Doctoral Dissertation Research: Examining Land Tenure Change and Well-Being

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

The governance of land resources is vital to human well-being, particularly given increasing demand for land and the ease with which land conflicts have been documented to escalate into violence. A longstanding theoretical claim has been that individuals are unlikely to coordinate sustainable resource management without strong state action or private property interests incentivizing them to do so. Direct state control of land or strict private property enforced by state bureaucracy has therefore been considered necessary for sustainable management. However, more recent studies have revealed that community-based resource governance operating outside direct state control or private market mechanisms is often viable in the long-term and can contribute significantly to well-being. Successful community-based resource management typically exhibits rule-making, monitoring, and sanctioning implemented by resource users themselves and requires personal interaction among resource users as well as familiarity with local environments. This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, comparatively analyzes formal and non-formal tenure arrangements to explore their impact on human well-being. The project also aims enhance public understanding of science and the scientific method through its dissemination plans. Andrew Bonanno, under the supervision of Dr. Bram Tucker of the University of Georgia, will examine the well-being implications of new bureaucratic land governance in a context where traditional, community-based land governance among most small-scale farmers have persisted alongside ongoing governmental and organizational efforts to formalize land holdings through state-enforced private property. In particular, this research examines how land governance impacts farmers' rights and abilities to benefit from land use, and the affects this has on human well-being. Research will be conducted at two sites: one with primarily traditional, community-based land governance, and one with recently introduced formalized land governance. Farmers will be interviewed about their land rights and resource use, and the researcher will accompany farmers during land-use activities to elucidate local processes of land allocation, use, and claim-making. The researcher will then conduct focus groups to identify local conceptualizations of well-being. Finally, household surveys will be implemented to investigate statistical associations between various rights and multiple well-being indicators, including local well-being conceptualizations as well as standard wealth and incomes measures. Data will aid other scientists in analyzing connections between land and human well-being and further understanding of how different forms of land governance can shape well-being. Such insights are critical for informing and evaluating land use and governance polices. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.