Land tenure regimes for women in Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) in Northern Ghana: Opportunities and threats

Highlights

• Women have poor access to land and land tenure security under customary land governance and state land title registration.

• Combining land title registration with customary land governance may provide women with better land access and security.

• Community co-creation, education and access to small-scale loans are essential and fosters inclusivity of vulnerable groups.

• Participation in REDD+ for women requires access to land and land tenure security and sufficiently large plots of land.

Abstract

This paper analyses women’s access and security to land under customary land governance in Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) in Northern Ghana through document analyses and surveys of 312 land right holders and tenants from 13 communities. The key interest is to investigate the potential for combining customary land practices with land title registration and education in improving women’s economic empowerment and social development in the Dorimon and Zukpiri CREMAs. The paper focuses on the motivation of land right holders to grant land rights to women through land use agreements and reasons for terminating such agreements, and provides critical perspectives and data to support the development of tenure security indicators for community protected agro-ecological areas. The study also assesses the position of women in anticipation of forest carbon credits as against their current land holding rights and concludes that despite inherent weaknesses of customary land governance in protected areas, opportunities exist to scale up and expand the formalisation of land use rights through CREMAs, education and the use of Voluntary Savings and Loans Association to enable women gain access to sufficient land. This could significantly help improve women smallholder farmers’ tenure security to land, provide livelihood options, enhance food security and ensure their participation and profit from entering into result based ecosystem payment scheme such as REDD+.

Introduction

Increasing competition for land and natural resources for various uses continue to be the most existential threats to rural livelihoods, conservation and natural resource governance in the global south. Population growth, urbanisation, “land grabbing” and climate change have been suggested as the prime catalysts for the current situation (Akinola, 2018; Higgins et al., 2018; Sward, 2017). Such competition is leading to food insecurity, reduction in agricultural lands, landlessness and livelihoods challenges for women smallholder farmers and other vulnerable groups (Thornton et al., 2019).

Women have the potential to increase farm yield by 20–30% and also reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17% if they have the same access to productive resources as men (Doss, 2018). Interestingly, women’s contributions to agriculture in the global south, have still not been valorised enough to activate the necessary discussions and policy options (Gatzweiler and Von Braun, 2016).

Interventions in agriculture targeted at women do not only bridge the productivity gap but may also spark holistic development in rural communities (Diiro et al., 2018). However, these benefits are impaired by limited access to fertile lands, farm inputs, markets, information and finance. Aside the use of basic tools and limited access to irrigational facilities, women smallholder farmers also suffer from unsupportive public policies (Muzari, 2017). Due to the low level of female representation in agriculture extension services, officers usually focus on male farmers (Diiro et al., 2018, Okonya and Kroschel, 2014). Undeniably, household and societal pay-offs due to women’s constraints in agricultural activities are enormous and far reaching (Muzari, 2017).

Despite lack of secured and equitable land rights (FAO, 2018a, FAO, 2018b), women, produce 70 per cent of Africa’s food supply and they play a significant role in household food production despite small sized plots and nutrient deficient soils (Lowder et al., 2016; Scalise, 2014). Women with secured land use rights are strategic centres for reducing hunger, malnutrition, and poverty in households in addition to educational attainment (Akinola, 2018; Loison, 2019).

Women’s contribution to farming activities and food security is not proportionate to the influence they have on land and natural resource use decisions (Scalise, 2014). Agriculture is a hegemonic male gendered institution that has obscured women as ancillary helpers with little or no decision making on farming activities (Lowder et al., 2016). When women have the same access and rights to resources and opportunities as men, statistics on the poor and hungry is expected to be lower (Nyasimi and Huyer, 2017). Weak land rights and tenure insecurity continue to be a plague and a limitation to women’s economic empowerment (McKinsey, 2015). A key enabler to improve food security, nutrition and women empowerment is women’s access to land rights and tenure security (Chagomoka et al., 2015). Secured tenure rights ensure women make long-term decisions on the use of land and also invest in sustainable land practices (Akram et al., 2019).

Within Ghana, the northern region records poor human development indicators and climate variability is expected to worsen and negatively impact agriculture. Although women here constitute half the agricultural labour force and produce more than 70% of the food, they are still poor (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019). This is closely attributed to the fact that 90% of women have no secured rights to lands, as compared to 7% of males (Richardson and Gaafar, 2016). Weak tenure rights restrict women farmers’ access to information, technology and capital assets which inhibits long-term, sustainable land use practices (Samii, 2013).

Land rights under customary practice in Ghana is accessed through marriage, clan/family control, gift, inheritance, plea or tenancy arrangement (Giovarelli, 2006; Kasanga and Kotey, 2001), with women’s access to land largely determined by male family relations, stability of marriages and inheritance (Yaro, 2012; Kevane, 1999). This makes women’s land tenure negotiable, fluid, oral and ambiguous (Apusiga, 2016; Kuusaana and Gerber, 2015). The weak land tenure of women is enhanced by customary law and etched in tradition (Kasanga and Kotey, 2001) and is a major barrier for exercising land use rights (Dery, 2016; OECD, 2016). Customary law posits that married women are obliged to assist their husbands in the acquisition of wealth but gives no proprietary rights to the wife, regardless of the level of assistance (Akinola, 2018; ABANTU, 2004; Fobih, 2004).

When there is divorce or death, the rights of the widow over farm land at best weans or at worst, is lost. In cases of polygamy, the deceased husband often leaves behind several vulnerable widows and children without secured farmlands. It is also commonly believed that a woman is the property of the husband and how then is it possible for a “property” to own a property?

Uncertainty over tenure weakens women’s rights to land and other productive assets (Croppenstedt et al., 2013). Land tenure security is the source of food, water, fuel, recreation, shelter and plant medicine for right holders (Satterthwaite et al., 2010). Therefore, the inability of women to exercise rights over land affects their access to these services and productive resources, limiting their prospects of improving their economic and social wellbeing (FAO, 2017; Whitehead and Tsikata, 2003).

Over the years, land under customary administration has experienced a major paradigm shift away from being a communal, social service to becoming more of a commercial item of individual ownership (Bugri, 2013). The accelerated transformation of agrarian society have increased deprivation among women, deteriorating their access to farming lands (Yaro, 2012; Lavigne and Durand-Lasserve, 2009).

Despite attempts made by governments and partners through policy and legislation to improve women’s land use rights, many still do not have tenure security. Policies seeking to secure women’s land use rights include for instance the 1992 Constitution and Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) Law 111. These policies and legislation processes have to a large extent not been successful in improving social equity and justice among the various interest groups (Apusiga, 2016). Although article 35 (1) of Ghana’s constitution prohibits discrimination and prejudices with regard to access, user rights and title holding based on gender, this clause is rarely enforced. Also, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) Law 111, which was passed in 1985 to improve spouses’ access to properties, is silent on bequeathing land to surviving wives and does not protect women in non-marital situations. Since the introduction of the Land Administration Project (LAP) in 2003 by the World Bank and the Ghanaian government, women hold of agricultural land has deteriorated (Deane et al., 2017). There are issues of cost of land title registration, bureaucracy, corruption, and centralisation of land titling processes (Ali et al., 2017; Jones-casey and Knox, 2011). Indeed, the Customary Land Secretariat (CLS) created as part of the LAP to address these challenges, has not achieved much due to resource and human capital constraints (Asiama et al., 2018). Ghana`s pluralist land regime has dislocated land resources from the social, cultural and spiritual life of its indigenous people (Alhassan, 2006). The superimposition of titling on pre-existing customary regimes has so far failed to address the real challenges and has increased the uncertainties surrounding land ownership and tenure regimes (Anying, 2014).

Given the long-standing challenges for women to secure land tenure in Ghana, this paper investigates the potential for combining customary land practices with land title registration and education in two case areas through four research objectives.

The first objective of this paper is to understand the mind set and motivation of key stakeholders in rural and naturally endowed communities concerning a possible paradigm shift from the business as usual (customary) to documented land title registration. Close to 80% of lands in northern Ghana are governed by customary law (Sward, 2017; Bugri, 2013). Over the years, attempts have been made to streamline the governance structure to align with that of the statutory system by encouraging individual titling. However, customary tenure regimes are community-based property systems for which practices are engrained in the culture of adherents (Ehwi and Asante, 2016; Mark Freudenberger, 2013).

Secondly, this paper seeks to provide critical perspectives and data to support the development of indicators of tenure security for women in community protected agro-ecological areas. These indicators are relevant to the attainment of the SDGs. Despite the relative support that customary land practices offer women and vulnerable groups, indicators of tenure rights and security are not fully defined and addressed (ILC, 2019). The design of appropriate tools to measure indicators of tenure security under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 5, target 5a,¹ and SDG 1, target 1.4² is still being debated (UNIDO, 2018).

Thirdly, this paper seeks to document the extent and type of benefit sharing and different motivations of patriarchal systems to grant land use rights to women. It also attempts to find answers to the questions: how long are land right holders willing to grant rights to women through land use agreements and what are the possible reasons for terminating such arrangements? The paper digs further to determine farmlands sizes, right holders are willing to grant to women as it is generally known that women work on farms not more than 5 ha (Cavenett, 2005).

Fourthly, this paper assesses the prospects of women to participate and benefit from REDD+ initiatives in light of their current land holding rights. For women to participate fully in the REDD+ Programme and to benefit from carbon credits as well as from shea parkland restoration activities, their access and tenure security to land is sine qua non. The landscape is described as the most vulnerable and susceptible to climate change in Ghana but still provides an estimated three million rural women with livelihood opportunities through the shea value chain (GCF, 2019; Foli et al., 2018).