).

To facilitate sustainable use, pastoralist rangeland access regimes under this paradigm should be flexible and overlapping to adapt to the unpredictable characteristics of the resource (Goodhue and McCarthy 2000; Scoones 1994). For the CAC region, in addition to rainfall, especially cold temperatures and snowfall (*dzud*) were identified as factors crucially influencing rangeland productivity, accessibility and livestock numbers (Kerven 2004; Fernandez-Gimenez and Allen-Diaz 1999; Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003; Li and Huntsinger 2011).

This focus on overlapping, open and flexible access rights is in strong contrast to the views held by common property scholars where clearly defined boundaries in a spatial and social sense are seen as crucial for the long-term stability of the common property regime (Ostrom 1990; Moritz et al. 2013). Instead, flexible access, open access or open property regimes are envisioned in which "there is open access to common-pool grazing resources but, and this is critical to note, open access does not mean the absence of rules; instead it refers to the right that every pastoralist has to common-pool grazing resources" (Moritz 2016, p. 689; see also L. Robinson 2019; Moritz et al. 2018).

#### **4. Governance Approaches to Rangeland Management in CAC Countries**

In this section, the governance of rangelands in ten CAC countries is reviewed. For each country, I (1) characterize the prevailing forms of pastoralism and (2) provide a short description of the major steps in rangeland policy in post-socialist transition, including the current policy framework for rangeland governance. As an evaluation, (3) the rangeland governance approaches are related to the four broad paradigms in rangeland governance described in Section 3, and (4) socio-economic and ecological outcomes as seen in the scientific literature are briefly characterized. Socio-economic outcomes assess the impact that the governance regime has on social organization, mobility and the management of herds. Ecological outcomes target the impact of the governance regime on rangeland condition, i.e., differentiated use pressure and evidence for degradation.

#### *4.1. Georgia*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism:* On the Georgian territory, steppe areas lying between Greater and Lesser Caucasus facilitate vertical pastoral movements along a steep altitudinal gradient. Stationary and mobile livestock keeping overlaps partly in agropastoral livelihoods (Stadelbauer 1984).

*(2) Governance approach:* The post-socialist land governance reform process in Georgia started with the dissolution of state and collective farms in 1992. A far-reaching privatization of agricultural land was initiated, which also allowed the lease of pasture land from 1996. Of the 1.8 million ha of pasture, in 2002, 83,300 ha was privatized, 600,000 leased and 940,600 ha remained in state ownership (Tsomaia et al. 2003).

Between 2005 and 2008, pasture land was planned to be transferred to municipal ownership. However, this process was stopped, and up to 1 million ha pasture land is now under jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development without further provisions for its management and use (as of June 2020). While officially pastures cannot even be leased out, there are exceptions for several municipalities as well as short-term oral use agreements (Gvaramia 2013). In consequence, there is a mixture of ownership structures with private owners (15–25%), municipality ownership (2–5%), ownership by Agency of Protected Areas (APA; 2%) and public property (70–80%) (Mansour and Phulariani 2016).

One major drawback for land privatization in Georgia was the late development of a public registry (starting only from 2004), which, to date, leads to many incomplete processes of land privatization (Gvaramia 2013).

*(3) Relation to rangeland governance paradigms:* As a general tendency, frequent changes in rangeland governance can be observed with a current intention to privatize rangelands (P1).

In publications on land governance, a variety of positions are articulated. In a quest for further privatization, e.g., a World Bank report (Welton et al. 2013, p. 77) explicitly draws on the Tragedy of the Commons to explain the low quality of pastures and overgrazing. Gvaramia (2013), which is a report of a local NGO, argues that "[i]t is also necessary to privatise animal transportation routes (if not privatised, serious management mechanisms need to be developed)". In contrast, in a report for Swiss Cooperation Office, Raaflaub and Dobry (2015) argue for a balanced approach allowing for cooperatives and user group-based management especially on village pastures.

*(4) Reported outcomes:* The frequent changes in overall rangeland governance and the management vacuum have created particular insecurity for land users since 2010. Evaluations of pasture quality produce mixed results due to the lack of comprehensive assessments (Mansour and Phulariani 2016). While some publications speak generally of overgrazing and low quality (Welton et al. 2013), others observe underuse and reforestation. A mix of overuse and reforestation processes is most likely, whereas overuse is likely to occur on easily accessible pasture sites and winter pasture areas (Gebhardt 2014).

#### *4.2. Armenia*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: Pastures comprise approximately 50% of the agricultural land in Armenia. The land-locked country has predominantly transhumant vertical migration systems along short distances partly combined with arable farming in agropastoral systems.

*(2) Governance approach:* While arable land was largely privatized based on shares in 1992, pastures remained in the hands of the state and were partly leased out. Between 2003 and 2005, management rights for remaining state land were handed over to local communities. While initially it was intended to give full ownership to local communities (including the right to sell and lease pasture), the government handed over finally only restricted rights in view of concerns about land concentration (Spoor 2012). In surveys, local farmers opposed sales of pastureland (Lerman and Mirzakhanian 2001). The government is working with development support on management schemes and tools for community-based pasture management (Christen 2020).

*(3) Relation to rangeland governance paradigms:* Armenia aimed at a pro-equality privatization strategy in land governance (Spoor 2012), while for pastures, after an initial search process with strong state control (P2) and intentions of privatization (P1), community-based solutions seem to be in progress (P3).

*(4) Reported outcomes:* Reports on the levels of pasture degradation or on socio-economic outcomes are scarce. A remote sensing study reports that more than 50% of Armenian pastures are degraded (Tepanosyan et al. 2017). A major issue seems to be the infestation with weeds and non-palatable plants mainly due to insufficient mobility and overgrazing pastures, especially around sheds and water sources (Christen 2020).

#### *4.3. Azerbaijan*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: High altitudinal differences on the slopes of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus with steppe and semi-desert lowlands in between allow for transhumant vertical migration systems along steep altitudinal gradients, but also vertical movements of shorter distances in agropastoral systems exist.

*(2) Governance approach:* In Azerbaijan, agricultural reforms started in 1996 with the privatization of livestock and machinery. Pasture land was not subject to privatization but remained in the hands of collective and state farms. Land access was reorganized in 2000, with the privatization of arable land, while pastures were not subject to privatization. While local village administrations (Belediyye) became responsible for administering village pastures, distant pastures and migration routes

are under district (rayon) administration. Distant pastures can be leased by mobile pastoralists for 25 years, and the individual leased plots have comparably fixed boundaries. By 2007/2008, all available pastures were leased out (Neudert et al. 2015). Contracts can now be obtained under an auction mechanism, while leasers have a primary option for renewal of contracts. Local village administrations have the option to lease parts of their village pastures to mobile pastoralists if these areas are not in use by local village livestock (Neudert et al. 2020).

*(3) Relation to rangeland governance paradigms:* In Azerbaijan, in post-socialist transition, pasture categories and usage patterns from Soviet and pre-Soviet times were continued or renewed. For distant pastures, the state aimed at an individualization of use with a strong position of the state (P2) but transfer of management rights resembling a near privatization (P1). Pastures in the vicinity of villages remained in common use under local administration (P3), whereas few provisions for effective community-based management were made.

*(4) Reported outcomes:* The use pressure on pastures in Azerbaijan is comparably high. During the distribution of lease contracts deviations from formal rules, e.g., use of private networks or bribing, occurred. However, during actual use, boundaries are well respected, while mobility is ensured due to the state management of migration routes, and informal cooperation and joint use agreements, which also enable mobility for owners with few livestock (Neudert 2015). Especially on village pastures, overuse is a frequent problem (Neudert et al. 2019).

#### *4.4. Turkmenistan*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: Desert and semi-desert ecosystems in Turkmenistan allow for semi-nomadic or transhumant pastoralism governed primarily by well water availability and salinity. The movement pattern is radial around wells, with the concentration of camps around wells in summer and dispersion in winter (Ferret 2014).

*(2) Governance approach:* In contrast to most other CAC countries, Turkmenistan has retained a comparably low level of privatization and higher state involvement. Reforms began in 1995 with the transformation of state and collective farms into farmer associations (Kerven 2003), while the farm assets remained nearly unchanged. The approach in the pastoral sector is termed "leasehold pastoralism" (Behnke et al. 2005). With lease contracts for state-owned livestock, herders manage the herd in return of a share of the offspring and products as long as production targets are met. Private livestock is allowed and is reported in increasing numbers (S. Robinson et al. 2017b). Rangelands and the associated water wells are state-owned and allocated to

the farmer associations, allowing for some degree of flexibility in pasture and well use. In addition, flexible decisions could be taken by herders with regard to mobility and access of other feed resources (Behnke et al. 2005; Behnke et al. 2016).

In 2015, a new pasture law was passed allowing now for community-based pasture access (S. Robinson et al. 2017b).

*(3) Relation to rangeland governance paradigms:* Turkmenistan combines a strong position of the state (P2) with regard to land and livestock ownership enabling effective decentralization and flexible decision making for herders. Thus, the rangeland governance resembles an open property regime (P4). With the increasing share of private livestock and a declining management role of the state, a change to towards stronger individual rights with the option of community-based pasture access is underway with the new pasture law of 2015 (P1, P3) (S. Robinson et al. 2017b). Whether the reformed system will be largely individualised or group based will largely depend on bylaws and implementation (Robinson et al. 2018).

*(4) Reported outcomes:* Based on extensive field research at the rim of the Karakum desert, Behnke et al. (2016, p. 117) conclude that the system is "insufficient to halt the growth in absolute levels of grazing pressure or the loss of vegetation cover around large water points, but they do retard the rate at which larger settlements grow in size, and are sufficient to maintain constant levels of animal performance", thus resembling an ideal free distribution of livestock. However, reports on pasture conditions are contradictory: S. Robinson et al. (2017b, p. 237) report that overgrazing is "perceived to be a serious problem" alongside increasing grazing pressure near settlements. In contrast, satellite imagery studies report a medium to good pasture condition without clear tendencies along transects to wells (Gintzburger et al. 2009), or pasture vegetation rehabilitation around settlements occurring alongside degradation due to the development of biogenic crusts in remote areas (Kaplan et al. 2014).

#### *4.5. Kazakhstan*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: The Kazakh territory historically hosted large scale pastoralist movements, which began to decline in length and scope in the 18th century with the establishment of the Russian empire. In the socialist period, collective and state farms with shorter migration cycles and the provision of winter fodder were established (Alimaev and Behnke 2008, Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003).

*(2) Governance approach:* In the mid-1990s, the livestock holdings declined dramatically (Robinson and Milner-Gulland 2003), and in 1995, it became possible to lease agricultural land, arable land and pastures, for 99 and later 49 years. While the lease system worked well for arable land, the demand for pastures remained low and, de facto use without lease contracts was common, as lease processes were complicated and costly. Movements ceased nearly completely particularly in desert regions, while grazing with few livestock took place around settlements (Alimaev and Behnke 2008), and short distance migrations in mountain regions were reestablished comparably quickly (Ferret 2018).

An amendment of the Land Code in 2003 allowed the acquisition of rangelands by purchase in addition to the leasing option, except lands in shared use. Pastures around settlements remain in the hands of local communities and are considered as "commons", as reported by a World Bank document (Schillhorn van Veen et al. 2004). Thus, different access options are available for herders, ranging from private (primarily winter pastures) to communal and open access options (Kerven et al. 2016a, 2016b). A reform of the pasture law in 2017 now formally allows for the creation of voluntary associations of pasture users (S. Robinson et al. 2017b).

A reform of the Land Code in 2016 attempted deeper changes in land access governance with an abolishment of all lease options, effectively allowing only for purchase of land. Following public protests, the reform and all land privatisation and sales were put under a moratorium until 2021 (S. Robinson 2020).

*(3) Relation to rangeland governance paradigms:* Kazakhstan's land governance initially made no difference between rangelands and arable lands with providing lease options (P2), but differentiated its management regime into several options for different rangeland resources involving privatization, lease and common management broadly dependent on the resource characteristics (P1–3).

*(4) Reported outcomes:* Several sources note a strong decline in mobility, inducing severe overgrazing around settlements and underuse in remote areas (Kerven et al. 2006). Mobility is re-established predominantly by herders owning greater numbers of livestock and crucial assets, such as trucks and access to wells (Kerven et al. 2006, 2016a; Milner-Gulland et al. 2006). Outcomes of the reforms of the pasture law in 2017 and the Land Code reform in 2016 cannot be assessed, yet.

#### *4.6. Uzbekistan*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: Uzbekistan has a history of nomadic pastoralism, while in recent years, desert and semi-desert areas have been used in horizontal transhumant migration systems. In mountain areas, vertical migration systems also exist, although vertical migration has minor importance at the national level (Kerven et al. 1996).

*(2) Governance approach:* With reforms of farm structures in 1992 and a new Land Code in 1998, the government took a restrictive approach to transition allowing no private ownership to land (Lerman 2008). All land remained state property;

former state and collective farms in arid regions were transformed into agricultural cooperatives in dry areas (*shirkats*, Zanca 2000; Shaumarov and Birner 2016), whereas district governments were mostly responsible for rangelands in semi-arid areas. Pastures can be leased for 49 years by entrepreneurs or agricultural cooperatives, who can allow others to use the land. In fact, land under the jurisdiction of districts is open access (Christmann et al. 2015). As households (*dekhan farms*) are de facto excluded from land lease (Christmann et al. 2015) but hold the greatest share of livestock (S. Robinson 2020), access to grazing land is mostly gained informally (Shaumarov and Birner 2016).

As reported on the website of the International land coalition, in 2019, a new law on pasture management became effective, enabling the development of pasture user associations and measures for improved pasture management and restoration (Yuldashev and Ykhanbai 2019).

*(3) Relation to rangeland governance paradigms:* Uzbekistan followed a restrictive policy with regard to land ownership intended to avoid land speculation and to preserve pastures as a national source of wealth (P2) (Lerman 2008), but de facto providing no regulation adapted to the resource characteristics of rangelands. The new law issued in 2019 proposed "pasture user associations", a community-based approach to pasture management (P3) (Christmann et al. 2015).

*(4) Reported outcomes:* Lerman (2008) describes a slight growth in cattle numbers, while abandoned pasture land and a reduction in fodder crops are also noted, implying a higher pressure on some pasture areas. Pasture land seems to be abandoned due to the lacking maintenance of water infrastructure and degradation (Shaumarov and Birner 2013). Christmann et al. (2015) terms the present-day use "unsustainable" and sees the system as being characterized by "the Tragedy of the Commons" and "free riding", as no fees for pasturing and shrub harvesting are collected, and uncontrolled grazing without shepherds occurs. Their work aimed at the establishment of pasture user groups and pasture regeneration.

#### *4.7. Kyrgyzstan*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: Rangelands cover approximately 80% of the land resources in Kyrgyzstan. The mountainous terrain allows for transhumant vertical migration and agropastoral systems of short and medium distances (Shirasaka et al. 2016).

*(2) Governance approach:* In 1998, Kyrgyzstan adopted far-reaching reforms of the agricultural sector, involving a far-reaching privatization of land and livestock. Pastures remained under state control with lease options (Dörre 2012; Undeland 2005). In 2009, Kyrgyzstan adopted as the first state in the Central Asian region

a community-based management approach. After disappointing results with the lease approach in pasture management, the community-based approach was jointly developed by government officials and international donor organizations (Kasymov et al. 2016). Control over pastures was handed from municipalities to pasture user committees, setting up management plans and granting access rights (Kasymov et al. 2016; Dorre 2015). Participatory monitoring approaches are being tested as a basis for informed decisions on pasture management and degradation prevention (Kirch et al. 2016).

*(3) Relation to rangeland governance paradigms:* From an early approach of strong state control (P2) which was incompletely implemented (Kasymov et al. 2016), Kyrgyzstan soon moved to an adoption of a community-based management approach (P3) with local control over pastures and explicit provisions for user participation.

*(4) Reported outcomes:* During the initial period of transition, a marked decline in pastoral mobility and overuse of pastures in the vicinity of villages was noted (Farrington 2005). While after 2009, in many places, control over pastures by pasture user committees was established, authors report a gap between intentions and implementation (Kasymov et al. 2016), elite capture (Crewett 2015; Dorre 2015) and lacking acceptance by local pasture users (Shigaeva et al. 2016). However, Kasymov and Thiel (2019) see a declining asymmetry in bargaining power, leading potentially to more equitable outcomes in the future. The community-based approach is evaluated as an improvement compared to the previous lease system; however, it still has shortcomings with regard to facilitating mobility and flexible movements (Mestre 2019; Crewett 2012) and to matching pasture availability with demand (Shirasaka et al. 2016).

#### *4.8. Tajikistan*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: Located in the high-mountain region of Central Asia with more than 80% of the country being pasture lands, Tajikistan's environment supports transhumant vertical movements in agropastoral systems (Robinson and Whitton 2010).

*(2) Governance approach:* Before 2013, there was no special legislation in Tajikistan applying to pasture land, but general land access options were applicable to pastures, including the option for long-term inheritable rights (Halimova 2012). However, no effective governance was established, leaving the pastures de facto open access. A reform in 2013 followed the Kyrgyz model of community-based governance: pastures are owned by the state, while management is delegated to commissions at the district level. Access can be community-based by user associations or individually

based on leases (Jaborov et al. 2017). This leads to a legal coexistence of private and common access options (S. Robinson et al. 2017b).

*(3) Relation to rangeland paradigms:* Tajikistan first aimed at a strategy of strong state control (P2) while also providing options for the privatization of pastures, which were not implemented (P1). The reform in 2013 generally followed the community-based approach in Kyrgyzstan (P3), but the approach was only adopted incompletely. The weak commitment of the Tajik government and gaps in the legislative framework resulted in a very slow progress of implementation (Jaborov et al. 2017).

*(4) Reported outcomes:* Lacking mobility and herd sizes led to initially low interest in obtaining private or lease rights for pastures. Declining mobility resulted in an overuse of pastures in the vicinity of villages, whereas remote pastures were virtually abandoned (Robinson and Whitton 2010). The implementation of the 2013 pasture law is uneven, with the creation of pasture user unions and pasture management plans heavily dependent on NGO intervention (Jaborov et al. 2017). In parallel, granting long-term inheritable (de facto private) rights of large plots to wealthy individuals seems to take place, creating a growing number of landless rural households and social tensions (Halimova 2012).

#### *4.9. Mongolia*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: The vast steppe and desert areas in Mongolia have hosted nomadic cultures for millennia. Nomadic pastoralism with a combination of vertical and horizontal movements is still common (Fernández-Giménez et al. 2018; Mearns 1993), although there is trend for reduced migration distances and less moves (Chen et al. 2018).

*(2) Governance approach:* Despite early policy advice to privatize pastures (Murphy 2011), Mongolia maintained state ownership of all pasture land (Fernandez-Gimenez and Batbuyan 2004). A major reform implemented in 1994 allowed the private lease of winter and spring camp sites. Thus, land access is mainly governed through campsite access rather than by rights pertaining to land per se. Local and regional authorities were made responsible for managing grazing pressure and seasonal mobility. Responding to unclear and contradictory issues of the 1994 law, in 2002, an amendment to the pasture law was issued, allowing group ownership of winter and spring camp sites and a consequent local responsibility for grazing management (Fernandez-Gimenez and Batbuyan 2004). Many authors note a strong complement and interpretation of the legal provisions with customary rules (Upton 2009), e.g., pertaining to reserve pastures and irregular long-distance migration in the

case of hazardous weather conditions (Murphy 2011). Development organizations promote actively community-based natural resource management to complement local government responsibilities for grazing management (Addison et al. 2013; Ulambayar et al. 2017). Since 2007, an amendment of the pasture law has been discussed with a central purpose of making provisions for the transfer of ownership and management rights of pasture areas to pasture user groups (Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008; Hannam 2014). The law is still in parliamentary discussion (Undargaa 2017).

*(3) Relation to rangeland paradigms:* Pasture access in Mongolia is mainly governed through campsite access rather than by rights pertaining to pasture per se. Thus, the governance approach broadly reflects open property regimes (P4). With the new proposed pasture law, a shift to more community-based management (P3) is planned. Advantages and disadvantages of common management in comparison to open and flexible access regimes are active discussions (Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008; Hannam 2014).

*(4) Reported outcomes:* The flexible access regulations seem largely conducive with Mongolian customary institutions, though the issuing of lease certificates was reported to not be implemented on large scales (Murphy 2011). Compared to the neighbouring Inner Mongolia, the general rangeland management approach has led to greater mobility and less rangeland degradation (Sneath 1998). Additionally, more recent assessments confirm that severe livestock-induced degradation is comparably rare in Mongolia (Jamsranjav et al. 2018). However, authors note a lack of planning and management resulting in overgrazing and degradation, especially in productive areas (Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008; Jamsranjav et al. 2018). Case studies on community-based management approaches showed mixed results (Upton 2009; Addison et al. 2013; Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2015), although a recent large-scale and representative study could verify improvements in grazing management practices (Ulambayar et al. 2017).

#### *4.10. China (Inner Mongolia)*

*(1) Forms of pastoralism*: With its location on the Mongolian Plateau, Inner Mongolia shares the same ecological system with the Republic of Mongolia. Steppe and semi-desert regions have supported historically nomadic, horizontal pastoral systems. However, in Inner Mongolia, livestock management has been largely changed to stationary systems or systems with reduced mobility (Chen et al. 2018).

*(2) Governance approach:* The former collective management approach was replaced by the "household responsibility system" or "grassland contracting policy" in the early 1980s (B. E. Robinson et al. 2017; Li and Huntsinger 2011). The system involved long-term lease contracts to livestock and pasture areas, as well as fencing of rangeland plots (Taylor 2006). While initially a privatization of livestock and grassland to herding groups was possible, the associated settlement of nomadic groups led to an individualization of households, which resulted de facto in a privatization of land and livestock to individual households (Li and Huntsinger 2011).

Since 2000, the existing individual rangeland access system has been complemented by laws and decrees increasingly aiming at a stronger regulation of stocking rates to combat rangeland degradation, e.g., with the "grassland-livestock balance regulation" and "forbidden grazing and rotational grazing program" (B. E. Robinson et al. 2017). Additionally, compensation schemes (payments for ecosystem services) aiming at lower stocking rates on rangelands were set up (B. E. Robinson et al. 2017). Further policies aim to encourage cooperation among herders in anticipation of fragmented family holdings merging into larger holdings (Chen et al. 2018).

*(3) Relation to rangeland paradigms:* The introduction of the household responsibility system in the 1980s was clearly motivated by the narrative that grassland degradation is caused by a Tragedy of the Commons (Li et al. 2007; Taylor 2006), resulting in an effective privatization of pastures (P1). The policy changes after 2000 are characterized by a stronger position of the state and complementary policy mechanisms, setting positive incentives for grassland conservation based on classical market economic measures of environmental policy (P1, with aspects of P2).

*(4) Reported outcomes:* The privatization strategy led, until 2000, to an unanticipated extent of rangeland degradation in Inner Mongolia, likely to be caused by fragmentation, fencing and disrupted mobility (Li and Huntsinger 2011) and also associated with adverse social consequences (Yu and Farrell 2013). Incomplete privatization led, on remaining common lands, to severe degradation known as the "tragedy of enclosure" (Williams 1996).

In a review of the scientific literature addressing the impact of government policies published by IIED, Li et al. (2014) find that most authors of the newer literature (2008–2012) evaluate the "grassland contracting policy" in a negative way, leading to adverse changes in environmental, livestock management and social issues. However, some improvements on the socio-economic situation of herders were also reported (B. E. Robinson et al. 2017). While grazing bans and rotational grazing were assessed primarily as positive in combating degradation (see also Li et al. 2012), the policy had largely negative impacts on herders' livelihoods and the pastoral society

(Li et al. 2014). Li et al. (2014) assert that lacking knowledge on pastoralism among policy makers is the root cause for inappropriate rangeland policies.

#### **5. Discussion**

This contribution reviewed governance approaches to rangeland management in ten CAC countries and related them to international paradigms of rangeland management as described in the scientific literature and to outcomes with relevance to rangeland degradation. The results are influenced by the methodical approach: only published material in the English language was taken into account. Drawing on local language material or primary data might have led to more detailed assessments of the specific governance approaches in the individual countries, but is beyond the scope of this review. As evaluations of socio-economic and ecological outcomes are based on qualitative assessments by authors of publications, they especially highlight impacts of the governance regime based on authors' perceptions; however, comparisons of statistical or field data may provide additional insights. Table 1 provides an overview of the information presented in Section 4 and facilitates the comparisons discussed in the following.

In the ten CAC countries, diverse forms of pastoralism existed, which were adapted to the ecological conditions in the respective countries; however, these pastoral forms underwent massive changes during the socialist period and in post-socialist transition. Drawing on mobile livestock keeping, pastoralists are able to use variable forage resources in space in time (Scholz 1995). Vertical pastoral migration systems occur wherever mountain environments allow for it in the CAC region. Longer and horizontal mobility forms can be found in Central Asia (especially in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia and Inner Mongolia).

Ecologically, there is a tendency towards drier ecosystems and to increasing continentality and non-equilibrial ecological conditions from west to east in Central Asia. The measure for climate variability, the Coefficient of Variation of precipitation, typically exceeds 33% under non-equilibrial conditions. In the western part of the CAC region, in Azerbaijan, the Coefficient of Variation ranges between 28% in semi-desert regions and 22% in mountain regions (Peper 2010). In arid and semi-arid regions of Uzbekistan, the indicator ranges between 27 and 34% (Gintzburger et al. 2005), while it is 47–50% in desert-steppe regions and 28% in mountain steppe regions in Mongolia, which indicates the tendency towards non-equilibrial ecosystem conditions in the eastern parts of Central Asia (Fernandez-Gimenez and Allen-Diaz 1999). However, the general east–west gradient is overlaid by elevational differences in mountain regions, which have higher precipitation and mostly lower Coefficients of


**Table 1.** Summary of forms of pastoralism and rangeland governance approaches in the Central Asia and the Caucasus


**Table 1.** *Cont.* Source: Table by authors.

Variation. Thus, in general, most variable climatic conditions, to which nomadic forms of pastoralism are best adapted, can be found on the Mongolian plateau (Mongolia and Inner Mongolia) (Fernandez-Gimenez and Allen-Diaz 1999; Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2017). While from a cultural–evolutionary perspective, an adaptation of livestock keeping practices and culture to environmental conditions can be assumed, current policy changes seem to be mostly driven by other factors, such as interests of political actors, prevailing narratives of how to achieve growth in the livestock sector and prevent degradation as well as the influence of international NGOs (S. Robinson et al. 2017b).

Current forms of pastoralism are shaped by historical conditions, whereas a tendency towards reduction and regularization of mobility over the last century can be observed. This is most expressed in Inner Mongolia, where an originally nomadic pastoral system was transformed by externally imposed policies to partly settled forms, leading to a livestock keeping system of a completely different character (Wang et al. 2013). This general reduction in mobility can be observed in pastoral systems worldwide (Scholz 1995; Humphrey and Sneath 1999).

In post-socialist transition in all ten CAC countries, similar developments in pastoralism can be observed. Nearly all countries saw a decline in and subsequent recovery of livestock numbers and changes in herd structures, which was associated in many cases with a reduction in mobility. In concurrence with the decline in livestock numbers, a retraction of mobility was observed: the small herds owned by one household were not worth being driven to remote pastures, as enough forage for them was available in the vicinity of villages (Farrington 2005; Robinson et al. 2010; Kerven et al. 2003). In addition to small livestock possessions, the lack of transport means was a contributing factor to decreased mobility.

After the initial decline, mobility patterns started to reverse: wealthier families began again to use remote pastures in order to satisfy the fodder demand of their large herds (Kerven et al. 2003, Farrington 2005, Kerven et al. 2016a, 2016b). In addition, common herding regimes started to emerge, which allowed households with few livestock possessions to participate in mobile pastoralism. Common herding practices may be officially recognized by the rangeland governance regime (e.g., Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan) or arise informally in spite of the absence of a legal framework (e.g., Tajikistan, Azerbaijan; Steimann 2011; Watanabe and Shirasaka 2016, 2018; Kasymov and Thiel 2019; Lunch 2003; Robinson et al. 2018; Allahverdiyeva 2017).

In rangeland governance, over the last 20–30 years, search processes for the appropriate regime can be observed, with a diversity of approaches existing today. There is evidence for all four paradigms of rangeland governance, for private,

state, common and open property, often combined in hybrid governance regimes. Enabling private or individualized access to rangelands (P1) occurred during the initial transition phase after 1990, providing a legal frame for the privatization of rangelands in Georgia, Tajikistan and Inner Mongolia. However, if individualized access was enabled, de facto distribution of rangelands rarely occurred due to low demand and the decline in livestock and mobility in the initial transition period. Thus, nearly private property rights for pastures are de facto established only in Inner Mongolia and are still planned for Georgia. To avoid a Tragedy of the Commons is clearly spelled out as the motivation for enabling private property rights in advisory documents of international development organizations and the scientific literature. Evidence for this is found for a range of countries, e.g., for Georgia in a World Bank report (Welton et al. 2013), for Mongolia as expressed by the Asian Development Bank and the Democratic Party (Goldstein and Beall 1994 and Sneath 2000 cited in Murphy 2011) or for Inner Mongolia (Taylor 2006; Li et al. 2007). Individualised lease, which resembles privatization if most management rights are transferred, is still a major pillar of rangeland governance in many countries (e.g., Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan).

Whether individualised lease options were implemented depended partly on other factors influencing the demand for pastures and re-establishment of mobility: individualised lease options were rapidly implemented in Azerbaijan due to the dynamic economic development in the country based on the exploitation of oil reserves and comparably scarce pasture resources (Neudert et al. 2015). In contrast, in Tajikistan or Kazakhstan, the implementation of lease options is still incomplete due to the difficult economic environment (Tajikistan) and vast pasture resources in both countries (Kerven et al. 2016b; Jaborov et al. 2017).

Another common approach in the initial transition period was to keep many features of the Soviet style of rangeland governance (P2), which indicates a path-dependency of governance regimes. This is exemplified particularly by the state ownership of rangelands and partly continuing existence of collective farms (e.g., Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). In extreme cases, the state even retained access to livestock, as exemplified in Turkmenistan. In later stages, the approach was complemented by a gradual devolution of rights, either by a change to community-based management (Uzbekistan, Armenia) or to individual users with effective flexible and open rangeland access options (Turkmenistan, where it arose as a side effect of the formal governance regime).

Some countries changed or complemented the initial individual access or strong state control approach in the later stages of post-socialist transition with

community-based rangeland management (P3): this is most clearly expressed in the example of Kyrgyzstan, which changed the rangeland governance paradigm from an individual lease to a community-based approach in 2009. Based on the example of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Tajikistan also complemented their rangeland policies with community-based approaches at least for pastures in the vicinity of villages. In many countries, international development organizations played and continue to play a major role in advocating and implementing the approach, e.g., the World Bank and IFAD in Kyrgyzstan (Kasymov et al. 2016), Asian Development Bank, IFAD and World Bank in Tajikistan (Jaborov et al. 2017), World Bank in Armenia (Christen 2020) or diverse donors in Mongolia, among them World Bank and Swiss Development Cooperation (Undargaa 2017). Cases of policy adoption from experience in other countries, e.g., in Tajikistan following the example of Kyrgyzstan (Jaborov et al. 2017), exemplify processes of policy diffusion and convergence in rangeland policies within the CAC region (Busch and Jörgens 2005).

However, as the examples of Azerbaijan and Armenia illustrate, community-based management does not appear spontaneously immediately after handing over management responsibilities to local communities. A legal framework for community-based management must be complemented by the facilitation of community-based decision making supported by tools and trainings for participatory pasture monitoring and the establishment of grazing management plans. Thus, implementing community-based approaches requires supporting measures, well-designed implementation rules and meaningful monitoring of participation activities in the long run (Crewett 2015; Gruber 2010).

The paradigm of open property regimes (P4) is seldom represented in the CAC countries, as it appears as part of the governance regime only in Turkmenistan and Mongolia (Table 1). The paradigm seems most suitable under non-equilibrial ecosystem conditions (see Section 3.4), which are most expressed in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. Only Mongolia partly followed this approach with the distribution of lease contracts for campsites. In the discussion of the new pasture law where a shift to more widespread community-based management is planned, concerns for flexible access regulations are expressed. As a special case, Turkmenistan was able to complement a system with strong state control with an effective devolution of access rights, thus enabling an open property regime. Moritz et al. (2018) also state that pastoralism in Mongolia and Turkmenistan exhibits features of open property regimes.

As visible in many policy approaches, rarely one paradigm of rangeland management is implemented to the full extent. Rather, approaches are mixed

across scales, particularly depending on the type of pasture resource concerned (L. W. Robinson et al. 2017). In many cases, regulations for remote or summer pastures differ from the governance of winter pastures or pastures in the vicinity of villages. Changes and refinements according to types of pastures are also reflected by the time scale. These policy changes and refinements leave the impression of search or trial and error processes to find the appropriate approach for rangeland governance in the respective countries to balance secure rights, mobility and flexibility. These processes are clearly not yet complete.

The review of outcomes, especially on the ecological condition of rangelands, shows a mixed result. The actual extent of pasture degradation in the individual countries is controversially discussed and strongly depends on the different definitions of degradation and methodological approaches used (Jamsranjav et al. 2018; Briske 2017). As irreversible degradation develops over a longer time period, historical use patterns and livestock number should also be taken into account. In the early period of post-socialist transition, an improvement of pasture conditions was noted caused by the decline in livestock numbers followed by an increase in use pressure more recently (see examples of Kazakhstan: S. Robinson et al. (2017a), or Mongolia: Khishigbayar et al. (2015), S. Robinson (2016) for a review for Central Asia). In addition to livestock-induced degradation, climate change may also have negative effects on pasture conditions, altering ecological processes of grassland ecosystems (e.g., in the example of Mongolia: Khishigbayar et al. (2015), Fernandez-Gimenez et al. (2017)).

Recurring patterns noted as problems in rangeland management are overused areas in the vicinity of settlements and underused plots in remote areas. Thus, mobility is a crucial aspect for sustainable rangeland management (Zinsstag et al. 2016; Coughenour et al. 2008). A governance regime can enable or inhibit mobility. This is most clearly illustrated by the example of rangeland governance inMongolia and Inner Mongolia, where one ecosystem is governed by two very different governance regimes: it was shown that degradation processes are more severe under individualized and settled rangeland management in Inner Mongolia and Russia compared to Mongolia, where pastoralists have maintained at least some degree of mobility (Sneath 1998; Li et al. 2007). In addition, degradation processes were found to be especially severe around enclosures, which are viewed as a threat to the sustainable management of rangelands (Williams 1996; Taylor 2006). Thus, enabling mobility is clearly a crucial aspect in the design of governance regimes for mobile pastoral systems.

However, several examples show that mobility can be maintained under very different access regimes, such as the leasehold pastoral system in Turkmenistan, the strongly individualized lease system in Azerbaijan or the campsite lease system in

Mongolia. Only for a privatized governance regime an example enabling mobility is lacking, but can be imagined theoretically. In addition to ensuring the mobility of livestock owners with formal pasture access, especially in lease system, modes of pasture access for households with few livestock need to be found to enable mobility for all members of the pastoral community. This is frequently ensured with cooperative or common herding regimes. Thus, any access regime should be complemented with formal regulations or informal norms ensuring mobility and enabling cooperative herding agreements.

#### **6. Conclusions**

In the context of combating rangeland degradation and SDG 15, this contribution reviewed rangeland governance approaches in ten CAC countries in the post-socialist period and related them to four theoretical paradigms of rangeland governance and socio-economic and environmental outcomes. There is evidence for all four paradigms, private, state common and open rangeland access regimes. Often, actual policy approaches bear evidence for two or three paradigms, or the approach changed during the time period considered. Policy developments show a search process for appropriate rangeland governance regimes, with complete changes of approaches or with gradual amendments and refinements of existing policy approaches, while decisions seem to be strongly influenced by international development organizations in many CAC countries.

Rangeland degradation, though contested in definition and extent, is often associated with lacking mobility, overstocking and lacking maintenance of infrastructure by the publications reviewed. Depending on formal regulations as well as informal practices of herders, rangeland governance regimes can enable or inhibit mobility and flexible movements to react to droughts or severe winter weather. Governance regimes integrating common access to rangelands to some degree and providing legal possibilities for cooperative livestock management and herding also have a greater potential to enable mobility for households with fewer livestock possessions.

Based on this information, the lesson emerges that there is no silver bullet for sustainable rangeland management based on the paradigms of rangeland governance, as often suggested in the theoretical literature or promoted in the early stages of transition by international development organizations. Blueprint or ideologically driven approaches are seldom appropriate. Once a decision for a general approach is taken, it has to be amended depending on the socio-ecological conditions in the country and the practices of the pastoral population. Often trial and error processes

are necessary for gradually improving the legal framework and the fit to pastoral practices. Consultation processes with stakeholders seem to be one approach to improve frameworks; however, they can be time consuming, as the example of Mongolia's new pasture law illustrates.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** I thank Ulan Kasymov and Volker Beckmann for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Comments of three anonymous reviewers helped to improve the quality of the manuscript further.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


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Lund, H. Gyde. 2007. Accounting for the World's Rangelands. *Rangelands* 29: 3–10. [CrossRef]

Manderscheid, Angela. 2001. Decline and re-emergence of nomadism: Tibetan pastoralists revive a nomadic way of life and production. *GeoJournal* 53: 173–82. [CrossRef]


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© 2021 by the author. 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Impacts of the Land Tenure System on Sustainable Land Use in Ethiopia**

**Hossein Azadi, Saghi Movahhed Moghaddam, Hossein Mahmoudi, Stefan Burkart, Diriba Dadi Debela, Dereje Teklemariam, Michal Lodin and Philippe Lebailly**

#### **1. Introduction**

In most developing countries, land is linked with people's culture, identity, and dignity. This claim is often expressed in the folklore of these countries. For example, in Ethiopian national and heroic songs and poems, land is considered as a dignity (i.e., the honor a person gives to himself) that soldiers are fighting for (Bezu and Holden 2014). Despite their cultural importance, such perceptions and beliefs can also lead to border and land conflicts. Land management is a perceptual concept, and in physical terms, land is nothing but an economic tool. This is linked to Sustainable Development Goal 15 (SDG 15), which is aimed at protecting, restoring, and promoting the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems (e.g., lands and forests) (United Nations 2015). Land policy in developing countries affects the development of societies in different dimensions and goes beyond economic and cultural perspectives. Since the period of colonial rule, the Ethiopian land policies have had impacts on resource allocation and agricultural development (Götz 2019; FAO 2008).

Ethiopia's landscapes are very diverse and stretch from deserts to volcanoes and highlands. It has an area of 1,104,300 sq. km, which makes it roughly as wide as France and Spain combined. More than 70% of Africa's mountains are found in Ethiopia. Despite these facts and in contrast to the documentation of the countries origins, little is yet recorded about its land tenure system and other key related issues (Lavers 2018). However, Ethiopia's history has witnessed different rulers during different epochs, and this has brought different land management systems. Ethiopia is the second highest populated country in Africa (Ethiopia Population 2020) with a population of approximately 107.53 million (based on an estimation in December 2018), and the annual growth rate is 2.46%. The key source of the country's economy is farming, which accounts for approximately 50% of the GDP, 85% of total import/export revenue, and more than 80% of total employment (Ethiopian Economics Association 2008; Cochrane and Vercillo 2019). Several theories about the factors affecting living and land management in the East African highlands have

been investigated (Fleskens and Stringer 2014). Among the main underlying theories was the prospect of sustainable land use at any given location, which relies on the "development pathways" and can be pursued. In turn, these development pathways rely on factors that determine comparative benefits in various sites, including the biophysical factors affecting agriculture capacity, market and facilities access, and population density (Sreejith et al. 2020).

These factors might affect household choices of livelihoods (e.g., participating in non-farm activities vs. crop production) and land use/management decisions (e.g., cropping patterns, the proportion of on-farm inputs, tree planting, and soil and water conservation measures). All of these decisions and choices will greatly affect the sustainability and productivity, employment, food safety, and welfare of agriculture (Wubneh 2018). In 2015, the United Nations, through the approval of SDGs, adopted an ambitious agenda for simultaneously tackling several major challenges of the 21st century. These goals are focused on eliminating hunger and alleviating poverty while protecting the environment (United Nations 2015). The 17 SDGs and their targets present a new and coherent way of thinking about diverse issues related to development, such as climate change, gender, and hunger. Fu et al. (2019) conceptualized the relationship between three classifications of the SDGs: (a) governance (including effective regulation, equitable rules, and systems, i.e., SDGs 9, 11, 12, 13, and 17) will ensure that (b) essential human survival needs are met (SDGs 2, 6, 7, 14, and 15), while at the same time (c) maximizing expected objectives (SDGs 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, and 16). The current study provides insights into the range of actions regarding the land tenure system linked to SDGs in general and SDG 15 or "Life on Land" in particular at the country level in Ethiopia.

Presently, 40% of the Earth's land surface is already used for agriculture, and arable land tenure will enhance under protectionist paradigms for food security. Many cultivated areas represent high input and intensified landscapes, in which pesticides, fertilizers, and irrigation are used with a severe environmental and biodiversity impact (Leventon and Laudan 2017). Food sovereignty has become an alternative way to achieve local food security, protect biodiversity and the environment, and provide wider social values through non-industrial agriculture methods. The most general definition of sovereignty, as defined by Beuchelt and Virchow (2012), is the right of people to healthy and sustainable food and the right to develop their own agricultural and food systems (Heckelman and Wittman 2015; Suh 2015). Food sovereignty can be formulated as a form of localism, which restores sovereignty over economics (Hess 2008).

In the last decade, the sovereignty and accessibility of food have changed considerably. In 2010, in Ethiopia, about 2.8 million people needed emergency food aid, but at the same time, they had been selling over 600,000 hectares of their land to transnational enterprises, exporting most of their products (Reuters 2011; Green 2011). Although a paradigm has focused on the financial and sovereign aspect of food provision, Ethiopia still has great food insecurity, which is caused by a lack of access to adequate, safe, and nutritious food (WHO 2017; Ruelle et al. 2019). However, Ethiopia needs to fulfill its food security commitments along with broader values (Leventon and Laudan 2017). For example, the threats posed by the commodification of agriculture and global market competition are a factor that can challenge food and existing systems in Ethiopia.

Commodity agriculture is a major contributor to many countries' economies (FAOSTAT 2017). In many countries (such as Ethiopia), commodity agriculture is simultaneously linked to environmental and social challenges to improve agricultural sustainability (Barona et al. 2010; Bowman et al. 2012). Concerning the effectiveness of the sustainability paradigm in recent decades, civil society and voluntary governance mechanisms have become more important (Pye 2019). Integrated food security data will not measure food sovereignty's importance, and data will not take unfair practices and environmental harm into consideration. A large proportion of Ethiopians are subsistence farmers who neglect human rights and environmental protection, since they are deprived of their land, rights, and livelihoods (Jiren et al. 2020). In order to achieve the goal of national food security and reduce the emergency food aid required, rural farms and food sovereignty must improve their revenue with the objective of securing their lands in Ethiopia. Agricultural commodities can also change land use and land tenure in Ethiopia, as in many developing countries. While the commodification of agriculture can lead to the conversion of large tracts of land, price fluctuations after the introduction of a commodity to the market, due to competition in global markets, will lead to the conversion of subsistence land into commercial agriculture in some regions of Ethiopia. This is a serious threat to the sustainability of agricultural systems, food security, sustainable rural livelihoods, and land use conservation in Ethiopian regions (Jiren et al. 2020).

According to Moreda's (2018) finding, the focus on land tenure security, at least in the fields studied, might be misleading. Some existing concerns were also revealed, appearing to threaten landowners' tenure security (e.g., land rights conditions) that may have led to further investment in land conservation activities. The main problem, however, is latent rights with high levels of insecurity and conflict. There is a significant social malaise, unfortunate agrarian structure, and significant

pressure for land redistribution due to unsolved land tenure concerns, despite rapid economic development (Ege 2017). As Legesse et al. (2018) demonstrated, land is a fundamental asset of social, economic, and political sustainability, providing ecosystem services, sustainability, and accumulating richness for rural communities in developing nations, such as Ethiopia. Degradation of the land is among Ethiopia's biggest environmental problems. Among the key factors affecting the decision of farmers to invest in land management, for example, may be ownership rights to land. The literature recognizes that land rights play a significant role in land management. Melesse and Awel (2020) demonstrated that in many African countries, agricultural land use and tenure systems are characterized by subsistence production and a system of community land tenure. Tenaw et al. (2009) discussed questions relating to land tenure, land rights, agricultural productivity, and climate change impacts on the north-western region of Amhara. Their findings show that land shortages alone do not affect the production of agriculture; they affect the land tenure structure, the lack of proper land ownership, the lack of enhanced agriculture technology, and climate change. In most Sub-Saharan African countries, including Ethiopia, this is the main issue.

In another study by Ege (2017), land tenure insecurity in the post-certification of the Amhara region in Ethiopia was investigated. The results showed that ownership rights are thought to have improved, but the evidence is weak and contradictory. Land rentals are growing, and farmer insecurity is high. Legesse et al. (2018) looked at the determinants of the decisions of farmers investing in reforestation actions by concentrating on land tenure and property in northwestern Ethiopia. As they showed, land provides ecosystem services, generates livelihoods, and accumulates wealth in developing countries, such as ethics, and is a major factor in social, political, and economic sustainability. Their study found that land safety is among the key factors affecting the decision of farmers to intervene in reforestation. In Ethiopia and Tanzania, Melesse and Awel (2020) examined the tenure of land, gender, and productivity. They were found to be characterized by subsistence production and a communal system of land tenure in many African countries. They also showed that in general, tenure security affects the productivity of households positively and considerably and is marginally significant, especially for female heads of households.

Ethiopia experienced a strong political debate on the relevant land tenure policy based on Chala's (2016) study. Imperial rule fostered an extreme state intervention in complex tenure systems. However, the previous feudal system was actually abolished by Derg, and so, access to land was distributed by peasant associations. By declaring state ownership of land in the Federal Constitution, the incumbent

administration changed certain policies of the former regime. The principal source of controversy is the use of land as the instrument for sustainable development by the Ethiopian regimes. Getahun (2019) argued that, in the Derg regime, although it changed the land tenure from heterogeneous to a uniform land tenure system in the whole country, there was unfairness in allocating fertile land to peasants. However, some plots of fertile land were given to some peasants favored by the local state agents, such as by members of land allotting committees. As a result, the Derg regime's land reform failed to maintain tenure security in southern provinces and elsewhere in Ethiopia. Broadly speaking, while the 1995 constitution largely confirms state land ownership as a continuation of Derg policies, some specifications are also provided that seek to take into account the need for rural land and labor markets to rise (World Bank 2013; Wubneh 2018; Tura 2018).

Focusing on one of the main targets of SDG 15, i.e., "promoting the implementation of sustainable management of all types of landscapes", this study aims at discussing the underlying causes of socio-economic and policy-related factors affecting the sustainability of land tenure systems in Ethiopia because the effects of land tenure and land use policies on sustainability and productivity of agriculture, income, food security, and welfare are generally not well understood yet. The aim of this study is also to review and evaluate the performance of land tenure systems in Ethiopia. This study conducted a systematic review to explore theoretical considerations and overviews on current estimates related to land tenure security. The study used major databases (1990 and 2020), including Google Scholar, the Web of Science, and Science Direct. In addition, a comprehensive search was performed to download relevant papers, articles, and FAO and World Bank reports on land tenure system and land degradation in Ethiopia using the following keywords: 1) land tenure insecurity, 2) land use policy, 3) natural resources degradation, 4) land governance, 5) farmers' livelihood, and 6) land use decision making. Moreover, to support the main findings of the current study mainly discussed in the discussion section, other relevant papers were downloaded and reviewed. The systematic review was limited to journal-articles published in peer-reviewed international journals and reports written in English. The collected articles and reports address relevant issues linked to the six keywords and help provide the coherent reviewing role of land tenure institutions and strategies of farmers to secure land use rights. As shown in Figure 1, the data collection process was conducted in three steps. The first step was dealing with the collection of databases. In the second step, the (about 200) relevant articles/reports were downloaded based on the six keywords, as discussed above. In

the third step, the most relevant articles/reports (about 100) to the land tenure system and land degradation in Ethiopia were chosen.

**Figure 1.** Steps of performing a systematic review and data collection.

#### **2. Ethiopian Experiences in Land Tenure and Land Use Policy Issues**

#### *2.1. Land Tenure System in Ethiopia: A Historical Review*

It is believed that Ethiopia was founded in 980 BC (Tareke et al. 2002). However, due to the limited availability of information, the history of land tenure and land use policy can be classified into three periods only: the pre-1975, the Derg (1975–1991), and the modern (1991–present) land tenure and land use policies.

The system of land tenure in Ethiopia belonging to pre-1975 was among the most complex tenure systems in the world and has not been studied in detail (Hawando 1997; Fitsum et al. 1999). Among the aspects that created a wide range of land use and ownership are the geographical and cultural diversity and its history (IFPRI 2005). The system's dynamic nature played a critical part in hindering any significant steps towards a substantive reform. Such problems may also have contributed to a number of classifications and methods used to characterize this past system of land tenure. However, the most widely known types of tenure are *rist*/kinship, family, church, and state-owned structures (Melaku 2013). The *rist*/constitution tenure scheme was most common in the northern part of the country, while in most of the country, private tenure was prevalent.

The *rist* scheme was distinguished by the concept of accepting access to land (using and transferring rights without displacement) for all descendants of citizens with a shared ancestor and in an ambilineal manner (the right to inherit land from

father and mother). *Gult* is considered as a tenure system, which is often easy to confuse with *rist* as a variant or *rist*–*gult*. *Gult* is not the right to farm, but the right to tax the profits of property is the main distinction. Less landlessness and tenancy were among the positive qualities for private tenancy in this scheme, while land decline, division of land, and constant land access litigation were among its major problems in the literature (e.g., Chekol 2017; Binayaw 2015). The *rist* structure also became a significant factor mediating the power of peasantry through the government through the elites retaining these rights with its *gult* rights over landholders (Yigremew 2002). In the final days of the Imperial Empire, private tenancy was known as the most dominant system, affecting about 60% of the peasants and 65% of the country's population, and land was sold and exchanged under this scheme. Considerable land concentration, exploitation, and insecurity have categorized the private tenure system, which has led to student movements against the kingship of Derg (Fitsum et al. 1999).

The Derg land reform of 1975 is considered as a revolutionary move that abolished tenant–landlord relations in Ethiopia, mainly recognized by its slogan "*meret le'arashu!*" ("a land must be given to its farmer!"). The reform was intended to fundamentally alter past agricultural relations and land owners, promote agricultural productivity, create jobs, distribute soil, and increase rural incomes (Belay et al. 2014). The right to own land has been vested on the state since the agricultural reform in 1975. Farmers may access land through state-controlled farmers' associations. In peasant associations in which they live, farmers have the open-ended right to use land (the right to use the property of others), but it is subjected to the evidence that they have a permanent natural residence and a capacity for continuous agriculture and fulfilling administrative duties. In 1975, the "Public Property of Rural Land Proclamation" nationalized all rural property and set out to redeploy it to its farmers and organize farmers into cooperatives, thus removing exploitative landlord–owner ties with the imperial regime (Dejene and Teferi 1994; Binayaw 2015; Cochrane and Vercillo 2019).

The collectivization program was intensified by the Derg towards the end of the 1970s with the promotion of state-cooperatives and the establishment of large-scale state farms. State-cooperatives were to be formed through the merging of their land, draught animals, and agricultural machinery by members of a peasant association. Automatically, the head of the cooperative became the head of the peasant organization and was thus able to exert significant political power and control over all members of the association (Kebede 2002). Peasants should formally, at their free will, join state-cooperatives (Dessalegn 2004), but some studies report more vigorous organization implementation (Azeze 2002; Crewett and Korf 2008).

It is not always true that land tenure security can increase productivity in agriculture. A number of studies of African countries in the 1990s officially tested the nature and strength of the relationship between tenure security and farm performance (e.g., Kunz et al. (2016) in Gambia; Higgins et al. (2018) in Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda; and Delville (2010) in Kenya). Putting a few exceptions aside, land rights have not been identified as a significant factor in determining whether or not farmers make investments that improve land, use inputs that increase yields, obtain credit, or improve land productivity (Lawin and Tamini 2017). Lawin and Tamini (2017) claim that the most pronounced relationships were found in Rwanda, where the right to bequeath was the main factor of some types of land improvement. Rwandan parcels that could not be bequeathed were, under short-term arrangements, mostly rented or borrowed. The research concluded that yields were not affected in any significant way by the presence of land titles. These findings are contrary to the common notion that tenure and titling safety lead to higher yields. All in all, agricultural productivity is affected by many factors that could be beyond the security of land tenure. For Northeastern Ghana, Murtazashvili and Murtazashvili (2016) argue that the focus of politics alone on increasing property security does not lead to increased agricultural production. However, other factors such as a lack of budget, poor soil fertility, insufficient rainfall, outbreaks of pests and diseases, insufficient agricultural land, burning of shrubs, and excessive felling of trees are the most important factors in reducing productivity in agriculture.

In 1991, with the fall of Mengistu's military–socialist Derg, farm collectives were quickly dissolved, and land tenure changed limitedly, to the frustration of several foreign donor agencies. In November 1991, the Declaration of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia on Economic Policy led to the continuation of the Derg regime's land policy. Since the fall of the military socialist Derg regime in 1991, land policy in Ethiopia has been controversial (Chigbu et al. 2019); many case studies have been conducted on the land use system in different parts of Ethiopia. Next, the government launched a land certification program to grant land use rights in order to resolve land tenure issues at the end of the 1990s, while it tried to maintain the ownership of all lands (Fleskens et al. 2014). In 1995, a new federal constitution in favor of public ownership of land was adopted in Ethiopia. By this, the government eliminated land policy as an efficient variable to control and monitor the changing circumstances affecting the rural economy (Ali et al. 2017).

#### *2.2. Recent Changes in the Land Tenure System in Ethiopia*

Ethiopia's new land tenure policy continues to be seen as a fundamental concern. Researchers are increasingly arguing about this controversial issue to persuade the government to change land policy. Dejene and Teferi (1994) evaluated the current tenure system by considering the existence of a high level of insecurity regarding land. Land insecurity, in particular, is an obstacle to farmers' interests in the conservation of soil and other natural resources. They concluded that land tenure security should ensure access to land for vulnerable groups, including pastoralists and women.

The backbone of Ethiopia's land economy is smallholder agriculture. With few exceptions, the rights of smallholders' access to land have been largely preserved. However, the conditions and criteria for women and pastoralists' access to land are poor and not properly understood. As a result, access to land by gender, occupational, religious, and ethnic minorities is at risk and must be carefully controlled. Historically, there have been concerns that Derg reforms have eroded the division of resources. Despite the fact that it seems that after the reforms, these efforts to strengthen the rights of women in the land were complementary to the changes that give equal ownership to men and women, some discrimination has subsequently increased since the land reform (Kumar and Quisumbing 2015; Flintan 2010).

Another neglected, but relevant, aspect is land access on behalf of indigenous nomad tribes (pastoralists) and women. The way that nomadic populations (pastoralists) wander from place to place and occupy areas for a limited period of time makes it difficult for them to assert their territorial rights (Gilbert 2007; Abate et al. 2015). The victims of international law are nomads and, therefore, their specific claims need to be recognized. In most societies, such as non-indigenous individuals or minorities, indigenous nomads face double discrimination. Despite the gradual evolution and recent progress in the international land tenure rights of nomads, they are still seen as nomadic societies in their homelands at the national level (Makki 2018; Tamrat 2010).

In Africa, when privatized land tenures promptly fragment pasture and sustain losses in ecosystem service services, intensified livestock production by privatizing is often inconsistent with mobility strategy (Basupi et al. 2017). Greater vulnerability to livestock disease incidences, climate variability, and land degradation can, therefore, challenge the livelihood prospects of pastoralists in communal grazing areas. According to Yang et al. (2020), cooperative grassland management practices have led to considerably higher household incomes, better equality of gender, and more managed grasslands than individuals. Nevertheless, because of their long-term customary activities, many pastoralists chose different grassland management

practices. In general, a new reform of rural tenure has enabled pastoralists to choose different pastoral practices, and the promoted, large-scale cooperative pastoral practices benefit the socio-ecological pastoral system. The academic debate has limited knowledge of the historical development, land use patterns of pastoral landscapes, and the way in which historical perspectives are embedded in the political process. The link between several historical factors and the developments in pastoralist landscapes and patterns of land use is less well understood. The sustainability of current rangeland policies depends on this lack of empirical analyses for the evolution of problems in the municipal rangeland (Fernandez-Gimenez 2006; Basupi et al. 2017). In addition, the principles and methods for enforcing the land tenure system were included in the newly drafted Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) constitution. Researchers, such as Bruce et al. (1994) and Dessalegn (2003), argued that the EPRDF's land policy is neither applicable to the agrarian society in Ethiopia nor an incentive for farmers to invest and increase productivity more than ever before. The pro-government advocate Hussein (2001) analyzed the unfair practice of land redistribution in the Amhara region in 1997. He added details on the policy overtones and implementation without the consent of the majority of peasants to participate in the reallocation program. Since 1998, rural land registration and qualification programs have been introduced in different regions of Ethiopia. Protecting land ownership and strengthening land-use practices are the primary objectives of the land registration system. The first phase began in 1998 in the Tigray region, followed by the Amhara region in 2002 and the Oromia region in 2004, respectively. The second phase is underway in all regions of the country. Ethiopia's agricultural land registration system is among the world's largest land registration projects and is fully implemented (Deininger et al. 2008; Tigistu 2011). The land registration system in Ethiopia involves the right (title of registration) with the name of the rightful owner and object of the right. The implementation of land registration is a highly participatory process, with the majority of the land demarcation input from the local community (Tigistu 2011).

In imperial and modern Ethiopia, land use policy, the real source of power, remains at the core of a controversial political debate (Crewett and Korf 2008). There are two antagonistic arguments concerning land ownership rights, which are the basis of the debate. The government of Ethiopia continues to advocate state land ownership, whereby landowners are granted usufruct rights solely (Getahun and Lanen 2015). To protect rural farmers from selling their land to the rich, leaving them without land or a source of livelihood, the right to sell or mortgage the land is ruled out (Crewett and Korf 2008). The government builds its argument on the

basis of two principles of social and historical justice: (1) justice acknowledged as egalitarianism, ensuring equal access rights to such land for every farmer in need of agricultural land, and (2) historical justice, providing tenure security to Ethiopian farmers who have experienced land deprivation and land expropriation through different methods during the process (Crewett and Korf 2008; Hussein 2001).

According to Lavers (2018), there are complex and potentially explosive problems with ethnic and religious minority land rights. Pre-revolutionary land tenure systems in most of Ethiopia were the result of conquest land alienation and settlement by northern groups. Therefore, if there is a conflict with the local opinion or tradition, the government must maintain the right to protect ethnic minorities, women, and natural resources (Tura 2018). Lavers (2018), however, states that the truth is not quite so clear-cut. While state ownership of land continues to dominate land tenure, the establishment of ethnic federalism has direct consequences for land governance, particularly in terms of non-indigenous ethnic minorities. In addition, in many parts of the nation, non-customary tenure systems have maintained some influence.

#### *2.3. The Underlying Causes of Land Degradation in Ethiopia*

Land destruction was often listed as a major driver of environmental change and had a broad range of environmental and socio-economic consequences, mainly due to deforestation, for agriculture and settlement. Ethiopia experienced major famines in the 1970s and 1980s because of deforestation and subsequent loss of productive capacity (Bai et al. 2008). Ethiopia's annual forest loss rate from 1995 to 2010 was estimated at 141,000 ha, which is approximately an annual decrease of 1.1 percent of the total forest area (FAO 2010). Demand for domestic oil, expansion of farmlands, and overgrazing have been considered as the key drivers of deforestation in Ethiopia (Belay et al. 2014).

There were extreme land cover conversions in the Ethiopian highlands, mainly due to demographic pressure (high population growth and densities) and the resulting increase in food and household energy demand and the subsequent expansion of croplands and destruction of forests (Rosell et al. 2017; Getahun et al. 2013). In the central highlands of Ethiopia, there has been a major expansion of agricultural land and settlements over half of the last century, which has taken place at the expense of forests. Amsalu et al. (2007) recorded an 83% forest loss between 1957 and 2000, and Minta et al. (2018) recorded a 73% reduction in forest cover in the Dendi-Jeldu mountains of the central Ethiopian highlands in 1957 and 2014. Both authors link this forest loss to the expansion of agriculture, pastureland, and settlements as a

response to the scarcity of available and suitable land for cultivation. The same trend of deforestation was found in North Central Ethiopia, South Wollo (Rosell et al. 2017).

As a result of both rural–urban and urban–urban migration, population growth in the satellite cities surrounding Addis Ababa has increased in recent years (Lohnert 2017). In particular, the migration of Addis Ababa's urban people, who are finding job opportunities with the industries and developments in the urban fringes, has brought about major changes in land use. This indicates that urban growth and development cause vast deforestation ranges across major urban centers (Kasa et al. 2011; Mohammed 2015). The estimated cost of land loss associated with land use and land cover changes in Ethiopia is estimated at around USD 4.3 billion annually (Gebreselassie et al. 2016). According to Gebreselassie et al. (2016), in Ethiopia, the cost of rehabilitating the degraded land through land use and cover change was found to be around USD 54 billion over a 30-year duration. The land tenure, which will be addressed in the next section, is among many reasons for degradation (Chekol 2017).

As shown in Figure 2, there are three main levels for both land degradation and land improvement. The first level, drivers of land degradation, can be mediated and modified by the second level, the institutional environment. This process will/could lead to land improvement if the third level, land user resource allocation, is considered carefully. Land improvement and land degradation mitigation can result from a behavioral change of land users and their reallocation of resources (e.g., capital or time) to land improvement practices. The entire process will lead to land degradation, unless all these three levels are mediated and modified by a number of institutional programs on land tenure security.

**Figure 2.** Three main levels of land degradation and land improvement.

#### **3. The Challenge: Impacts of Land Tenure Insecurity on Natural Resources and Land Users**

#### *3.1. Land Degradation: Biodiversity Loss*

Land degradation has been characterized by a steady decrease in the land's productive potential, which can occur through any combination of related processes, such as soil erosion, soil nutrient depletion, biodiversity loss, and deforestation (Le et al. 2012). Some of Ethiopia's environmental challenges today include the relationship between the environment and development in general, the poor involvement of citizens, and community-based organizations in environmental protection activities (Le et al. 2014). Furthermore, poor land management practices coupled with a lack of understanding lead to the significant depletion of natural resources, such as forest loss, soil degradation, and the scarcity of water supplies (Bai and Dent 2008). Ethiopia has developed a variety of significant policies and strategies regarding the climate. However, the formulation of sound policies and plans alone is not an ideal solution, since the goals can only be accomplished if they are applied correctly (Hansen et al. 2013). While poor policy and strategy implementation remains a major constraint, some other policies and practices hinder the proper implementation of successful and sustainable resource management activities, such as investment policy or regional policies (Le et al. 2014).

As discussed by Gete (2015) and MoARD and WB (2007), despite the fact that tackling land degradation and biodiversity loss through restoring degraded natural resources (e.g., soil and forest) was a priority for the country, organizations dealing with natural resource management were frequently restructured. This process resulted and still results in a high turnover of staff, loss of institutional capacity leading to discontinuity of activities and initiatives, and loss of institutional memory. More importantly, the absence of participation in the management of resources has resulted in the rejection of central government policies, such as settlement and resettlement, reforestation and soil conservation campaigns, and tree cutting prohibition programs (Yosef et al. 2013). In addition, public sector land development efforts have been made with little consideration of traditional land users.

#### *3.2. Soil Erosion: Land Productivity Loss*

A key element in soil degradation is the process, which leads to a reduction or loss in the current or future productivity of land and the ability to use it under the effect of different natural or human factors (EPRS European Parliament Research Service). The loss of soil is among the most obvious factors that affect farmers'

livelihoods and also indirectly affects the livelihoods of people depending on the production of food by farmers. Soil erosion is highly sensitive to the effects of both human and natural conditions (Pimentel and Burgess 2013). Gully erosion is among the different forms of soil erosion across the globe and has an impact on the productivity of land (Ionita et al. 2015).

Among the major causes of soil degradation in Ethiopia is soil erosion. Berry et al. (2003) mention that the country's annual economic loss derived from soil degradation in the form of soil erosion and nutrient depletion is in the range of 10–11% of agricultural gross domestic product achieved by the country's highlands. Several recent studies (Yesuf et al. 2008; Tsegaye 2019) have estimated the annual cost of soil degradation related to soil erosion and the loss of agricultural and grassland nutrients to be around USD 106 million. The rapid population growth in Ethiopia has led to a decline in the supply of cultivable land and very high soil erosion rates (Essays UK 2013). Generally, the insecure land tenure system and the historic changes in land use in Ethiopia have had a major impact on the country's biodiversity, natural resources, and farmers' livelihoods, which will be discussed in the following sub-section (Tsegaye et al. 2019).

#### *3.3. Impacts on Farmers' Livelihoods: Low Income*

Land degradation poses environmental challenges and causes land productivity losses that, in turn, lead to the conversion of high-value biomes, particularly in countries with low-income, where most rural farmers rely on natural resources (Lal et al. 2014). Land degradation caused by an unstable land tenure system has negative implications for the protection of household food and directly reduces rural communities' livelihoods in Ethiopia. The initial effect of soil degradation is lower crop yields, resulting in increased rates of poverty among farm households (von Braun 2013). This poverty leads to less potential for land users to invest in sustainable land management practices and thus higher land degradation rates (Bai et al. 2008). It is important to understand the causes of land degradation and their interactions to determine the correct steps to address it.

Land tenure, as a security feature, has fundamental roles in the livelihoods of farmers. Secure land tenure can provide reasonably good markets with additional benefits and opportunities, including production, input, and financial markets (Baumgartner et al. 2015). Sound land ownership rights broaden the planning scope of agricultural entrepreneurs and make expensive advances in sustainable land management more practical and competitive with significant mid- to long-term benefits (von Braun 2013). It is essential to recognize that a fair and efficient rule of

law is a prerequisite for secure land tenure, such that the effect of the rule of law on sustainable land management supersedes that of land-right protection. Therefore, in middle-income and advanced economies, sustainable land management has a positive relationship with land tenure protection (Baumgartner et al. 2015).

#### **4. The Solution: Land Tenure Institutions and Access to Land**

#### *4.1. Strategies of Farmers to Secure Land Use Rights: Use, Control, and Transfer*

Policies and initiatives aimed at preventing and reversing land degradation have long suffered from the lack of a strong and clearly defined goal for directing action and designing tangible progress. A breakthrough agreement on the concept of land degradation neutrality (LDN) was reached between the parties at the UNCCD in October 2015. The LDN aims to mitigate the projected losses of land-based natural resources and associated ecosystem features and services with metrics that produce alternative benefits through strategies such as soil regeneration and sustainable land management (Kust et al. 2018). The primary scope of land degradation research is currently centered on assessment and monitoring based on various data sources, measures in mitigation and ecological restoration, estimation of key drivers using different techniques at different scales, or simulation of growth patterns and forecasts using quantitative models. Yue et al. (2016) suggest that land use form and quantity should meet human needs and be in accordance with the natural conditions. The work of Kust et al. (2018) indicates that LDN policies need to communicate closely with climate change adaptation plans. Countries have to perform a thorough assessment of land degradation for non-farming land in order to make appropriate and timely land degradation policy decisions.

Regimes regulating tenure rights include access to productive capital. It is essential that land is accessed and managed at the farm level. This is crucial for the livelihood, equity, and productivity of farmlands, especially in rural societies (Lipton et al. 2009). Changing the property right system means either changing the political structure or making substantial efforts by the current regime. Ethiopian agriculture cannot produce enough to feed the country's fast-growing population. A brief historical analysis reveals that up to the end of the 1950s, Ethiopia was self-contained in the production of staple food and net food export (Belay and Manig 2004). More importantly, the development of the Ethiopian economy, in general, and that of the agricultural sector, in particular, have been affected by a range of policy factors, including Ethiopia's top-down approach, insufficient legislation, incorrect priorities, and poorly defined property rights. Highland farmers believe that the adoption of soil conservation measures is a pre-condition to achieve long-term land

use certificates in the sloping lands. Another strategy is to buy the farmland through "owner financing". A contract of sale of installments or land is a contract under which the seller of the land (original owner) agrees to pay the selling price to a new buyer. The new buyer enters the ground and begins to pay the seller/owner directly on the basis of an agreed interest rate and other conditions (Belay and Manig 2004).

#### *4.2. Implications of the Land Tenure System in Sustainable Land Use*

Land tenure potentially impacts sustainable land use by improving incentives for production and increasing soil and water conservation investments. Thus, changes in access to farm holdings and the ability to exclude others from receiving benefits accruing from land result in resource use changes. This, in turn, affects the demand for labor and capital, productivity, and consequently, income and sustainability (Binayaw 2015). Land use policies are generally considered to have significant impacts on investments, but this might not be a universal formula applicable to all contexts. For instance, in Kenya, Deininger et al. (2006) found no empirical evidence proving that land titling enhances credit markets, land markets, and investments. A secure land tenure system provides countries with a framework to eliminate poverty by ensuring land tenure and ensuring stability on the land market (Holden and Otsuka 2014). Since economic development is among the common goals of many developing countries, such as Ethiopia, one might argue that Ethiopia's current policy of introducing an urban cadastral system is advancing the level of economic development (Adem et al. 2020). Many land use planning programs were introduced in Ethiopia, but with varying degrees of success. Each of these (pilot) projects included cadastral device implementation trials, but these were not complementary to earlier projects. This has resulted in overlaps, redundancies, and ineffective and incoherent cadastral structures across the nation. The persistent absence of a project progress assessment during each process was among the most remarkable characteristics of these projects. In other words, the strengths and limitations of the previous projects are not analyzed regularly, and the methods used in initial projects are not being organized. On the other hand, international organizations should create standards and metrics that can perform these tasks, but such standards are not being implemented. For example, the FIG proposed a set of criteria for developing and accessing the security of tenure (EFQM 2019). As shown in Table 1, the important factors/issues relevant to land degradation and the institutionalization of land tenure include participation, inappropriate land use system, population pressure, and institutional failures. This table shows how these factors lead to land degradation and how they could be avoided using relevant measures (strategies). As

an example, an inappropriate land use system (e.g., deforestation, and overgrazing) could be avoided through a forest relations strategy and regulations on grazing management by implementing forestry and plant control policies and legislation.


**Table 1.** Significant issues and focus areas in the combat against land degradation and institutionalization of land tenure.

Source: Berry et al. (2003).

#### **5. Discussion**

#### *5.1. Natural Resource Policies and Land Use Decision Making*

The determinants of land tenure include changes in vegetation cover and species spatial distribution, impacts on climate change, the effects of long-term human activities, and land management practices variations (Kakembo 2001). Land tenure is often cited in land transfers and improvements as a way of informally obtaining and owning property by citizens and businesses and improving tenure protection and alternative land usage, as observed in African countries, such as Ethiopia (Mwangi et al. 2018). As stated by Zinda and Zhang (2017), land tenure regimes shape how families use labor and other means of subsistence. Within a

given tenure system, existing households with changing trade-offs shift land–labor relationships over the household life cycle. Therefore, the legacies of land distribution after de-collectivization, in particular, secure access to land and restrictions on land transfers, can create separate patterns connecting livelihood strategies to household life cycles in Ethiopia alongside the growing market exchange of labor and production. Land tenure underlies some of the incremental uses of land and includes farmers' shift cycles, turning forests into areas first used for annual and subsequently for perennial crops (Wannasai and Shrestha 2008). Therefore, shifting land ownership in African countries will alter the landscape pattern and ruin mature forests for the production of modern agriculture. According to Gedefaw et al. (2020), land tenure patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa are rapidly changing. They argued that extensive changes in land tenure have occurred in some Ethiopian regions over the past three decades, such as Gozamin. These changes occurred primarily in agricultural lands and then moved to grasslands and forests. Based on the findings of this study, land degradation in Ethiopia has significant socio-economic and environmental tradeoffs, and we need to understand barriers within the social, economic, and political contexts. Kassa et al. (2016) argued that transformation of crop forests and grain-based forests affects biodiversity; soil fertility; soil loss; and economic, social, and cultural conditions of the Ethiopian people. In addition, the loss of natural forest cover in various areas threatens the sustainable agricultural practices and livelihoods of the local community. In another study by Hammad and Tumeizi (2012), it was found that the deterioration of land is a natural and socio-economic cause–effect phenomenon that is common across the globe.

The socio-economic degradation of land in Azerbaijan calls for efforts to improve farmers' awareness of the environment, environmental standards, and legislation, and for the reduction in land mismanagement, diversity of tenure has been observed in common occupation regimes at different land levels in Ethiopia. As a result, it can have different effects on management activities, such as forest cover and land use management. Asaaga et al. (2020) showed that different components of tenure security influence the adoption of non-consistent methods across the various components of tenure security or specific, sustainable land management procedures in African countries such as Ghana. According to the results, in Ethiopia, the relationship between tenure security and sustainable land management investments is also mediated by other important non-tenure factors (including access to credit, modernized agricultural inputs, and targeted extension service support). The results also correspond to and are confirmed in the studies by Kamwi et al. (2017), Walmsley and Skleniˇcka (2017), and Um (2020). These findings, therefore, suggest that Ethiopian

land tenure policy will produce a range of positive and negative outcomes relating to investment in land conservation. This indicates the need to think more deeply about prioritizing sustainable land management interventions, especially in emerging areas in Ethiopia.

Overall, these findings are important for redesigning context-specific and appropriate land-use policies to address barriers to Ethiopia's sustainable land management. Furthermore, according to the findings, particular attention should be paid to tangible local incentives for taking action against land degradation. Due to land degradation, consolidating land ownership mitigates certain economic losses and costs (Nkonya et al. 2016). In confirmation of these findings, we can refer to the results of the study by Barbier and Hochard (2018). They believe that land is among the few productive assets that rural poor people own and that nearly all of these households are engaged in agriculture. In low-income countries, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the rural poor population in agricultural degradation increased over the period 2000–2010. Although degradation threatens the survival of the poor population, this is a complex and economically, socially, and environmentally important interaction. This also limits the impacts of economic growth and economic reforms on poverty reduction.

The erosion of soil is a key cause of land degradation in various parts of the world. This concerns especially developing countries where soil erosion through water seriously endangers farm productivity and food security. In Ethiopia, precipitation is erosive, and soil erosion by water is a major environmental challenge (Fenta et al. 2017). The issue is particularly important because heavy rainfall, steep roots, and agricultural practices that reduce soil protection can lead to potentially high erosion rates (Ebabu et al. 2019). The soil erosion threats and trends were linked to land use and related land tenure practices, such as land fragmentation, especially in agricultural communities. This level of understanding indicates the importance that societies assign to their natural resources in their decision-making processes. The productive land tenure system shows a clear trend for improving resource management. By analyzing the findings of related studies, we learned that the enhancement of forests and the weeding of land biomes have been productive, primarily through participatory community engagement. This underlines the value of collective governance and by-laws that appear to be more effective when implemented and enforced at the local level. These results are consistent and in line with the findings of studies by Ntihinyurwa et al. (2019), Uddin et al. (2018), Terefe et al. (2020), and Sklenicka (2016).

#### *5.2. Land Governance and Land Use Decision Making*

Main aspects defining land governance include how land rights are defined, exchanged, and transformed; how public oversight of land use and land management is performed; how state-owned land is managed; and how information on land ownership is collected, controlled, and made publicly available (Hailu 2016). Land tenure, or access and rights to land, is essential to sustain people's livelihoods. The insecurity of perceived and de facto land tenure leads farmers through farming and non-farm job opportunities to explore alternative strategies and avenues for food supply. Therefore, from a political perspective, it is important to emphasize that people's livelihoods must be given priority in land governance, thus extending the current positioning of land solely as a pathway for agricultural or conservation production (Keovilignavong and Suhardiman 2020).

The way land governance is implemented can greatly influence how agricultural and non-agricultural land is used and whether long-term sustainability investments are being made. The land registration and certification of smallholder farms and communal land, for example, can encourage land managers to engage in higher value and more productive land uses (Byamugisha 2014). Secure rights can provide incentives for longer-term investments to enhance land productivity, protect local communities, and safeguard the environment in general (Falk 2016). Likewise, the level of clarity of land tenure on forestlands can affect the willingness of land managers to invest in future forest productivity or conversion to other land uses. Finally, overlapping rights and claims can create conflicts (Hailu 2016) and greater uncertainty for investors (Deininger and Ali 2007). Land management should enable different stakeholders to participate in government decisions and ensure the safety of their livelihoods (Azadi 2020). However, depending on the government's decision-making process, land governance could be poor or strong. So, land governance is a prerequisite in rural areas of developing countries for economic growth and poverty reduction (Bessa and Brunori 2017). In Ethiopia, the government is supporting the gradual reform of land administration and tenure within the country's system of state ownership of land. For example, the last five-year plan committed to scale up second-level land certification in the highlands, and innovative, pilot-level projects of community certification of land, for rangeland communities, for example, are underway (Woldegiorgis et al. 2018). However, gaps in land governance remain. A recent assessment highlights important challenges requiring urgent attention, such as strengthening rights to forest (Okoli 2019) and common lands (Ma Rhea 2018), increasing the effectiveness of rural land use regulations (Van der Sluis et al. 2019), improving public land management (Long and Qu 2018), making large land transfers

to private investors more transparent and competitive, and strengthening public provisions of land information (Hailu 2016).

The common land resources grant "common access" to everyone and are used for various economic gains, as the name indicates. They include the communal land, community pastures, forestry, wildlife, wastelands, common dumping, thresholds, banks, and river beds governed by social conventions and legal rules. Forests supply forests. Agriculture and social forestry are also used to support livestock pastures. In general, they represent a large proportion of poor Ethiopian farmers' income, socio-economic growth, and livelihoods. The steady fall in agricultural incomes has caused small farms to become inviable for farming practices. Thus, most farmers use these resources to add to their income. Some farmers depend on them for their livelihoods. Therefore, lands that are used collectively have a great impact on the sustainability of environmental and social systems because they can provide natural resources in the event of various crises and be used as an alternative source when crops are damaged (Dwomoh and Wimberly 2017). Land tenure and environmental conditions are closely related: land tenure can promote land use practices that harm the environment, or it can serve to enhance the environment (von der Mühlen et al. 2020).

The findings of Fonjong et al. (2016) indicate that the government; leaders; and, to a certain extent, elites have played a central role in the formal and informal processes of providing investors with land. Nevertheless, both processes neglect women and communities affected because there are no mechanisms for holding actors, particularly women, to account for their livelihood on land. It is, therefore, essential to have a legislative framework that makes the process transparent and promotes responsibilities and gender inclusion. Given that, in general, insecurity in land tenure is a major limiting factor in Ethiopia and in developing countries for sustainable use, the government has introduced a Rural Land Certification Program to ensure land tenure. As shown by Mengesha et al. (2019), Alemu et al. (2020), and Abi et al. (2018), as soon as their land was certified, the majority of farmers in Ethiopia practiced sustainable land use. Land certification, therefore, makes a major contribution to sustainable land use. Since access to land for developing countries, such as Ethiopia, is a fundamental socio-economic requirement for sustainable agriculture and forestry, tenure security is key to development in poor populations and is essential to achieve sustainable development goals. Therefore, the rights of land tenure as the entry point for the empowerment of the poor should be considered. The security of land tenure is currently applied in Ethiopia with land registration and land certification. This helps improve sustainable land use practices. This enables other countries, particularly

developing countries, to learn from this achievement and emphasize land tenure rights for their country's development and sustainability (Rampa et al. 2020).

In fact, property ownership and tenure security are fundamental factors and are a good start for sustainable land management practices. Nevertheless, a policy on land use in order to implement sustainable land use practices should be developed. The land degradation and deforestation problem can otherwise not be resolved (Hendriks et al. 2019). In turn, this could threaten agricultural output and exacerbate the country's poverty situation (Lencucha et al. 2020). Moreover, the experts and local people have a weak tie to the plantations of tree plants. Practices and technology are most often developed using a top-down approach without local citizens being involved. Sustainable land use and sustainable development, in general, cannot lead to this situation (Liu and Ravenscroft 2017). Indigenous local people's knowledge should be integrated with scientific expert knowledge to improve sustainable land use and boost agricultural output (Adade Williams and Shackleton 2020). Most of Ethiopia's legal documents, including the constitution itself, stress the need and value of public involvement in natural resource governance (Gebreamanuel 2015). However, the literature warns that such fundamental freedoms cannot be expected to be followed because the decision-making power of the public is significantly undermined by policymakers. The ECA (Economic Commission for Africa) (2002) reported that current land policies have failed to achieve planned outcomes due to a lack of public participation and interaction, as it is structured using a centralized and top-down approach. According to the relevant studies (Gebreamanuel 2015; Meshesha et al. 2012), these government policies have resulted in a growing degradation of land.

#### **6. Conclusions and Policy Implications**

In conclusion, this study proposes some ways to tackle the problems arising from the insecure land tenure system in Ethiopia. The main problem found is the conversion of land classified as forest, protected area, or wetland to other uses affecting the biodiversity and environmental health in Ethiopia. To safeguard land, providing multiple ecosystem services and public goods, the official demarcation, mapping, and registration of public lands must accelerate. This must be aligned with a computerized land information system that supports public access. Performance gaps in allocating land for agricultural investments, a key driver of land use change, must be closed. Notable necessary improvements include increasing the institutional effectiveness of multiple land investment institutions, seeking comprehensive consultations and new

benefit sharing models with local communities, and encouraging clear and enforceable land contract clauses to safeguard water, biodiversity, and other natural resources.

The fact that the threats deriving from the commodification of agriculture and the competition from global markets are not mentioned as major challenges for the development of rural communities indicates that the sustainability paradigm is weak. Sustainability pathways and goals set by the UN are a weak sustainability paradigm for a poor, developing country, such as Ethiopia. This is because the UN sustainability pathways fail to consider the peculiarity of the Ethiopian context, where the majority of the population live in poverty (Worku et al. 2018), in rural inaccessible areas (Kea et al. 2018), with low levels of school enrollment (Ramachandran 2017), and very low access to capital (Manlosa et al. 2019) and investments (Haile et al. 2019). Although Ethiopia has enacted laws to achieve a sustainable agricultural market, considerable gaps remain in applying and enforcing these laws within the context of food security and the commodification of agriculture.

More importantly, to achieve more sustainable food and land use, a functioning monitoring system is required to enforce the existing legislative provisions or propose new ones. This, in turn, will require further studies on the current capabilities and practices within governmental structures and the awareness of landholders to apply land laws that support a sustainable food and land use system. The small farmers of Ethiopia play a significant role not only in feeding a large segment of the country's population but also in contributing to food security. There is, therefore, an urgent need to promote strong rural economies in rural areas of the country, empowering and renovating small-scale productive agriculture. This scales down the tide of out-migration from rural regions and creates adequate employment opportunities and strong foundations for food security. In this way, stronger sustainability paradigms, such as food sovereignty or agro-ecology, are more capable of fully addressing the sustainability needs of a developing country, such as Ethiopia. Although Ethiopia has enacted laws to achieve social and environmental objectives, considerable gaps remain in applying and enforcing these laws within the context of land allocation decisions. Expanding access to customized agricultural extension services for female farmers; increasing women's access to key inputs, such as seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides; building women's assets and improving their access to credit; and other gender reforms could support the transition towards a sustainable food and land use system. It is also essential to monitor smallholder commercialization closely in order to detect unintended risks that can lower nutritional outcomes or widen gender gaps within households. Land degradation is a common problem in Ethiopia and has a devastating effect on the socio-cultural and environmental settings of the

region. The findings revealed that major causes include rapid population growth, extreme soil erosion, deforestation, low vegetative coverage, and unbalanced crop and livestock production. To manage land loss, conservation policies have concentrated on physical management mechanisms (such as soil erosion) and stable land tenure systems throughout the past. Removing bottlenecks in land administration and strengthening land and resource security can create incentives for more sustainable land and resource management. Improved land administration results in economic and social returns. Future studies on improving low price soil fertility applications and the improvement of environmentally friendly or sustainable farming methods could help in improving land use. Policymakers should consider the above-mentioned points and consider the effective application of the laws.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, H.A.; Writing the original draft, H.A., S.M.M., H.M., S.B., D.D.D., and D.T.; Resources, H.M., D.D.D., and D.T.; Review and editing, S.M.M., M.L., P.L., and S.B. All authors have read and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research has not received any external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** This manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors. The criteria for authorship have been met. The authors also do not have any financial interest or any other conflict of interest. The manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libelous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal. Furthermore, the authors point out that the data file is supplied for closer examination.

#### **References**


© 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **New Types of Land Ownership to Sustain Life on Land**

**Insa Theesfeld and Jarmila Curtiss**

#### **1. Introduction**

Sustainable Life on Land, the fifteenth UN Sustainable Development Goal, calls for protecting, restoring and promoting sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, including agricultural subsystems. Related to agricultural production, Targets 3 and 5 of SDG 15 are particularly relevant. Target 5 regards "taking urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species" (Wood et al. 2018; Blicharska et al. 2019). The need for such action is as critical in Europe as it is in other regions with intensive farming and industrialized agriculture (Dudley and Alexander 2017). Besides the loss of biodiversity, the European agricultural sector faces severe challenges of farmland degradation (Panagos et al. 2018; Panagos et al. 2016; Panagos et al. 2019; EEA 2020). Therefore, in our inquiry into newly emerging organizations governing agricultural land resources, we consider their contribution also to Target 3 of SDG 15, "Combat land degradation, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world".

Various kinds of agricultural farming practices, notably ecological or regenerative farming, but also no-till farming practices and integrated pest management, which emphasize soil protection and the growth of healthy crops with the least possible disruption to agroecosystems, share these target goals as well. However, as these practices come at costs to farmers, they are adopted less broadly than socially desired. Therefore, fighting land degradation and protecting biodiversity in connection with the agricultural use of land have, for a long time, been the subject matter of political debates and interventions (European Commission 2006, 2020). Agri-environmental schemes (AES) under the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union are an example of such political efforts. Nevertheless, even this most widespread mechanism to encourage farmers with financial compensation to engage in more sustainable practices has been assessed rather critically. Hardy et al. (2020), for example, evaluated the effectiveness of these measures as rather weak as half of the schemes have not increased species richness. To increase their effectiveness, Fleury et al. (2015)

suggested that local collective actions and participative governance are required to complement and support the AES.

The notion of the benefits of a natural resource participatory governance is also supported by the commons literature that points to the particularity of natural resource management. For example, Basurto et al. (2013) referred to natural resource governance arrangements as being responsible for conservation behavior and success. More cooperative forms are thought to be more conducive to sustainable natural resource use. Further, in the area of land tenure, the institutional shift from private (individual) to collective property rights to land has long been asserted as a way of improving incentives to use land in a more societally desirable and sustainable way (Bromley and Hodge 1990). The wide range of land governance arrangements emerging across and within European regions provides evidence of the ongoing institutional shift that may reflect the diverging motives of alternative governance formations. The joint and community-supported land governance arrangements subject to this study could be expected to more likely follow motives such as resource conservation, sustainable management and restoration.

However, cooperative land governance has been discussed in the recent literature as only one potential mode of the ecological transition of land use. Other measures such as knowledge transfer, supporting new entry into farming and farm succession, access to land or changing symbols of farmers' identity have also been pointed to as potential facilitators to achieving the Life on Land SDG. Carlisle et al. (2019), for instance, identified stagnant farm succession and barriers for new entrant farmers who are more likely to adopt agroecological practices with more diversified cropping and livestock systems as barriers to be eliminated. To achieve this, they suggested pushing the role of ecologically skilled farmers and less farming intensity that would reduce the harmful use of non-renewable resources.

The positive role of new entrants into farming for achieving the Life on Land SDG has been highlighted in several other studies. For instance, Zagata and Sutherland (2015) found new entrants into farming to be more interested in and responsive to environmental issues. Correspondingly, they represent a disproportionate number of organic farmers, particularly in Western Europe, where they achieve greater environmental outcomes (ibid.). Another role of new entrants into farming was found in their potential to change symbols and the inherited farming identity (Sutherland and Calo 2020). Farm identity means that farmers want to demonstrate a certain role performance, such as weed-free fields. According to Sutherland and Calo (2020), this kind of inherited farming identity represents another barrier to achieving the Life on Land SDG, as it might hinder the ecological transition of farming. To get

rid of such barriers, symbols need to change, and according to Sutherland and Calo (2020), new entrance into farming might be the time to question these symbolic values. There are also several studies supporting that farmers' age relates to views on sustainability (Comer et al. 1999; Vanslembrouck et al. 2002). However, Zagata and Sutherland (2015) questioned the usefulness of concentrating on age (i.e., being young) as a factor of more sustainable farming, promoting the factor of new entry.

Nevertheless, to contribute to long-term sustainability goals, entrant farmers require support mechanisms in order to remain in farming. They need exchange platforms and political market support mechanisms as well as access to land, facilitated, for example, by the cooperative governance forms considered in this contribution (Sutherland and Calo 2020). The role of knowledge as a factor of the adoption and development of more ecological farming practices, particularly for entrant farmers, was assessed by Calo (2018). He pointed out that extension and educational programs for entrant farmers do often not answer to their needs. However, even well-trained and successful farmers with environmental ambitions, such as protecting biodiversity, face structural challenges such as access to land or securing product markets. Thus, to facilitate the ecological SDG 15, educational programs may need, beside mediating entrepreneurial knowledge, to include tools for dealing with the above-mentioned structural challenges. With relevant training, farmers promoting environmentally friendly practices could better enter farming and stay successful in business (Calo 2018).

Despite knowledge transfer, access to land and successful farm succession all being critical conditions for adaptive changes and an ecological transition of land use, without land tenure security, these changes are further unlikely to take place. For instance, Calo (2020) stressed the relation of land tenure distribution and the fight against biodiversity loss. He pointed out that the power to decide on land is inevitably intertwined with the capacity to adapt. This is why a core challenge of meeting the SDG on Sustainable Life on Land is the way land property rights and markets are structured. The socio-legal commitments to private property and the current interest in farmland as a financial asset suggest that a change to more sustainable land use practices will require land governance innovations. Therefore, to understand the progress towards and potentials of achieving SDG 15, it is important to study the emerging forms of land ownership.

In the following, we present unique developments of ownership to land in Germany. In Germany and other European regions, we particularly observe a growth in community- and civil society-supported (community-supported hereafter) organizations of farmland ownership that are mobilizing financial resources for

joint land acquisition and promoting delivery of the ecological targets. Some of the endeavors may appear in a way similar to crowdfunding initiatives (Behrendt et al. 2018) or impact investing (Höchstädter and Scheck 2015), where investees do not seek competitive returns on their investments, which, however, result in innovative land governance arrangements. These aim to control resource access, but even more normatively to define the use of land (Bahner et al. 2012; Bahner 2015). Their initiators and supporters often perceive land as commons (Fabjanˇciˇc 2016; Bahner et al. 2012) and thus ultimately aim at withdrawing land from future market exchange. Their driving belief is that sustainable use of land cannot be achieved when ownership of land is private (individual) and is directly linked to profit- or production-maximizing endeavors (ibid.). Instead, ecologically and socially sustainable use of land is perceived to be best achieved within a "steward-ownership" model with clear criteria and social practices stipulated by a larger community (members or the public). Some community-supported land organizations form in tandem with joint farming communities and aim at environmentally sustainable communal living. Common to all is their self-initiated ecological and also often social value added.

Having described the general impediments to and possible factors of adaptive change and ecologic transition in line with the Sustainable Life on Land SDG, we identified the role and unique potential of the emerging community-supported land organizations, especially if they also adopt the above-described measures such as targeting new entrants into farming or facilitating knowledge generation and transfer. In this chapter, we inquire into the scope of the emergence and diversity of these organizations. In doing so, we respond to the following question: What are the governance interventions of key land commoning efforts in Germany? More specifically, we ask whether such forms of joint farmland ownership are driven by motives congruent with SDG 15 and form governance structures and rules of cooperation with farmers or farming communities that support their achievements.

Based on a German-wide scoping study, we will first introduce the diversity of legal forms of organizations that support such new forms of community-supported land ownership in Germany. This will provide a first perspective on the different legal requirements and opportunities to steer and restrict the property rights to (i) the use of land of the engaged farmers and (ii) the returns of the investees. It will help to assess the formal opportunities to secure ecological farming practices. Second, we will show the geographical dispersion of the partner farms in Germany. This will provide a first indication of the general role such new forms could play as a focal point for social innovation with an ecological impact (Moore et al. 2012; Westley and McConnell 2010; Kunze 2015). Case studies of two forms of community-supported farmland ownership will exemplify the motives and governance structures for the ecological conditions as well as cost–benefit distribution among stakeholders making such structures possible. We will conclude with opportunities such organizational forms could bear for the fulfillment of SDG 15 and how they can be supported.

#### **2. New Forms of Governing Land Ownership and Use**

Community-supported organizations of land ownership can be found in various legal forms under the German business and corporate law. Due to the previously reported organizations' aim to mobilize societal support (Bahner et al. 2012; Rüter et al. 2013), we assumed their broad social outreach and thus active online presence that allowed us to base our scoping analysis on an online search. We created a German-wide sample that covers the wide spectrum of the legal forms and organizational constellations. The online search followed a deeper analysis of the organizations' available documents. Only those organizations were considered in which the providers of financial capital support ecological outcomes without expecting (a) full financial returns or (b) other forms of capitalizing on their investment.

To measure the actual impact on ecology (such as humus content or soil erosion data), a long-term dynamic study with ecological indicators would be needed. However, the static approach at hand allows offering a good indication about the opportunities to shift the agricultural production towards haltering biodiversity loss and sustain soils by certain conditions farmers need to agree on in exchange for receiving the option to lease land plots or to access land through partnerships with community-supported organizations that act as stewards.

#### *2.1. Organizational Diversity and Outreach*

There are six different legal organizational forms (excluding the group of "others") of how community-supported organizations of farmland ownership appear in the current agricultural sector (Figure 1). Within the 56 organizations which we studied, we found 31 agricultural homesteads officially registered with a publicly beneficial pursuit under three legal forms. These are publicly beneficial limited liability companies (LLCs), registered associations and foundations. Checking for their outreach, these organizations are represented in rural areas with one homestead location. In contrast, as shown in Figure 2, the BioBoden Cooperative, for example, provides a network of 68 partner farms spread across the whole of Germany.

**Figure 1.** Legal forms of community-supported organizations of land ownership. Source: Graphic by authors.

Depending on the legal form of the organization that constitutes the new community-based land ownership, the individual supporters (shareholders/members/ investors) do not necessarily come from the rural areas where the actual farming takes place. People can invest in agricultural land funds, become a member of a soil cooperative, get financially engaged in an association or become a stockholder of a stock company without regional ties. Although we talk about new community-supported organizations of land ownership, the capital providers/supporters do not actually become land owners registered in the German land registry. Formally, the associations, foundations, corporations, partnerships or cooperatives own and manage the land on behalf of the investors and communities.

#### *2.2. Partner Farms and the Ecological Target Delivery*

The partner farms, who are supported by such new organizations of land ownership through long-term rental relationships and rental rates often below market rates, have to follow various ecological guidelines, ranging from broad aims of eco-farming to directly specifying production procedures. Thus, de facto the partner farms do deliver the ecological target. By target delivery, we refer to the tenants' contribution to Targets 3 and 5 of SDG 15, primarily to preserving biodiversity and to combating land degradation. The partner farms are mostly individual farms of various legal forms, but also farming communities or farm managing consumer cooperatives.

The spatial distribution of the partner farms exemplified for the registered cooperatives in Figure 2 shows their geographic outreach. The distribution shows a German-wide land governance model with an environmental orientation.

**Figure 2.** Geographic distribution of partner farms ofland cooperatives. Source: graphic by authors created with ESRI Deutschland. **Note:** The individual community-based cooperatives are two consumer group-owned cooperatives, *Kartoffelkombinat* and PlantAge, and the ecovillage community cooperative Sieben Linden.

#### **3. Case Studies of Community-Supported Land Ownership Delivering Ecological Targets**

Two case studies will exemplify the new types of governing land ownership, which follow the principle of community-supported organizations of land ownership *grund-stiftung am Schloß Tempelhof* (a foundation) and *Kulturland Cooperative*. Given the high diversity of organizations of community-supported land ownership as

presented in Section 2.1, these two organizations cannot represent typical cases. We, instead, followed a purposive case selection illustrating expansive influential organizational types. We assume these land governance forms will influence the community-supported land organizations' landscape in the future. The case studies are based on qualitative interviews with initiators and active representatives of the organizations as well as on in-depth qualitative research of the organizations' websites and available online documents, such as the statutes and annual reports, and a review of previous descriptive studies.

Both selected cases represent bottom-up self-help initiatives identifying collective land ownership as a means to achieving their ecological objectives. The first case depicts a development where parts of the civil society, based on their motivation to support a fair distribution and sustainable use and preservation of basic natural resources—including land—get engaged. The second responds to developments in the land market and down-stream market segments perceived as threats to more sustainable—organic and locally embedded—farming. The two case study organizations thus differ in their founding sparks. The first stems from a civil society movement forming a community, while the second one was initiated by farmers. Respectively, we will call them "community-initiated" and "farmer-based" organizations.

Another common aspect to both organizations that importantly shapes their mission is their perception of the resource land as an Allmende (Commons) that should not be governed under a private property regime (Netting 1976; Yussefi-Menzler 2015). Recent developments in the land markets denoted by growing competition and soaring land prices prioritized land acquisition in the organizations' development agenda and unveiled the need for innovative instruments to expand their models through broader societal support.

In the following, we present the two case study organizations and the different governance structures they set up to facilitate their partner farms or farming communities to combat land degradation and to sustain biodiversity as well as to gain societal support for land acquisition.

#### *3.1. Community-Initiated Case: Grund-Stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof (Foundation) and Community (Cooperative) Schloss Tempelhof*

The charitable foundation *grund-stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof* was established in 2010. Its headquarters is in Kreßberg, located in the Jagstregion, a rural area in Southern Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. It was founded by a community of 20 people organized in a cooperative, *Schloss Tempelhof*, who jointly purchased land and property in the village of Tempelhof for 1.5 million euros in

December 2010.<sup>1</sup> Perceiving land as a commons, the cooperative placed the purchased 32 ha in the foundation *grund-stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof* with the aim to ensure its withdrawal from the land market, and thus to avert future ownership transfer and to promote its long-term sustainable use. The cooperative leased the land back on a long-term basis to retain the user rights. Its 12-member working group for agriculture produces organic food for the community and a contractually linked group of consumers and sells surplus in the local market. Since its establishment, *Schloss Tempelhof* as a cooperative and a self-organized (ecological) village has grown from 20 to 150 inhabitants. Agricultural activity represents nowadays around 30% of its total turnover (Jacobson and Urbain 2018).

The community considers the foundation *grund-stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof*, the owner of the land, as the "guardian" of its visions. It defines the use of land according to socio-ecological criteria promoting sustainability and other broader objectives: "The intention of the Foundation founders is to promote cultural sites, institutions/personalities that/who *protect, preserve and develop our natural foundations of life*, *our environment with all its creatures*, maintain their health and health of the population, care for people and build up solidarity network structures, which enable and encourage a dignified coexistence of the people in self-determination and self-responsibility. A particular concern of the foundation is *to promote the realization that land is not a commodity*, but a gift from the earth" (foundation's statutes in the version dated 25 May 2015). The foundation fulfills specific ecological objectives of nature protection, including promotion of biodiversity, landscape management, plant breeding or research in areas of soil regeneration and increasing humus content (grund-stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof 2019).

To increase its outreach, the foundation opened up to communities that share these objectives and that want to secure agricultural land for permanent (long-term) use in congruence with the foundation's mission. The foundation offers communities the opportunity to lodge their land in their own foundation fund under the umbrella of the *grund-stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof*. The foundation currently accommodates three funds:

• *Gemeinschaft Schloss Tempelhof eG* (since 2010).

<sup>1</sup> In view of the German Land Transaction Act, farmers enjoy preemption rights in land sale transactions, while non-agricultural market actors are permitted to acquire land only if no farmer is interested in the land purchase at equal conditions (further more specific regulations apply). The Schloß Tempelhof community was considered an eligible buyer in view of the Real Property Transactions Act, since farming the land was one of the main intended long-term economic activities of the cooperative.


These communities (cooperatives) transfer their land ownership to the foundation and likewise lease the property back. The lease relationships are regulated by a long-term lease contract for 99 years obliging the communities to use the land in accordance with the foundation's statutes. The communities pay annual rent (*Erbpacht*) that is allocated to their fund within the foundation and that represents financial resources to be used for various charitable projects carried out by the respective communities. The projects relate, for example, to community development, permaculture and soil regeneration, safeguarding biodiversity, sustainable (living space) construction or youth development.

In 2015, the foundation extended its mission and placed a greater emphasis on fundraising for the purchase of land (*Freikauf* of land) (Nelle and Aehnelt 2019). The fundraising activities allow the broader public (society) to support activities and projects of the communities already linked to the foundation as well as the development of other communities with congruent objectives and visions. The introduction of the new objective and the active fundraising tool marks a change in the foundation to an expansive model, in which property is used as a special purpose asset (Nelle and Aehnelt 2019). The foundation's ultimate goal is not to acquire the real estate/land for its own use but to influence the use of the property in the direction of the foundation's mission defined in its statutes. In 2018, the foundation owned ca. 42 hectares of agricultural land and its land value totaled EUR 1,060,000.

The foundation-based land governance structure is schematically illustrated in Figure 3. It demonstrates the above-described interplay between the foundation as the charitable land owner and the cooperatives representing the land tenants. In addition, it illustrates that the governance design allows for mobilizing financial resources from society and the surrounding communities. The SDG 15 Targets 3 and 5 (provision of biodiversity and land stewardship) are thus facilitated by (i) the conditions set in the land rental contracts, as well as (ii) through the societal and community support systems (dark gray blocks). Additionally, community projects related to improving soil conditions and biodiversity are facilitated through the land lease relationship as the foundation returns the majority of the collected land rents to the communities via projects in accordance with the foundation's mission.

**Figure 3.** Land governance structure of the *grund-stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof*. **Note:** As of 15 September 2020. Source: Graphic by authors.

Of the total expenditures of EUR 98,000 in 2018, the foundation allocated 48% to projects related to nature protection, permaculture and soil regeneration (regenerative agriculture) (grund-stiftung am Schloss Tempelhof 2019).

#### *3.2. Farmer-Based Case—Kulturland Cooperative*

*Kulturland Cooperative* represents a land cooperative open to members of the public interested in supporting collective ownership of land (land commons) and its environmentally and socially accountable governance. The Cooperative purchases arable land, meadows, pastures, hedges and biotopes and makes the land available to regionally integrated organic farms that produce and regionally market food, as well as offering various social or educational services to the outside community.

It was founded in 2013 by a group of experts—researchers and farm consultants —in response to several impulses: (i) they identified then-observed trends in farmland markets and farm structure development as threatening small-scale organic farming and the sustainability of rural communities, (ii) they observed formations of new organizations of land ownership in Germany and elsewhere and (iii) they were ultimately and most importantly incentivized to action by a concrete case of a farm in need of a prompt response to a sales intent of the leased-land owner. Seeing the last instance as a reoccurring problem of many smaller farms, the founders aimed at establishing a platform that would allow organic and socially accountable farms to secure or extend the farmland in their use as their economic basis and a grounds for social and potentially other public/community-benefitting activities.

Although located in Hitzacker in Lower Saxony, the Cooperative has a broad geographic focus; it supports farms across Germany (see Figure 2). Its agenda is not to acquire land available on the market, but to respond to applications of organic farmers with a concrete land purchase issue. The expansion of the Cooperative is therefore dependent and driven by farmers' interest. As of autumn 2020, *Kulturland* purchased land in support of 22 farms (partner farms hereafter).

The Cooperative was initially soliciting financial support of land purchases mainly from the surrounding community of farms for which the farmland was purchased. Its approach has thus been particularly compliant with consumer-supported farms that are principally characterized by a strong link to and support from the consumer community but have no platform for governing land ownership or its share. As a result, 50% of *Kulturland*'s partner farms are set up as community-supported agriculture (Carlson and Bitsch 2019). In recent years, *Kulturland* expanded its member recruitment to the broader public by designing online crowdfunding campaigns. The crowdfunding tool attracts financial supporters from areas beyond the farms' surrounding communities.

The financial supporters who, through the *Kulturland* model, become land cooperative members are not-for-profit impact investors whose interests lie in contributing to the long-term security of farmland for locally embedded organic production. Although having the option to choose from concrete crowdfunding campaigns, they become cooperative members without any linkage to a specific farm. With a membership share price of EUR 500, the membership is attainable for small investors from the general public. This geographically non-restricted fundraising and low membership share price concept allow for flexible fund acquisition and cooperative expansion. As of July 2021, *Kulturland Cooperative* has 947 members and owns 270 hectares of agricultural land.

*Kulturland Cooperative* represents in its structure an intermediary between the farms and society. Its role is to bring together the interested parties and carry out necessary transactions related, among others, to farmland purchase, its funding, land

use governance and member support. The Cooperative acts as a financier and a guardian organization, ensuring that the partner farms produce ecologically and are regionally integrated. The conditions on partner farms are specified by a land lease contract and include: maintaining organic farming according to EU standards; care/cultivation of nature conservation on at least 10% of the land area; and annual implementation of at least two out of six possible activities for regional integration (open farm, regional product sale, educational work, preservation of biodiversity, cultural events, work with supervised/handicap persons) (Kulturland Genossenschaft 2017). In particular, conditioning land lease to organic farming, maintenance of nature conservation areas and preservation of biodiversity contribute to Targets 3 and 5 of SDG 15.

Due to its main focus on the intermediary function in land acquisition and lease transactions, *Kulturland Cooperative* has the potential to offer a simple and secure long-term land governance structure. The potential simplicity of the land governance is, however, not provided for due to the legal framework of farmland sale transactions in Germany, in which a possible solution for a non-farming community to acquire land is through involving farmers in land purchases. For this reason, *Kulturland Cooperative* establishes limited partnership with each farmer to purchase land. The farmers are the executive party in these legal entities and the *Kulturland Cooperative* is the limited partner providing capital for the land purchase. This is illustrated in Figure 4.

The contract of special limited partnerships between *Kulturland Cooperative* as the financier and the farmers as the complementary parties does not purely represent a formal solution to the state land sale regulations. By consensus, the partnerships set the rules of cooperation between the two parties; the land rental contracts are, however, concluded between the special limited partnership firms and the farms separately. As the general partners of the Special limited partnership, the landlords (farmers) are in fact their own lessors. As long as the farm complies with the above-listed conditions of the rental contract, it can dispose of the land indefinitely (Kulturland Genossenschaft 2017).

**Figure 4.** Land governance structure of *Kulturland Cooperative.* Source: Graphic by authors.

#### *3.3. Comparison of Governing Ecological Targets*

We will compare and analyze the presented cases in two respects. First, we focus on the different governance mechanisms ensuring ecological target delivery. These selected enforcing criteria draw on Basurto et al. (2013), who state that different incentives for conservation are responsible for different governance arrangements of natural resource management with regard to their conduciveness to environmental conservation. As a second criteria to compare the selected organizational forms, we use the mechanism of how supporters get involved and rewarded, as a means for long-term satisfaction with the organization that contributes to its durability.

#### 3.3.1. Regulating Target Delivery—Rental Contract and Foundation Statutes

*Kulturland Cooperative*, although initiated by a farmer, was set up by a few initiators from the expert/advisor community who designed the land cooperative. The separation between land users and the governance designer (the cooperative), who is the collective owner and steward of the land with a majority of non-farming members, distinguishes this governance model. Its main objective is to secure land for organic farmers across Germany. Other studies have shown that organic farming has been the engine of the sustainable development process, counteracting depopulation and providing a viable economic alternative for rural areas (Zezza et al. 2017). Another objective of the Cooperative is to govern additional environmental and social target delivery. The Cooperative formulates its respective objectives in the statutes; the conditions on land use ensuring the objectives' enforceability are, however, defined more specifically in each individual rental contract, with the farmers managing, individually or in partnership, the leased land. The clarity and enforceability of the rules are important preconditions for the legitimacy and transparency of the organization—necessary conditions for receiving public support and for attracting new supporters. It is the lease contract conditions that regulate the direct target delivery here.

The foundation *grund-stiftung am Schloß Tempelhof* was initiated by the land owner/user community and thus directly reflects the (farming) community's values and objectives. The community of individuals jointly managing the land evolved around one farm and village that greatly contrasts with the mostly individually managed partner farms of *Kulturland Cooperative* spatially distributed across Germany. Due to the uniformity of the land user, the core land financier and the governance designer, there is no issue of legitimacy and the rules of land use and thus ecological target delivery are specified more generally. This is despite the formal separation of land use and ownership as the land was transferred to the foundation. Specific to this land use governance is then the limited option to change the foundation statutes.

Both models contribute to the ecological target delivery also indirectly since they target specific groups of farmers or deliver additional services discussed as important factors of ecological transition in Section 1. *Kulturland Cooperative*, besides securing land of existing organic farms, also facilitates access to land for start-up farms, thus broadening the area on which land and natural resources are used more sustainably than without the collective land acquisition and the related land use conditions. The new entrants' role for the adaptive ecological processes was demonstrated in the previous literature (see Section 1). *Kulturland Cooperative* further provides for long-term tenure security that reduces farmers' risk of loss of investment in environmental practices including soil regeneration. The Cooperative also facilitates crowdfunding for farms' investment projects, designs models for farm succession and offers related extension and seminars to farmers, thus filling in the gap in information

transfer and addresses the structural barriers to advancing towards environmental sustainability targets.

The *Schloß Tempelhof* community partnering with *grund-stiftung am Schloß Tempelhof* is also engaged in knowledge generation and transfer. It is active in research of agro-environmental practices, particularly regenerative agriculture, develops information and training material and provides educational seminars.

The selected case studies illustrate that the analyzed land organizations and partnering communities follow the sustainability objectives for agriculture and, for that, combine various means of achieving these targets. They link the land governance arrangements with additional measures to grow to their environmental ambitions.

#### 3.3.2. Acquiring Funding—Investments with Waiving Economic Returns and Donations

The ability to fundraise is an important determinant of organizational sustainability and its long-term success in environmental target delivery. The form and the size of the target delivery support is strongly related to the motivation of supporters and to the origin of the land acquisition funding. The different structures of land financiers thus considerably distinguish the two case studies.

Withholding the land from the farmland market, the aim of *Kulturland Cooperative,* prevents future land value increases, sustaining land rents at a predictable and low level for farmers. The foregone economic returns to capital providers (members) are expected to be compensated by the target delivery by the partner farms. The collected rents are used only for the Cooperative's running cost. Supporters—here members of the Cooperative—participate financially without any expectations on economic returns. The partner farms thus share the costs of target delivery with the Cooperative. This system holds as long as the majority of the members remain with the cooperatives. After five years of membership, the members have the right to withdraw their capital. Should numerous members decide to exit, the Cooperative may be forced to sell some plots and free the land from the conditional use. There are, however, the land tenants who have, based on the rental contract, the right of first refusal of the purchase of the land for the original purchase price, if it were to be sold. Assuming shared values between the cooperative and the partner farms, the continuity of the sustainable use of resources may be secured even then. An interesting development in that respect is the initiative from *Kulturland Cooperative* to form a foundation for members wanting to donate their shares and thus to prevent potential future sale of the farmland.

The foundation *grund-stiftung am Schloß Tempelhof* did not originally have the role of acquiring land. The land was transferred from the farming community that purchased it. The community that acquired and operates the land was the full carrier of the target delivery costs. It formed the foundation to guard the irreversibility of its mission and to generate through rental payments additional funds that would be used only in accordance with the community's objectives. The willingness to absorb the cost of sustainable use of resources and of the delivery of broader societal objectives legitimized the community to donations from society. With the first donations to the foundation, the communities farming the foundation's land started sharing the costs of the target delivery with the donating society.

#### **4. Discussion and Conclusions**

Our German-wide scoping study of community- and society-supported organizations of land ownership delivered insights on the large diversity of land ownership arrangements for environmental target delivery—reaching from collective ownership within corporations, partnerships and cooperatives to associations and foundations. These are found linked to unique and innovative forms of sustainable land use governance within partnership arrangements with farms, as shown in the closer investigation using two case studies.

The two examples of the new land governing organizations have shown very distinct possibilities of how to contribute to the transition towards sustainability with the help of community and societal support. Both organizations adopt the right of defining conditions of land use in exchange for long-term tenure and below market price rental conditions for farmers. It is thus the partner farms to these organizations who ultimately preserve biodiversity and combat land degradation, consequently supporting SDG 15.

The relative importance of such new governance forms cannot be expressed in the absolute numbers of partner farms, or the share of cultivated agricultural land, but by their mere existence and their survival that matter for social innovation to start off (Westley and McConnell 2010). Thus, an important criterion of the collective land organizations' success, from the perspective of SDG 15, is the long-term security of their target delivery. This regards the stability of sustainability objectives, a stable and growing supporter base (fundraising) and partnering farmers' viability.

The selected case studies illustrate that the analyzed land organizations and partnering communities follow long-term sustainability objectives for agriculture and, for that, combine various means of achieving these targets. They link the land governance arrangements with additional measures to grow to their environmental ambitions—by supporting farms' viability and succession or through knowledge facilitating the adoption of sustainable practices.

However, we find significant differences in the way the organizations secure their funds and their long-term objectives. While the funds/assets and goals of a foundation are permanently anchored by the law, in the case of a cooperative, they are subject to the amendable statutes. It could be well believed that individuals, who engage with the cooperatives described above, are willing to financially participate without profit, sharing the same long-term objectives as members of a foundation. Nevertheless, the legal form of a registered cooperative principally allows changes under conditions set in the statutes. *Kulturland Cooperative* thus restricts through these conditions the statutes' changeability, as well as lowering the incentives to change the collective land use objectives, potential sale of plots and the right to withdraw membership shares in the early years of membership. Despite the risks of members' mobility, the societal trends suggest sufficient interest in replacing potentially dropping out members in support of a positive sustainability impact.

Achieving stability of conservation objectives requires durable organizations that also need to support social sustainability. Thus, we would like to point out the potential social implications of the new organizations for rural communities and thereby motivate future research. To achieve sustainability goals, the environmental target delivery should not come at a cost to rural communities but rather be aligned with social sustainability targets. The conditions on farmers' partnerships with *Kulturland Cooperative* include items in support of a "regionally integrated organic agriculture". The partner farms thus have to implement annually at least two out of six possible activities for regional integration. These can include open farm days, product sale on farm, educational work, cultural events or work with people in care. These activities are oriented outward toward the local or regional community. Such activities could have an integrative influence on the surrounding community members and groups and thus facilitate local social cohesion as well as increasing trust and solidarity between the farmers and the rural community. The latter may be particularly important in case of new entrants into farming. However, it remains a question whether these semi-occasionally performed activities are sufficient to have such social implications.

A relevant aspect for some of the described farming communities with implications for the original rural community is that they were established by newcomers to the regions. By that, they may be expected to have strongly contributed to the economic value of the acquired local assets as well as the local community's vibrancy. However, getting (mainly urban) people without an agricultural connection involved in the management of land may suffer from the risk of rural gentrification. Studies by Sutherland (2012) and Mamonova and Sutherland (2015) showed that

the degree and risks of gentrification depend on who the new acquirers of land are and to which degree they displace native inhabitants in the process of the local establishment. However, to understand these complex social processes and their implications for original rural societies calls for more in-depth research.

According to Target 15 of SDG 15, financial resources should be mobilized and significantly increased from all sources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems. Thus, if more studies could show that such new community-supported forms of land ownership can implement SDG 15 and that the elaborated governance forms ensure durability, the initiatives would, in line with SDG Target 15, additionally qualify for some form of state support.

Besides financial state support, legal state support in terms of reducing administrative barriers of agricultural land acquisitions for the new governance types of joint land ownership is also an issue. For instance, in order to conform with the Real Property Transactions Act (Hoffmeister 2018)—the most relevant legal ordinance as regards agricultural land transfer in Germany to non-farmers—*Kulturland Cooperative* forms limited partnerships to function as the owner of the land. This results in administrative and other transaction costs for the Cooperative and, at the point of establishment, also the farmer—funds that are, in the case of a foundation, used towards various charitable projects including initiatives supporting SDG 15. As there is no equal treatment of the diverse legal forms allowing community-supported acquisition of farmland, it leads to the distortion of competition among institutional innovations. The possible legal framework amendments restricting access to land to non-agricultural investors and, at the same time, allowing community-supported land purchases are subject to current political federal state-level debates (see, e.g., Rüter 2020; Balmann 2020).

**Author Contributions:** Insa Theesfeld: main conceptualization and funding acquisition, Insa Theesfeld and Jarmila Curtiss: methodology, writing–original text, revision and editing. Jarmila Curtiss: concept extension, conduct of the empirical research–scoping study and case studies. Both authors: contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, granted by the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE; grant number 2817HS015).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

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