UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Effects of farmers' land tenure variations on their land use around Kerinci Seblat National Park, West Sumatra, Indonesia

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.3759/tropics.14.283

Authors

Masahiro OTSUKA

Reported year

2005

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:18:18.034757+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:18:18.034757+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

World Agroforestry Centre

Documentary abstract — original language

The insecurity of farmers’ land tenure rights are thought to bring about resource degradation and low crop productivity in tropical areas. Private property rights are therefore expected to optimize farmers’ land use by allowing the usage of perennial crops that will increase land privatization for longer growing periods. This article discusses the effects of community property regimes on land use by examining a case study from West Sumatra, Indonesia. Farmers of the study area grow rice, non-rice food crops, and tree crops on community, lineage, family, and private land. Family and private land are dominant nowadays, while community or lineage land control is declining. Despite their preference for new, private land in forested areas, however, local Minangkabau farmers maintain joint ownership of their ancestral land through matrilineal inheritance as is the custom instead of privatizing it. Community leaders allow farmers who have familial inheritance rights to plant trees and other crops on every tenure type of land, because there is a separation of crop tenure and cultivation rights from land ownership rights. Crop productivity is similar between private land and common land in rice fields and dry-land farms, given similar biophysical and socio-economic conditions. Tree crops and idle bushy land occur on both land tenure types. Private land ownership rights do not always lead to more investment in sustainable and efficient resource utilization in the study area. Local institutions also manage common resource pools to sustain the whole kinship group, including the poor. The principle problem is the continued degradation of natural resources caused by the decline in local institutional capability and the lack of technical innovation. Institutional restructuring of common forest resource management and technical interventions for agricultural intensification, not the privatization of the indigenous common property which will weaken communities’ control of land and resources, are crucial for the improvement of farmers’ land use.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W2002932788

DOI

10.3759/tropics.14.283

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

article

Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources

ID

Natural entities mentioned

Forest

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.3759/tropics.14.283
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W2002932788

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w1507836268 · CITES
• Does Privatization Protect Natural Resources? Property Rights and Forests in Guatemala · CITES
• openalex:w2226396244 · CITES
• openalex:w2319807154 · CITES
• openalex:w2581163031 · CITES
• openalex:w40941687 · CITES
• openalex:w4206664605 · CITES
• openalex:w4285719527 · CITES
• openalex:w645224970 · CITES
• openalex:w7015330776 · CITES
• openalex:w7020709782 · CITES
• openalex:w7032860795 · CITES
• openalex:w87696256 · CITES

0 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

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