1. LAND TENURE SUSTAINABILITY: THE CASE OF FAMILY LAND IN TOBAGO
Sunil Lalloo and Charisse Griffith-Charles
The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine

2. Classifying Tenure arrangements in Trinidad and Tobago
Formal
Informal
Certificate of Comfort
Adverse Possession
Deed in the name of a deceased antecedent
Squatting on State Land
Registered
Unregistered
Unregistered Deed
Squatting on Private Land
RPO Title
Successive Title
Deed
Family Land
Registered Trust
Unregistered Trust

3. Land tenure sustainability
Basis of justifications for state support, formalisation and recordation.
Assessed over the short, medium and long terms.
A function of several variables

4. Common-pool resources – the Literature
Agrawal, 2003 – summarised and added to Ostrom (1990); Baland and Plattaeu (1996); and Wade (1994).
Griffith-Charles, 2004 – Specifically dealt with land tenure sustainability
Barnes, 2009 – Tenure ‘resilience’

5. Agrawal (2003)
36 Critically enabling conditions for tenure sustainability.
10 key variables:
Sizes of the resource and group.
Definition of boundaries
Social and cultural norms
Leadership and interdependence
Level of poverty
Level of dependency on the resource by the group
Level of demand
Simplicity, applicability and enforceability of governing rules
Accountability and transparency
Effects of the external environment

6. Griffith Charles (2004)
5 prevailing variables for land registration sustainability:
The prevailing tenure type and the perceptions and governance practices within family land.
The associated costs of transactions
System awareness and observability
Complexity
Enforcement

7. Barnes (2009)
Variables determining fundamental identity and structure of land tenure:
Group membership
Governance
Resource Rights

8. Relevance to Caribbean’s family land
Family land tenure sustainability is a function of the following variables:
Parcel size
Level of rights activation
Ability to function alongside formal systems (objective tenure security);
The perception of tenure security (subjective)

9. Variables cont’d The existence and resolution of disputes.
Land use practices and productivity
Ability to alienate the parcel (in parts or whole)
Ability to create economic opportunity (and access credit)
Perspectives on the social and cultural retention of the tenure
Perspectives on formalisation (privatisation vs formalisation of de facto governance)

10. Methodology Tobago is delineated into 7 parishes administratively
Two-stage cluster sampling done in 2 rural parishes
Simple random sampling done in 2 urban parishes
Total sample size: 308 parcels sampled – 190 family land cases.

12. Testing sustainability indicators for Family land
Analyses

13. Parcel size – family land parcels

14. Parcel size – private tenure

15. Active use of land rights

16. Objective tenure security

17. Subjective tenure security – Family land

18. Subjective tenure security – private tenure

19. Comparison – subjective tenure security

20. Conflicts - sources

21. Conflict resolution

22. Land use
40% the parcels were covered by residential housing by 50% of the total area or more.
In cases where there was actual cultivation, less than 20% of the parcel was used for this agricultural practice.
In the family land investigated, over 30% of the lands were unutilized by 70% or more

23. Land Economy
Only 22 of the family land cases (11%) reported that they earn a percentage of their income from the land itself
2 of these reported that the utilization of the land was their sole source of income

24. Intention to alienate? – No – Why?

25. Need for access to credit

26. Perspectives Tenure retention
65% preferred family lands to remain under customary holdings, 35% felt there were too many conflicts.
System to formalise
60% preferred a self-governing system; 10% preferred the state to have this responsibility; 30% would opt for a joint system

27. Is Family land sustainable?
Short term – subjective tenure security
Medium term – Provides supplement to household income
Long term – Prevents fragmentation and landlessness, but leads to wasteful and unproductive land use.

28. LAND TENURE SUSTAINABILITY: THE CASE OF FAMILY LAND IN TOBAGO Need to know more?
Sunil Lalloo; Charisse Griffith-Charles
Skype: sunil.lalloo