Most Australians are familiar with the concept of land ownership and understand the meaning of native title, which recognises Indigenous peoples' rights to land to which they are spiritually or culturally connected. The ownership of areas of sea and its resources is often overlooked however, despite Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander connections with the sea being just as important as those with the land. The papers in this volume demonstrate how the concept of customary marine tenure has developed in various communities and look at some of its implications. Originating in a session of papers at a conference in 1996, the papers in this volume were originally published as Oceania Monograph 48 in 1998.

Land tenure arrangements are intimately linked with the organization of society, the economy, political structures and geography. In the South Pacific Islands the majority of land is held by community groups under 'customary' or 'traditional' forms of tenure. This book argues that land formerly held in common is now often controlled and used exclusively by individuals or nuclear families - it is being privatized. Detailed case studies demonstrate these trends in Western Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and Fiji. Parallels are noted from Asia, Europe and Africa, where comparable forces of commercialization, individualization and socio-political change have brought comparable results. The denial of these trends by policy makers in the region reflects an interest in maintaining the image of traditionalism and its associated status and power. The divergence between rhetoric and reality creates dilemmas for many Pacific Islanders and their leaders.

This book examines current trends in customary land issues in Africa, focusing on the practice of converting customary land into leasehold tenure, particularly in Zambia. Since the enactment of the 1995 Lands Act No. 29 in Zambia, conversion of customary land has become a controversial policy, raising questions about the future of customary land and rural communities, and the role of traditional authorities in a changing environment. Alienating customary land into leasehold tenure has serious implications for local and national politics and gender dynamics. Analysis of these trends suggests that the policy of creating land markets on customary land is subjecting customary systems to the forces of change. However, governments that have adopted this policy have not, by and large, adopted measures to respond to these challenges. Although customary tenure is widely believed to be resilient, it is not clear how the customary system will navigate the current winds of change. Chapters in this book draw from the Land Use and Rural Livelihoods in Africa Project (LURLAP), a collaborative research project undertaken by staff and students at the University of Cape Town and the University of Zambia.

This publication deals with key issues in land tenure, especially as they relate to food insecurity and rural development situations. Land tenure issues are frequently ignored in rural development interventions, with often long-lasting, negative results. This guide is designed to assist technical officers in governments and civil society in understanding why and how land tenure issues should be considered in rural development projects. It analyses important contexts such as environmental degradation, gender discrimination, and conflicts, where land tenure is currently of critical concern.

This open access book presents a nuanced and accessible synthesis of the relationship between land tenure security and sustainable development. Contributing authors have collectively worked for decades on land tenure as connected with conservation and development across all major regions of the globe. The first section of this volume is intended as a standalone primer on land tenure security and its connections with sustainable development. The book then explores key thematic challenges that interact directly with land tenure security, followed by a section on strategies for addressing tenure insecurity. The book concludes with a section on new frontiers in research, policy, and action. An invaluable reference for researchers in the field and for practitioners looking for a comprehensive overview of this important topic. This is an open access book.

Increasingly, attention is being paid to recording tenure rights that are not yet recorded, for example, in cases where customary rights have recently been given legal recognition, where new legally-recognized rights have been created based on informal rights, or where new fisheries rights, forest rights and water rights have been created or given legal recognition. In such cases, there is often a need to also create a new recording system with a specific focus, such as for recording forest use rights, fisheries shares or water use rights, or to have the recording done at an appropriate level of government or by a self-governing community.This guide is about extending the recording or registration of tenure rights to people who currently are not served by systems to record their rights. It provides practical advice on ways to introduce a new system to record tenure rights and for the recording of rights for the first time by the state, a process that is sometimes called first registration.

The main theme of this volume is a discussion of the ways in which legal mechanisms, such as the Land Groups Incorporation Act (1974) in PNG, and the Native Title Act (1993) in Australia, do not, as they purport, serve merely to identify and register already-existing customary indigenous landowning groups in these countries. Because the legislation is an integral part of the way in which indigenous people are defined and managed in relation to the State, it serves to elicit particular responses in landowner organisation and self-identification on the part of indigenous people. These pieces of legislation actively contour the progressive evolution of landowner social, territorial and political organisation at all levels in these nation states. The contributors to this volume provide in-depth anthropological case studies of social structural and cultural transformations engendered by the confrontation between states, developers and indigenous communities over rights to customarily owned land.