Paper presented at the 107th Annual Meeting
of the American Anthropological Association in November 2007
Effect of global and national policies on tenure
insecurity in
By
Gayatri Thampy and Jeffrey H Cohen
Abstract:
The tourism industry in Bocas del Toro
archipelago on the Caribbean side of
Keywords:
Introduction:
The Bocas del Toro archipelago lies on the
Caribbean side of
According to Fisher (2007: 78), fair trade is the only system to have wide activist support. Hans Bolsher, the former director of the Max Havelaar labelling initiative also notes that consumer activism is crucial for the success of the fair trade network (cited in Fridell 2007: 54). Issues concerning land rights will therefore greatly benefit from being drawn into the gamut of discussions on fair trade. This will aid in applying pressure on relevant agencies to design equitable land policies and also draw attention to unjust policies resulting in loss of land to local people because of land grabbing by elites, non-resident wealthy tourists, developers and real estate agents.
Methods and results:
This paper is situated in the context of data
collected during an ethnographic study of residents’ opinions on the effects of
tourism during the summer of 2006. 83
participants were selected based on convenience sampling within each locality on
the
Out of a total of 83 interviews, 76 interviews were included in the data analysis. Opinions on tourism were elicited using open-ended questions and then manually coded into different categories. The discussion here is limited to opinions concerning land. Land related concerns constituted 40% of the responses, second to opinions addressing the economic advantages of tourism (76%). A break down of opinions by category is given in table 1. A breakdown of land related concerns is given in table 2.
Origins of property rights and the
common property theory:
The debate on the morality and efficacy of private property and common property has a long history (see Ostrom 1990, Acheson 1989 and Demsetz 1967 for a summary of the arguments on each side). Some of these arguments can be traced to the 17th century English philosopher John Locke (West 2007:1). Espousing a view that was radical for the time, Locke held that private property existed outside of government and preceded the development of government, and therefore was a natural right (West 2007: 2). His theory on the creation of property rights was based on the idea that the contribution of a person’s labour to the creation of a particular good is akin to extending one’s physical body to include this good (West 2007: 4). Therefore, an individual should have the rights to the products of his labour and own it like he owns his body (West 2007: 4).
Though Jeremy Bentham, the 19th century English jurist and reformer, agreed with Locke and Smith on the primary function of the government in a society, he did not believe that property rights were natural laws (West 2007: 13). He attributed more powers to the government, without which it would not be possible to tax a property without the consent of the owners (West 2007: 14). John Stuart Mill, the British political economist, agreed with Bentham on the importance of government in property management, though his conception of property rights included the right of bequest or gift after death, but not the right of inheritance (West 2007: 20). More interestingly, Mill also believed the land was not akin to other forms of property and therefore, the rights extended to individuals over property could not automatically also be extended to land.
“When the ‘sacredness of property’ is talked of, it should be remembered, that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree as landed property. No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency. When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust.”—(Mill [1848] 1969: 233; cited in West 2007)
Espousing a view more radical than Mill’s, Marx saw private property as the source of most evil in society because private property rights take commonly accessible productive resources of the majority and puts it in the control of a small minority, leaving the majority with no other options but to sell their labour on the market (Schmitt 1997). Private property is however an assumption for rational economic behaviour in neo-classical economics (Wilk 1996). The common property issue is concerned with ways in which resources shared by all the people in the society can best be protected (Acheson 1989). The basis for the neo-liberal property reforms stem from Hardin’s concept of common-property mismanagement (Hardin 1968). Advocates of neo-liberal land reforms believe that common property and communal land tenure lead to inefficient and ecologically unsustainable forms of land use because the user has no incentive to invest in their land. The basis for this assumption is the Hobbesian model of the human being as innately selfish and interested in optimizing their own satisfaction (Wilk 1996).
This idea of the inefficiency of common property has been further developed in Demsetz (1967) and scripted in the New Institutional Economics as formulated by North (1990, 1998) and the Property Reform School (de Alessi 1983, Deininger and Feder 1998) as well as Deininger and Binswanger’s (1998) paper on the evolution of the World Bank’s policies concerning land. These ideas have been crystallized in the Evolutionary Theory on Land Rights or ETLR (Demsetz 1967, Coase 1960, and Alchian and Demsetz 1973. ETLR and therefore, neo-liberal land reforms, posit that granting land titles will improve the land market, which will facilitate the transfer of land to the most efficient and productive users. Advocates of private property believe that land formalization and private ownership will reduce poverty, stimulate national economic growth, increase public savings and safeguard the environment (Zoomers and van der Haar 2000: 11) by requiring licenses, setting quotas, charging rent, and taxes, etc. (Acheson 1989: 357).
Hardin’s theory is however not supported by
empirical data and mistakes a metaphor for reality (Ostrom 1990).
Anthropologists have shown that many societies have institutions and rules that
limit exploitation (Acheson 1989). Examples include pasture management in
Neo-liberal views on property management
are at the foundations of land reforms in
The Panamanian Laws 8, 54, 2 and the World Bank’s Land Administration Project:
The islands in the
Bocas del Toro archipelago on the Caribbean side of
Subsequently, in 1998,
In 2006,
Previous to this law,
State-owned property
could be used for various productive purposes through the granting of
concessions over Rights of Possessions (RoP) or derecho posesorio. RoPs allowed one to lease lands for long periods
of time, with a maximum time limit of 99 years. RoP was given by the Instituto
Reforma Agro-pecuario (Department of Agriculture and Fisheries) and is now the
responsibility of the Cadastral office. Because obtaining RoPs for occupied
land is both expensive and complicated, only a relatively small proportion of
the resident Bocatoreneans have RoPs.
RoP can be obtained
only if you have been working on a land and improving it in some way. These
could include, planting crops, building a fence, digging wells, installing rain
water harvesting apparatus, building trails, building living structures, or
grazing cattle. It is more formalized than Rights of Occupation. If you have
100 hectares, and you use 70 hectares, the RoP will be given for only 70
hectares. Remaining 30 hectares will not be entered into the spirit of the RoP.
Hence, usually, RoP area is less than RoO area.
Most local people
possess what are known as Rights of Occupation (RoO) which is similar to
squatter’s rights. The Cadastre (and now the Mayor) can give a certificate of
Rights of Occupation (RoO) that says that you are occupying a particular land. But
this certificate (RoO). An RoO does not protect your right to reside on and use
the land. It can be taken away from you if a more economically productive
investment is possible from the land. However, many people on the islands were
not aware even of RoO. RoO can be obtained for 2 $ for a certificate. The
certificate would be for the whole property and does not depend on the actual
area of the property.
The cost of the RoP,
on the other hand, depends on the number of hectares you want the RoP on, You
have to pay an annual fee to the cadastre. It is my understanding based on my
interviews that it is prohibitively high for most people. Because of their
concerns about their land rights, more and more people in Bocas are trying to
obtain a RoP for at least certain parts of the property. Some households seem
to be cooperating with others to obtain joint RoPs by pooling together income
resources. But this phenomenon will need to be investigated in more detail. If
this is common enough, then it may be that the new reforms may transform
individual property rights into communal rights, achieving quite the opposite
intent of the reforms. Such an effect would not be novel. Communal land tenure
among indigenous communities of
The cost of titling
your property is more than 1000 $ for as little as 5 hectares (12 acres) and
excludes the fees for the lawyer. The median property size for the 76
participants in the 2006 study was only 1.14 acres. Hence titling is an arduous
task for most residents but quite simple for foreign investors and developers.
People practicing
subsistence agriculture in Bocas del Toro have a patchy use of land. This is
due to the topography, soil chemistry and nature of crops planted. This means
that portions of a property may be fallow at various times in a year or between
years. Unscrupulous foreign investors use this as proof that land is not being
used and usurp the land for development purposes. This is especially the case
because the region does not have an inventory of the people residing on the
land and the property that they use for various purposes. In such cases, even
if you did have an RoP for the property, it is very difficult to prove your
case to authorities because of lack of access to capital and legal resources
and a incomplete understanding of their rights. It is obviously worse for
people who do not have a RoP. Two cases
that came to our attention during the study. One involved appropriation of a large
portion of the
“Lot of
trouble due to tourism because people who don’t have anything, are selling what
they have. Some people are unscrupulous. They sell land that they don’t own-
just with some papers (makes
flapping action with hands to suggest false land documents)….. Everyone is buying or selling. No one is looking to see if there
are benefits or not.” – Interview with a 72 yr old woman who runs a
trinkets and handicrafts shop in Bocas town.
“There are problems when tourists buy land.
They tell us to leave the land. But we have lived on this land for a long time.
[My family] has Rights of Possession. But it is difficult to get titles as
government does not cooperate. To change from RoP to Title, one needs 5–7
years.”—Interview
with two men, 45 and 37 years of age, working as macheteros clearing land.
“We don’t feel safe / sure about our land. We
do not have titles to the land. So it is possible that they [someone else] may
sell some of our land. If we had titles to our land, we would feel more safe
about the land and we wont want to sell
the land. Without titles (sin papeles) we
can ask for 10,000$ /hectare. It would be the same price even if we had RoP (derecho
posesorio). But if we had the titles (con papel), we could ask for 25,000 $ /
hectare. So there is a big difference in the prices possible.”—Interview with a 62 yr old
man who works as a farmer and tourist guide. He is a colonist from the Los
Santos province who settled down in the region during the 1970s as part of a
government resettlement program.
Residents also
complain about the differing norms concerning private property between themselves
and incoming tourist buyers and the reduced capacity to move freely across the
landscape after property has been bought by tourists who fence it and display
“No trespassing” signs on it. The following subset of comments summarizes a
feeling of loss and confusion resulting from these changes in the landscape.
“Some people want to buy land and live here. So
once they have a fence, we cannot pass through that area.” – Interview with a 34 yr construction
worker in Drago on Isla Colon.
“Tourism is partly bad because some people
[tourists] buy and limit their boundaries and nobody can then enter their
properties. There are boundary limits with closed gates that you can enter only
with the permission of the new owners. Even on farms and beaches. Before
tourism reached here, there was tranquility and no problems. We were poor, but
we lived well and were free to go where we wanted. Since 1990, everything
changed. Now we are prohibited from going to various places because they buy up
all the property.”--Interview with a 27
yr old housewife living in Bikri Arriba in Isla Colon and participating in a
protest march against the Red Frog Beach Development Project.
“They [tourists] come and they buy the land and
when they buy they promise to give work to the people and then in the end they
don’t do so. Then they privatize everything. It is painful for me and my family
because we traditionally live freely everywhere in
Increasing high-end
tourism (through resort development, cruises, etc.) instead of back-pack
tourism means that local resources are substituted by imported goods. Hence,
agriculture becomes commercially non-viable because the produce does not have a
large enough market in the archipelago where the economy caters to tourist
states. Residents are well-aware of these ill-effects on their economy. So
although they cite the economic advantages of tourism in terms of more
employment and revenue for the region (76% of people interviewed felt that
there were economic advantages from tourism; refer table 1), they also
paraphrase it with the economic disadvantages from tourism (22% of the
participants).
“…some tourists come here to exploit the place
and then leave. First tourists would come and rent cabins and see stuff and we
would offer services. But then things changed. The people come here, buy land,
take up capital of other tourists. Because all the businesses and shops are
foreigner owned, so all the capital leaves Bocas. Very little remains here.
This is exploitative tourism camouflaged within so called tourism. A foreigner
comes and buys land in Bocas. He sells parcels of land to other people from
abroad. He gets money. The money goes to foreign banks. Nothing for Bocas or
“I am working hard and dying of work. Bu there
is no result from it. We used to have a rice farm [1971 -1975]. But the price
for rice was so low. So we worked hard without any result. We later tried to
grow bananas too. But it was the same story. So we have not done anything since
2 years. We are thinking of starting a fishery (just an idea).” —Interview with the 62 year
old colonist from Los Santos province quoted before.
“When tourists come here, they try to remain
here and so there are more tourists than there are people who belong to here.
When Bocas people have a business or a shop, it benefits the people over here.
Tourists’ have businesses and shops that satisfy the needs of other tourists
only. So it does not benefit the people who are over here.”—Interview 20 yr old housewife
living just outside Bocas town.
When combined with
high costs of living because of tourism and stress from developers and land
speculators seeking to bank land, residents might find it more viable to accept
a far-below-the-market-rate and move to another region that has a lesser cost of
living. Many people in the region are seriously considering this option and
talk about others who have done so. This leads to proletarization of the rural
population. Wages from the tourism economy are not very high and the little
revenue from tourism is limited largely to the town of
The combined effect of
the three laws (8, 54, 2) and the structure of property rights, is that of
greater economic impoverishment and loss of land and forced evictions for the
economically deprived population in the Bocas del Toro Archipelago. The tax incentives
given to attract foreign investors and tourists result in reduced tax flow into
the region. The repatriation of capital, profits and dividends from tourism
enterprises to investor’s countries of origin, as allowed by Law 54, results in
out-flow of capital from the region and the nation. The only benefits to the
local residents are in the form of low-paid wage labour.
Wages are fixed as
salaries and therefore do not reflect the profits accrued from tourism. At the
same time, the “Express Window” created by the Law 2 has taken power over the
governance of land rights from the local government and placed it in the hands
of the national government. Concessions and sales of land titles are granted to
potential tourism developers even though indigenous people already reside in a
particular area and have been using the land for agriculture and other
subsistence activities for decades. This result in forced land sales and
evictions of poor people from the land they have farmed for decades.
Table 3 gives a summary of Remax property listings for the islands of Isla Colon and Bastimentos obtained from their website1. Of a total of 26 listings in Isla Colon, 20 have titles to the property and have a total value of US $ 10,661,000 and amount to a total of 166 acres. The median property size is 1.15 acres and the average property value is US $ 524,000. For the same size, a local resident from whom the developer takes the property is compensated only around US $ 10,000 if at all. Among my 76 participants, only one had title to their property.
Agents often resort to selling land that have only an RoP at low prices so that they can be titled quickly since the tourism and free-market laws give special treatment if it can be shown that the land will be used for augmenting tourism. This can be done as easily as just buying some boats or even furniture such as bunk beds and couches. This is especially so if there are counter-claims to the legitimacy of the sale or residents and other local people resist the sale of that property. For example, an entire island 1.35 acres is up for sale at just US $ 85,000 on the Remax website1.
Land tenure security is essential for poverty alleviation. The laws 8 and 54 may have been enacted with good intentions to alleviate poverty and generate employment opportunities for the people of the Bocas del Toro region. However, the combination of the Laws 8, 54 and 2 and their faulty implementation together with aggressive foreign and national developers intent on profit has resulted in loss of land for the poorer sectors and marginalization and exploitation of the Bocatoreneans in their own land.
It is quite apparent from the above
discussion that laws enacted to attract investment in
A detailed inventory of land use patterns and users is essential for protecting the rights of long-term residents of the region. Back-pack tourism is a low end, low investment, and comparatively high returns form of tourism (Westerhausen and Macbeth 2003). Eco-friendly tourism enterprises are more likely to be successful with back-pack tourism than with high end resort, vacation homes or cruise tourism. Back-packers may be more inclined to use locally produced food and other materials (Westerhausen and Macbeth 2003). So, even if immediate capital returns with back-pack tourism may not be as high as the high-end tourism, it is more sustainable both economically and ecologically for a long period of time and will give more opportunities for local entrepreneurship. Another factor that could aid in this would be the establishment of micro-credit loans that will help local residents make additions and improvements to their property to attract tourists (e.g. building a trail through a forest area on their property, adding a wood or cement room to lease out to tourists, starting small restaurants, etc.).
Conclusion:
One of the objectives of fair trade is to combat gross global inequalities through a system of ethical trade standards and an international network of certified Southern producers and Northern importers, processors, and distributors (Fridell 2007: 5). Fair trade also aims to confront the alienation and atomization of consumers by providing them with information on the social and environmental conditions under which products were produced and traded (Raynolds 2002: 415). Fridell terms this perspective as the decommodification perspective (Fridell 2007: 83).
Land however is not a produce. It is something that aids in the production of other commodities. Unlike other commodities such as coffee, tea, cut flowers, etc. for which fair trade needs to create a market in the North, and which depends on Northern consumers for its success, one does not need Northern consumers to buy land in the South. What are needed are appropriate economic investments that benefit local residents.
Fridell distinguishes between the fair trade network and the fair trade movement. The fair trade network refers to the formal network of NGOs that connects peasants, workers, and craftspeople in the South with partners in the North through a system of fair trade rules and principles (Fridell 2007: 23). The fair trade movement refers to a broader movement, that encapsulates a variety of initiatives headed by Southern governments, international organizations, NGOs with the purpose of radically altering the international trade and development regime in the interests of poor nations in the south (Fridell 2007: 23).
Fridell argues that the fair trade network’s success is largely due to its compatibility with neo-liberal ideals rather than challenging neo-liberal policies and globalization (Fridell 19). He also notes that except for the fair trade network, most other fair trade movement initiatives that were more statist and protectionist in orientation were abandoned during the 1980s (Fridell 2007: 24). The distinction between the fair trade network and the fair trade movement is useful when considering options for including land within the gamut of fair trade discussions. We see two ways in which this may be accomplished.
The first option would be to use the fair
trade network’s strategy and consider the neo-liberal land reforms and
concomitant land market as a reality to be dealt with. The question then would
be how to enforce fair trade ideologies in the land market. This could be done,
for example, through labelling initiatives that are included in titles and sale
deeds for land. The labels could specify the local ideologies on land use and
private property concepts that must be respected by the purchasing parties,
ensure use rights and rights of passage to local residents, and include a price
for social premiums that should be paid to the community even if it is sold by
an individual. Such a social premium should be over and above taxes (which are
currently heavily discounted in
The second option would be to follow the fair trade movement’s ideologies. Akin to the movement’s advocacy of protection and state intervention in various domestic sectors to equalize the playing field between Northern and Southern countries (Fridell 2007: 23), a fair trade movement in land would disallow land sales to foreigners, allow investment in businesses in the region but enforce a cap on profits that can be repatriated out of Panama, improve and enforce labour laws guaranteeing appropriate wages, and make available micro credit for fostering development of local businesses. This would allow investment in the use of land but not the sale of land itself to Northern consumers. It is our opinion that land related concerns fit the fair trade movement’s ideologies rather than the fair trade network’s acceptance of neo-liberal policies.
The decommodification perspective of fair trade (Fridell 2007: 83) can be used for increasing consumer awareness of land related issues and the impact of their decisions on Southern citizens. This would involve roping in real estate agencies like Remax, century 21, Pillar Constructions, etc. (all of whom currently operate in Panama) to participate in the fair trade of land in much the same way as TNCs like Starbucks now support fair trade in coffee. Again, this demands greater consumer awareness that can then put pressure on the TNCs. The fair trade network does provide a symbolic critique of fetishism of commodities (Fridell 2007: 10). But can it really challenge this fetishism? The possession of retirement homes and island destinations in tropical countries is a fetishism that holds foreign tourists captive to the extent that they ignore or are completely oblivious to the effects of the resultant land market and speculation on the lives of local residents.
This discussion on the land tenure insecurity resulting from neo-liberal policies is extremely relevant to the field of fair trade, where land has traditionally not been considered a commodity akin to coffee, cut flowers, bananas, etc. But it is an extremely important issue that needs to be addressed in the context of free market policies that treat land as a commodity that can be traded on the global market, yet is in many ways different from other commodities because it is a productive, immovable resource that generates different kinds and amounts of value over a long period of time. The land market may also potentially impact the fair trade market since the loss of productive land to development could have an effect on who has access to enough land to grow other fair trade commodities.
Similar to other fair trade commodities, this issue also depends on consumer education and awareness since the land market in Bocas caters to the needs of foreign tourists and retirees. It addresses cultural ideas of ideal retirement havens, as well as the right of local people to use land as befits their own cultural ideas and socio-economic needs. The purpose of this paper is to bring to the table questions such as: Can land be treated as just another consumer good? Can there be a “fair trade” in land? How is a “fair price” to be determined for land? Should future productivity or loss there of and cultural ideologies pertaining to land be factored in to determining the “fair” price of land? How can consumer awareness be employed in resisting unfair and unjust trade in land?
Acknowledgements:
This paper has greatly benefited from the
comments and advice of Dr. Kendra McSweeney, Department of Geography, The Ohio
State University. Dr. Mark Moritz in the Department of Anthropology at OSU was
instrumental during the study design and data analysis phases. I am also
grateful to my field associate Feliciano
Table 1: The breakdown of residents’
opinions by category:
|
Opinion
Category |
Percentage
of households expressing this opinion (N = 76). |
|
Economic
Advantages of tourism |
76 % (n = 57) |
|
Land
related concerns due to tourism |
41.3 % (n = 31) |
|
Socio-cultural
problems due to tourism |
38.67 % (n = 29) |
|
Economic
Disadvantages from tourism |
29.3 % (n = 22) |
|
Socio-cultural
advantages of tourism |
18.67 % (n = 31) |
Table
2: Number of participants voicing various land related concerns:
|
Number of participants expressing
this opinion |
|
|
High Land Prices (inflation) |
3 |
|
Land Loss to tourism (banking by elites) |
16 |
|
|
6 |
|
Restricted mobility over landscape |
6 |
|
Clashing Private Property Norms |
8 |
|
Insecurity about tenureship |
3 |
|
Ills of residential tourism |
9 |
|
Feeling that future is bleak for locals |
4 |
|
Feeling that locals don’t value land enough to
hold on to it |
2 |
|
Too much construction in the region |
1 |
|
Environmental destruction |
1 |
|
Feeling that retaining land is essential for
future security |
1 |
|
No place to live in the future after selling all
land |
1 |
Table
3: Summary of property values and sizes in Isla Colon and Isla Bastimentos from
the Remax
|
|
|
Isla Bastimentos |
|
# of property listings |
26 |
10 |
|
# of Titled property |
20 |
7 |
|
Total Property value |
10,661,000 |
1,953,000 |
|
Median property value |
524,000 |
195,300 |
|
Total property size in
acres |
166.17 |
8.46 |
|
Median property size in
acres |
1.15 |
1.0575 |
Note 1: information
about property listings and corresponding property values were obtained from
the Remax Panama website: http://www.bocasrealestate.net/Real_Estate/Panama/Bocas/home1.php
and then summarized using MS Excel. It should be noted that Remax properties
were used solely as an example. Other real estate agents such as Century 21 and
Pillar Construction also operate in the region and similar practices have been
attributed to most realtors and developers in the region.
Bibliography: