DIIS Report

Inequality in Nicaragua: Land titles, land markets and tenure security

Formal titles do not benefit the poor as much as they benefit others
This DIIS report examines poverty and inequality in Nicaragua and the processes that reinforce or exacerbate those conditions. Access to and control over natural resources such as land are important elements in finding ways out of rural poverty.

However, in Nicaragua, land ownership is highly unevenly distributed, despite decades of land reform. The large-scale structural changes in land ownership have created considerable land tenure insecurity, where current policy focuses on land titling and land administration projects. 

The main argument of this report is that such policies face a sloping playing field in which benefits of land titles tilts toward the rich, without providing the same benefits for the poor. This is in stark contrast to the theoretical expectations and arguments underpinning the policy, where it is assumed that because it is the poor who mainly lack formal documentation for their land rights, titling will bring them in a position to harvest important benefits.

The study shows that other resources besides land titles and the formal recognition of property rights are required in order to realise the expected benefits, i.e. in being able to obtain credit, get the attention of authorities in the case of a land conflict, and also for land titles to create perceived land tenure security.

Furthermore, the report shows that the land market, which the mainstream policy package aims to vitalize, actually works to the disadvantage of the poor, by concentrating land among the wealthy and powerful. As such, it exacerbates existing poverty and inequality.

The report provides an empirical basis for arguing in favour of increasing attention to existing conditions of inequality in order to fully understand the benefits (and drawbacks) of land titles, as well as the limited use that poor people are able to make of formal land titles.

In the report, Rikke Broegaard introduces the concept of ‘perceived land tenure security’ as a separate issue from that of formal land titling. On this basis, she is able to distinguish the effect that land titles per se have for owners, from other resources the land owner may or may not have – resources that are decisive for his or her perceived land tenure security.

The report contributes to the existing debate on how to strengthen access to and control over natural resources for the rural poor, considering the large amounts of donor money spent or loans made available through land administration projects in which cadastral surveys and issuing of titles represent a major cost.

Region
Nicaragua

Dokumenter