Property regimes have been making the news lately in spades. it seems like every time one nation transitions away from nationalized or collectivized resource management, another is waiting in the wings to take its place. The contrast between incredibly short life spans of national property regimes to long-held traditional collective and familial property regimes also refers us back to the social nature of property relations. Shifting ownership entitlements mean shifting social values.

There's an interesting amiguity that I struggled with when reading this report and it turns on the phrase "Collective Action."

This report was released by the International Land Coalition (ILC) in partnership with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)'s System-wide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRI) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). While I can't find anything amiss about the ILC -- in fact, their principles, mandate, and members are impressive -- the CGIAR and FAO leave something to be desired in terms of their ties to transnational agribusiness, and in the case of the former, in terms of its place at the WB as well as its historical agenda of promoting the Green Revolution in the Global South.

http://www.landcoalition.org/

CALL TO ACTION from ARTHUR MANUEL

I've attached the call to action here. But I wanted to highlight a particular distinction the call makes between Indigenous demands and what government policy pushes:

COLLECTIVE LAND BASE: Our peoples collectively made decisions and cared for the land, it is inalienable. We have the right to control our territories.

versus

FEE SIMPLE: If a group signs a treaty, the “treaty lands” are returned as fee simple lands—held like settler property that can be seized, forfeited and sold to settlers.

Originally published in GRAIN, Seedling, January 2005 (http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=315)

Aldo Gonzalez is an indigenous person from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where community organisations are leading a major resistance movement against the contamination of native maize by transgenic seeds. The movement is guided by the ancestral relationships between people and their natural surroundings. Politically, the resistance movement is linked to the struggle for autonomy by and for local communities, and is rooted in a particular indigenous vision of the world. In Oaxaca and in other Mexican states, defending maize is a cornerstone of defending a community’s autonomy.

Comprehensive historical reports and monitoring papers on Land Reform efforts in various countries