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Journal of Land Use Science

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Land tenure regimes and land conservation in the African drylands: the case of northern Ghana
Emmanuel Joseph Mensah
a ab

Policy Fellow, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Accra, Ghana
b

Executive Member, lOasis Development Group, Accra, Ghana Accepted author version posted online: 06 Jan 2014.Published online: 21 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Emmanuel Joseph Mensah , Journal of Land Use Science (2014): Land tenure regimes and land conservation in the African drylands: the case of northern Ghana, Journal of Land Use Science, DOI: 10.1080/1747423X.2013.878765 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2013.878765

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Journal of Land Use Science, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2013.878765

Land tenure regimes and land conservation in the African drylands: the case of northern Ghana
Emmanuel Joseph Mensaha,b*
a

Policy Fellow, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Accra, Ghana; bExecutive Member, lOasis Development Group, Accra, Ghana (Received 23 January 2013; final version received 17 December 2013)

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In Africas drylands, threats to economic livelihood from climate change are exacerbated by a low rate of investments in land conservation. The existing literature identifies land tenure insecurity as a major contributory factor. To help better understand this challenge, this paper investigated, empirically, the impact of land tenure regimes on investment in land conservation, focusing on northern Ghana. The studys findings identified three dominant traditional institutions of land administration, viz., tendana, chieftaincy and family. These institutions in turn define three broad categories of tenure regimes, namely, freehold, leasehold and lineage. It further finds that these regimes exhibit a continuum of tenure security that impact differentially on investment in land conservation. This is buttressed by the quantitative analysis, which reveals that whereas freehold (relative to lineage) significantly engenders investment in conservation, leasehold shows no important impact. Among others, the paper recommends the institution of reform processes that promote durable and individualized land tenure security. Keywords: land tenure; land conservation; dryland; farm household; northern Ghana; Africa

1. Introduction Contemporary adverse changes in global climate and land productivity continue to threaten farm-based production and livelihood worldwide (UN WCED, 1987). As noted by IFAD (2009), climate change and variability is unequivocal, accelerating and constitutes a major threat to sustainable livelihood. In the drylands of Africa, this trend is exacerbated by a relatively low rate of investment in land conservation in these regions. The existing literature hypothesizes land tenure insecurity as a major contributory factor. In this paper, a quantitative assessment of the extent of impact of land tenure regimes on household decision to make major investment in land conservation is provided. The aim is to help enhance understanding of this challenge and distil the appropriate policy interventions necessary for stimulating investment in land conservation, thereby contributing to existing knowledge and discourse on how derivatives of institutional arrangements such as land tenure regimes influence household decisions on land productivity and resource management. Whereas the vulnerability of agro-ecological systems in arid and semi-arid regions of Africa is attributable to the state of the environment and the increasing extremity in weather patterns, investment in land conservation is endogenous and driven by factors
*Email: ejmensah@gmail.com; ejmensah@agra.org
2014 Taylor & Francis

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inherent in the behaviour and decisions of farm households. As discussed in Adams (1974) and recounted by Goldstein and Udry (2006), key derivatives of institutional arrangements that underlie access to and use of economic resources such as lands are important in engendering their sustainable management. In particular, land as an economic resource is important for agricultural production. Investment in land conservation to help sustain their productive capacity is therefore a non-trivial economic decision for all farm households. Like all economic actors, these households require sufficient incentives to justify major investment in landholdings (AGRA, 2012). Among such incentives is the extent and duration of control over the given land resource. Indeed, such control, as defined by the prevailing land tenure regime, provides the basis for capturing and internalizing the benefits arising from investment in a given conservation practice (Deininger & Binswanger, 1999). Hence, land tenure is hypothesized in the literature as critical for determining the rate of investment in land conservation. However, empirical understanding of the structure of such impact remains limited. Specifically, plural systems of land tenure administration in most parts of Africa (including Ghana) tend to exhibit a continuum of user rights, which ranges from very strong to relatively weaker tenure security. To what extent then do such different tenure regimes influence decisions on major investment in land conservation and related productivity-enhancing practices? How could development policy properly optimize such leverage to engender greater investments in land conservation, especially in one of the worlds increasingly vulnerable agro-ecological zones Africas drylands (Deressa, Hassan, & Ringler, 2009; Downing, 1992; UNCCD, UNEP, & UNDP, 2009)? These are the core research questions underlining this paper. The primary objective of the paper is therefore to establish the differential impact of land tenure regimes on major investment in land conservation, focusing on the semi-arid agro-ecological zone of Ghana. The specific objectives are to (1) identify the dominant institutional arrangements for land administration in the study area and the tenure regimes arising as key derivatives of these institutions; and (2) quantify the differential impact of land tenure regimes on the incidence of major investment in land conservation by farm households in the study area. Justification for this study is founded on several grounds. First, land rights and their influence on agricultural production and conservation practices will remain an important global development issue for the twenty-first century (Asabere, 1994; De Soto, 2000; Maxwell & Wiebe, 1999). By focusing on investigating the nature of such nexus and within the context of a typical semi-arid agro-ecological zone in Africa, this paper responds to an important policy issue. Second, for Africa generally and Ghana in particular, the strategic importance of agriculture to sustainable development makes a better and thorough understanding of the link between land rights and the adoption of land conservation and productivityenhancing practices extremely necessary. Also, the dominance of agriculture and the espousal of the private sector as the engine of growth imply that policies that specifically address bottlenecks to private investment in the sector needs to be urgently identified and deployed. Obviously, this will involve policy initiatives that are sufficiently informed by the results of studies of this nature. Third, some districts in the focal area already benefiting from major development investments such as the Millennium Village Project1 and various national agricultural

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development programmes. With the strategic objective of increasing agricultural production, productivity and competitiveness, the results of the study should prove useful and timely. Lastly, economic livelihoods in northern Ghana, like most of Africas drylands, are identified to be systematically vulnerable to endemic poverty. GoG (2006) indicates that overall poverty incidence in Ghana is highest in these regions, with relatively more fragile environment for agro-based production. Thus, by exploring the extent of influence of land tenure regimes, among other factors, on the adoption of major conservation measures by landholders, the study contributes to knowledge on the subject while informing policy strategies appropriate for promoting efficient land use and resource management in this zone. This paper is therefore very relevant and timely. The paper is organized into five sections. Section 2 provides a review of the focal country, the literature on the nexus between land tenure and investment in land conservation and the study area. Section 3 discusses the analytical framework, methodology, data source and definition of variables. Section 4 then discusses the results of the analyses, with Section 5 concluding. 2. Literature review This section provides a brief overview of the economic and policy background of the focal country (Ghana), review of the existing literature on land tenure and land conservation with special reference to Ghana and an introductory note on the study area (northern Ghana). 2.1. Ghana: a country background Ghana is a West African economy, located on the southern coast of the sub-region, between latitude 444 N and 1111 N and longitudes 311 W and 111 E (FAO, 2006). A recent population and housing census in 2010 estimated the population of the country at over 24.6 million, with an intercensal growth rate of 2.4% (GSS, 2012). Economic development policy in Ghana since the post-independence era identifies poverty as a major development problem requiring direct and methodical response. Towards this end, economic policy in Ghana over that period has focused on accelerating growth in income towards improved livelihood and significant reduction in poverty. Aside the adoption of the global agenda of drastically reducing poverty and hunger by 2015 (as specified in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals), major policy programmes have been implemented in more recent decades to specifically address poverty and its associated challenges to the Ghanaian society. Some of these programmes are marked out in the Human Development Strategy Plan (NDPC, 1991) and the National Development Policy Framework (NDPC, 1994) of the country. The latter formed the basis for the development of the various phases of the Vision 2020 policy programme, which was implemented from 1995 to 2000 (NDPC, 2003). Succeeding these programmes has been the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP) and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), the Millennium Challenge Programme of the United States, the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA) and the Savanna Agricultural Development Programme. Significantly, a key strategy cutting across all of these programmes has been the targeting of agriculture as the primary sector to drive up income growth and thereby improve living standards in the country. This is based on the view that an agro-based

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industrial development strategy, in the context of the countrys economy, has greater potential to impact immensely on employment and wealth creation. Ghanas agricultural sector has accounted for over 36% of national income and employed more than two-thirds of the countrys labour force in the periods preceding the export of crude oil in 2011. In terms of growth, the sector has grown at an average rate of 6.1% since 2002, representing over 1 and 1.3 percentage points more than that reported for industry and service sectors, respectively (BOG, 2008; CEPA, 2007; ISSER, 2006). Even more crucial is the fact that traditionally growth in the sector tends to have stronger leverage on other sectors of the economy, especially on the basis of its contribution to food security and raw material supply, foreign exchange earnings and savings, food prices and improved household incomes. Furthermore, improved farm incomes create significant demand for domestic manufactures and services, more so given the sheer size and structure of demand of the rural sector. However, agriculture in Ghana confronts major debilitating challenges that considerably constrain the capacity of the sector to respond to the growing market opportunities and policy initiatives. Dominant among these factors is the issue of land access and tenure security. Quite consistent with a sector characterized by the dominance of traditional production practices, land constitutes a principal factor of production for the agricultural sector in Ghana. In many instances, access to land alone determines to a large extent the poverty status and degree of vulnerability of farm households to hunger. Beyond access however, the right to use land and benefit from investments made in it constitute a defining factor for production decisions and the very survival of most farm households. Underlining this state is especially the trend in population growth and the ever-growing demand for land, land productivity losses through degradation, overuse and extremities in precipitation and other weather patterns. 2.2. Land rights and land conservation in Ghana As noted by Goldstein and Udry (2006) in a study on land rights and agricultural productivity in Akwapim (a farming community in southern Ghana), political influence and social network significantly influence a households ability to exercise right to a piece of land. Such rights then provide the incentive to invest in improving farm productivity and income. The livelihood implication of this phenomenon is what the paper aptly describes as the profits of power . This is very much consistent with the global view expressed by Lappe (1998) that around the world, the poorest of the poor are the landless in rural areas, followed closely by the land-poor; those whose poor quality plots are too small to support a family (FAO, 2005, p. 2). And, it is such global concerns that have generated the intense policy debate and varied programmes on land tenure reforms in most parts of the developing world, Africa not excluded. For Ghana specifically, the debate on land has centred mainly on the plural2 land tenure systems prevailing in the country and how they could be reformed and administered to foster economic growth and development. For instance, the National Land Policy (GLAPS, 2003) clearly articulates a general focus on stimulating economic development through improving land markets, security of tenure and effective administration. Nevertheless, an obvious trend in the policy debate seems to favour market-based access and private entitlement to land. This is based on the notion that private ownership of land, as expressed in well-documented and enforceable title, tends to engender greater security of ownership and, in some cases, serve as useful certificate for accessing

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investable resources such as credit. Consequently, individuals with secured land title are found to be better incentivized to invest in and optimally use existing land resources than those without it (Cleaver & Schreiber, 1994; De Soto, 2000; Hitchcock, 1981; Picardi & Seifert, 1976). A contrary perspective to the foregoing argument is provided by another strand of literature led by Besley (1995). This literature posits that privatization of land cannot constitute the primary solution to the complexities associated with land tenure problems in Africa, and for that matter Ghana. Indeed, it argues that typical of most African societies, goodwill and social bonds tend to provide sufficient protection for rights to land and therefore the motivation to invest, not only for the individual concerned but for the community and posterity. As illustrated by Besley (1995), since community-based risk sharing forms an important feature of most African societies, it is quite outside expectation that the incentive to invest in land necessarily increase with formal rights to land as against a communal (or the indigenous) tenure system. The paper further points out that such formal right in land do not necessarily correspond with the rights that a farmer may desire in planning to invest in that land. Additionally, beyond the matter of ensuring efficient land use administration, some literature also express greater confidence in the ability of traditional institutions in readily responding to local needs and the changing exogenous conditions that preserve efficient use of land resources. This argument is best articulated in Dasgupta and Maler (1990). Another dimension to the argument is the view that even where communal tenure systems are alleged to have failed in providing sufficient protection to rights in land, individuals have been able to enhance such rights by making long-term investments in the land, such as tree planting. Bruce (1988), in a review of the African land tenure systems, summarizes this view as follows:
Some observers have suggested that indigenous tenure systems pose a degree of insecurity that destroys incentives to plant tree crops. This may be true in some cases, but the literature is also replete with examples in which holders with temporary or fragile titles, having succeeded in planting trees, enhanced their tenure. The establishment of tree farms can be a critical step in the transition from shifting to stabilized cultivation, with trees defining permanent holdings. Tree planting may initially be discouraged by insecurity of tenure, but tree planting can actually produce greater security of tenure and act as a way of claiming land. (Bruce, 1988, p. 41, in Besley, 1995)

In Uganda, Place and Otsuka (2002) also find that in enhancing tenure security farmers in their study also tended to engage in coffee cultivation on the land. Obviously, these varying perspectives provide important reflection of the conflicting views associated with the nexus between land tenure systems, land use forms and decisions regarding investments in land conservation by landholders. Empirical insights to reinforce the fitting perspective, deepen evidence-based discourse and better inform policy actions for efficient administration of land resources are sorely needed. For most parts of Africa, the significance of this debate is already manifested by the increasing vulnerability of food production systems to the rising trends in land degradation, soil productivity losses and declining food security. In fact, recent projections by Scherr and Yadav (1997) indicate that by the year 2020 land degradation may pose a serious threat to food production and rural livelihoods, particularly in poor and densely populated areas like the arid and semi-arid regions of the developing world. The paper further predicts that if accelerated erosion continues unabated, yield reductions by 2020 may reach 16.5%. Already, the AU Commission (2010)

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observes that decades of nutrient mining has rendered farmlands in Africa the poorest in the world. The Commission further estimates US$4 billion as the equivalent value of nutrient lost on the continent annually. In Ghana, the situation is even more pertinent in the semi-arid regions where productivity losses of farmlands are accelerated by the increasing population pressure, limited investment in external inputs like fertilizer, limited land cover and extensive exposure of the top soils to rain and wind erosion, extreme rainfall patterns and high-temperature conditions, obsolete land management know-how and poor land use practices. Some notable land use practices that directly compromise the productivity and sustainable management of these land resources include short-fallow shifting cultivation practices, intensive farming on limited pieces of land, indiscriminate felling of trees for fuel wood and charcoal production, bush burning and overgrazing. Certainly, these developments pose significant challenge to the national agenda of agricultural transformation for improved incomes and poverty reduction. At the household level, it also deepens the vulnerability of households to hunger and chronic poverty. 2.3. Background to the study area: northern Ghana The focal study area is the semi-arid agro-ecological zone of Ghana, which is made up entirely of the landmasses of the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions of the country. Together, these regions also constitute the northern corridor of Ghana. On account of the distribution of the agricultural and climatic conditions in the country, Ghana is organized into six agro-ecological zones. These zones exhibit different attributes of vegetative cover, geological structure, natural resources and climatic conditions. They are, from the north to south: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Sudan Savannah Guinea Savannah Forest Savannah Transition Semi-Deciduous Rainforest Rainforest Coastal Savannah

The Sudan and Guinea Savannah agro-ecological zones of the country therefore constitute the semi-arid (or the dryland) region of Ghana. Figure 1 is the map of the six agroecological zones, showing the key administrative towns and cities as well as the range of annual rainfall amounts for the respective zones. The zone covers a total area of about 97,702 km2 and an estimated population of 4.23 million, representing about 41% and 17.1% of the national landmass and population, respectively (GSS, 2012). This population is dominated by two major ethnic groups. These are the Mole Dagbani and the Grunsi ethnic groups. The vegetative cover of this zone is characterized by the savannah grassland, thinly interspersed with some thickets and drought-resistant trees such as the shea, dawadawa, baobabs or acacias. The zone experiences unimodal rainfall distribution. This occurs during the months of May to September. This period constitutes the wet or the principal production season in this zone. The mean annual rainfall over the entire zone is 1000 mm, with a minimum of about 700 to a maximum of 1200 mm. The temperature levels vary significantly across the seasons, peaking at about 41C during the season especially.

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Figure 1.

Map of the six agro-ecological zones of Ghana.

Source: www.ehs.cdu.edu.au/chromolaena/proceedings/third/3tim1b.html (Accessed 14 December 2013).

3. Analytical framework The evaluation of the extent of impact of land tenure regimes on farmer decision to implement major land conservation measures has been the subject of both theoretical and empirical research. According to de Janvry and Sadoulet (2001), contentions over issues of land access and user rights are now even more acute, driven especially by two principal

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factors: the growth in human population and the rate of integration of markets for agro-products. In respect of population growth, this argument is bolstered by Boserup (1965). In analysing the relationship between population growth and changes in agricultural production systems, that paper contends that within traditional agrarian production systems the scarcity of farmlands and the consequent reduction in fallow periods arising from population explosion necessitates a shift from extensive to more intensive production systems. Farmers thus compensate for the increased pressure on the available lands with the deployment of more labour resources and investment in land conservation practices. By this argument, Boserup contradicts Malthus (1998) that growth in human population largely determines growth in agricultural production. Considered within the context of land tenure and its relation to land use and productivity, Kabubo-Mariaria (2006) also notes that some studies provide further impetus to the Boserup thesis by asserting that the increase in the relative price of food, arising especially from increased demand, necessitates reforms in land tenure arrangements towards improved incentives for increased investment in land conservation. Platteau (1996, 2000) are cited as typical examples. Accordingly, arising from Boserups argument is the consideration that rights in land could be endogenous; that is, derived on the basis of previous investments in the land.3 From this conceptual premise, this paper proceeds with the analysis of the factors influencing farmers decision to invest in land conservation by evaluating the relationship between the expected right in land and previous investments in conservation on the given land. However, since the expected right in land is not directly observable but still dependent on the prevailing tenure regime and the investment in conservation made on that land, a relationship could be specified to measure the expected land right, following the methodology of Otsuka, Quisumbing, Payongayong, and Aidoo (2003) and adapted by KabuboMariara (2006) such that Re 0 1 X 2 C (1)

where Re refers to the expected land right; X is a dummy that refers to the prevailing land tenure regime; C refers to investment in land conservation; 0 is the value of the land right without any investment in conservation; 1 is the marginal effect of the land tenure regime on the expected land right; and 2 is the marginal effect of the incidence of investment in land conservation on land right. Following the conceptual arguments preceding Equation (1), 2 is hypothesized to be positive, a priori; that is, as investment in land conservation increases, the expected right increases, ceteris paribus. The relative effect of X (i.e. 1 ) however depends on the tenure regime. As noted earlier, a thesis spearheaded by the neoclassical school provides another important basis for conceptualizing the relationship between land tenure and conservation. From that perspective, the incentive to invest in land increases as the right to appropriate and internalize the benefits of those investments rise (Adam, 1974). In the expression of Uma (1992, p. 37), assured land rights ensure incentives to invest in land. Thus, following the argument of Otsuka et al. (2003), a simplified linear expression of this relationship could be specified such that C 0 1 Re (2)

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where 0 is the intercept term in the model and 1 is the marginal effect of the expected right in land on the adoption of a land-conserving practice. The dependent variable, C , is measured as a binary variable assuming the value 1 when a major land conservation practice is adopted, and 0 otherwise, while 1 is hypothesized to be positive. To make the two models tractable for empirical estimation, the unobserved variable Re is eliminated by substitution such that C 0 1 0 1 X 2 C Solving for C in Equation (3) yields a reduced form function, given as C 0 1 X (4) (3)

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 where 0 0 1 0 1 1 and 1 1 1 =1 1 1 Equation (4) therefore constitutes the basic model of the study.

3.1. Methodology Following standard practice in econometric analysis, the functional form of the model above is estimated taking into account other factors that the existing literature identifies to have potential effect on the dependent variable. Thus, at the level of a farm household i, the model to be estimated is specified in matrix formulation as Ci 0 1 Xi 2 Zi ei (5)

where Ci defines the adoption (incidence of investment) in land-conserving measure; Xi defines a vector of the prevailing tenure regimes, as a measure of right in the land; Zi is a vector of factors other than the land tenure regime influencing the decision to adopt a conservation practice by farm household i; S are the parameters (or coefficients) of the model; and ei is the random error term of the model. Factors represented in the vector Zi include the socioeconomic characteristics of the household. These include the educational attainment of the head of the household, household size and assets, the sex of household head, age and marital status of the household head, proximity to major market centre, population density, land use form and the extent of presence of public/private institutions in land conservation-related interventions. As the availability and definition of these variables depend entirely on the empirical data available, Section 3.3 provides extensive discussion of the definition and construction of these variables. In the empirical estimation of Equation (5), the binary adoption approach is employed. Soule, Tegene, and Wiebe (2000), for example, have used this approach in modelling the relationship between land tenure and adoption of conservation practices among a sample of U.S. corn producers. The dependent variable in the model is assumed to be generated by a latent variable, C , such that the incidence of a conservation measure on a farmer s

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field implies C is positive, generating the observation, C 1, in Equation (5). Otherwise, the conservation practice is not observed and thus C 0. In Long (1997), the structural model is specified such that Ci f0 Wi 2i i 1; :::; N (6)

where Wi is a vector of land tenure regime and other characteristics specific to the farm household i, f is a vector of coefficients while 2i is a random disturbance term. In effect, the relationship between Ci and Ci is stated as follows:  Ci 1 if Ci > 0; 0 if Ci  0: (7)

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and 2i , NID0; 2 . As a result, for a farmer i, the latent variable Ci > 0 if the farmer adopts the conservation practice on the field, which also implies Ci 1. The probability that Ci 1 is therefore given in Equation (8) as PrCi 1 PrCi > 0 Prf0 Wi 2i > 0 1 F f0 Wi F f0 Wi (8)

where Pr and F is the probability distribution and cumulative distribution functions of the model, respectively. To ensure that 0  Ci  1, the cumulative distribution function F of the error term in the model is assumed to follow the logistic distribution in this study. For comparison purposes, the model will also be estimated under the assumption of the cumulative standard normal distribution.

3.2. Source of data Data for the analysis were drawn from a household sample survey carried out under the ISSER/USAID4 project on Land Tenure and Land Policy Research in Ghana. The survey was designed and conducted by ISSER. The overall survey covered 2690 households nationwide. The data for the present analysis were therefore extracted from the national database using the regional identification code for Upper West, Upper East and Northern regions. As explained earlier, these regions constitute the northern corridor of Ghana and makes up the semi-arid agro-ecological zone of the country. This sub-sample therefore contained a total of 695 households, from 10 enumeration areas in 10 districts of the three regions. Key sections of the structured questionnaire included questions on household composition and characteristics, landholding, land use and land tenure regimes, evidence of major investment in landholdings, land prices, land markets and institutional issues, among others. Survey enumerators were trained with the aim of enabling them retain

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the same understanding of the concepts and questions as the researchers, communicate the intent of each question to the respondents and elicit the appropriate responses. As part of the overall project, key informant and focus group discussions were also designed to generate additional information on land rights and land use practices, land administration and other institutional issues. These data were organized and reported as two other independent levels of analysis, namely, reports on statutory land institutions (or institutional analysis) and key informant interviews (or community-level analysis). However, as explained above, the data at the core of the present paper were based primarily on the sub-sample data obtained exclusively from the quantitative survey. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for processing the data, while STATA was used for the estimation of the models. 3.3. Definition of variables and hypotheses Land conservation in the current analysis is measured as the incidence of major investment in conservation on the principal farmland of the household since the past 5 years. These measures are defined to mean those on-farm investments undertaken to help protect or even enhance the productive capacity of farmlands, especially in relation to soil and water conservation. Among such practices identified by the respondents are tree planting and contour bands that are created to prevent soil erosion. Other practices such as ridges, mounds, stone lines, basins rectangular mounds, contour stripping and the use of cover crops are also reported to be in use in the area although these are noted to be short-term conservation measures. Giving the long-term nature of investments in tree planting and contour bands, widespread adoption of these measures is particularly constrained by land tenure insecurity and limited resources. Indeed, across the broad spectrum of respondents in the survey, the notion of major investment in land conservation is well understood to be relative. That is, given the differences in resource endowment among farmers, what constitutes a major outlay for one farmer might be minor for the other. This is more so since the opportunity cost of investing a specified amount of resources in land conservation is expected to be lower for a resource-rich respondent, relative to her resource-poor counterpart, ceteris paribus. Thus, for the purposes of the study, what constitutes a major investment in land conservation is permitted to be self-evaluated by the farmholder during the interview. Here, it is hypothesized that the stronger the security of tenure of a farmholder, the more likely that such a holder will undertake what she evaluates (relative to her resource endowment) to be a major investment towards the conservation of that land. The variable is assigned the value 1 when respondents indicate they made such investment, 0 otherwise. Based on this methodology, only 15.5% of the respondents identified to have made major investment in land conservation in the past 5 years. Whereas the initial assessment of the study had considered the state of land market (and prices) as important for consideration in the model, preliminary evaluation of the empirical data suggested an absence of such dynamics within the focal area. For instance, the difference between the price of migrant lands for farming in 1995 and 2005 was considered a useful proxy for estimating the extent of vibrancy in the local land market. Unfortunately, this variable was found to be highly collinear, as it showed little change. The response rate on land price (values) was also very poor. This factor was therefore excluded from the empirical model. For the tenure regime, three broad dummy variables are defined in the study, based on the regime under which the land is operated. These are the freehold, lineage and leasehold

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tenure regimes. By definition, the freehold regime involves cases where the landholder expresses the right to own and use the land for unlimited period of time. In the sample data, this regime was found to arise mainly from outright purchase of land by the respondent or when the land is passed on to the holder as gift. Under such regimes, the holder exercised full right to the use of the land and had no obligation to an institution or person(s) regarding the form of use the land is applied, the payment of rent and duration of access to the land. The leasehold land tenure arises where the respondent exercised right to the use of the land only for some period (whether such period is explicitly specified or not). In such instances, the respondent acknowledged the fact that right to the use of the land is subject to the discretion of the landlord or upon the fulfilment of some known obligations. Such obligations were noted to include cash payments (occasional) assistance offered to the owner and other forms of payment in-kind. In other instances where no specific obligation is reported, respondents clearly acknowledged that the land will be returned to the landlord over time or on demand. The last tenure regime is the lineage. This form of tenure arrangement involved rights to use the land on the basis of family ties (lineage) or inheritance. Underlying this arrangement is the fact that though no known restriction apply in the form and duration for the use of the land (which could be for even unlimited time period), the land is still regarded as a resource belonging to the family or the lineage. Any transfer or even continued use is dependent on the state of association with the lineage. Thus, unlike the freehold, the right to bequeath the land resource is limited but the form and duration of use by the occupant is usually unrestricted. Arising from these three different tenure regimes, the leasehold tenure regime is hypothesized in this study to be inferior (in terms of tenure security and user rights) to freehold and lineage regimes, in that order. This is more so as the choice of land use is highly limited and may even involve restrictions on the type of crops to cultivate or even the degree of transformation that is allowed on the land. Indeed, unlike the latter two, any major investment on the land (and outside the original terms) may require prior and explicit approval of the principal landowner. The order of tenure security and user right for the three regimes is thus illustrated as follows:
Land Tenure Security Land Tenure Regime Very Strong Very Weak

Freehold >> Lineage >> Leasehold

In the estimation of the model, the relative strengths of these three tenure regimes in influencing the decision to undertake major investment in land conservation are empirically investigated using the lineage regime as reference. Among other independent variables, the marital status, age, gender and educational attainment of the head of the household, location and size of the household were investigated. The variable age is defined as the number of complete years of the head of the household. This variable is introduced in the model to measure the cumulative experience and hands-on skills in farm-based production of the household. Size is used to measure the amount of labour resources available to the household, whereas gender is defined as the sex of the head of household, assuming the value 1 if the head of the household is male, 0 otherwise. For a typically patriarchal society like the communities in the focal areas, the gender of the head of household could make considerable difference in determining the quality and size of farmlands that the household could hold and operate. It

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could also influence the extent to which the household could assert its right in the use of the land and the range of choices to which the land could be applied (Goldstein & Udry, 2006). All these variables are postulated to have positive impact on household decision to invest in land conservation, ceteris paribus. The level of educational attainment of the household head, as a measure of the households knowledge frontier, capacity to properly analyse trends in the productivity of their land, absorb new knowledge and implement major conservation measures, was constructed as follows: None, if household head had no formal education. Basic, if the head had had at least primary, junior secondary, middle school or Koranic education. Secondary, if the head had received at least senior secondary, technical, vocational training, ordinary level or advanced level schooling. Post-secondary, if the head has attained at least teacher training, technical, professional or other forms of tertiary education. These variables are constructed as mutually exclusive dummy variables (i.e. assuming value 1 if applicable, and 0 otherwise), with none serving as the base or reference variable. The variable on location is defined as the rural/urban location of the place of residence of the household, which is assigned a unit value if household reside in rural location and zero otherwise. Table 1 summarizes the definition and descriptive statistics of these variables. According to Kabubo-Mariara (2006), though most household characteristics do not significantly impact on the adoption of conservation practices in Kenya, the educational attainment of the head of the household has significant positive effect. This is contrary to the observation made by Mwakubo (2002) that educational level of the household head reduces the likelihood of adoption of conservation practices by reducing the intensity of terracing among farmers in Machakos and Kitui Districts. The paper explains that the

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Table 1. Variable

Definition, measurement and summary statistics of the key variables. Basic definition and measurement Major investment in land conservation since the past 5 years (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Using principal farmland from lineage/inheritance (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Using principal farmland under freehold terms (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Using principal farmland under leasehold terms (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Marital status of head (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Age of respondent (range 20100) Size of the household (range: 115) Sex of respondent (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Location of household (1 = rural, 0 otherwise) No formal education (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Educated up to basic level (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Educated up to secondary level (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Educated beyond secondary level (1 = yes, 0 otherwise) Mean 0.155 0.043 0.262 0.255 0.872 48.249 6.436 0.901 0.458 0.550 0.308 0.085 0.033 SD 0.362 0.204 0.440 0.436 0.334 15.383 2.843 0.299 0.499 0.498 0.462 0.279 0.179

Conservation Lineage Freehold Leasehold Married Age Household Size Male Rural None Basic Secondary Post-secondary

Source: Authors computation from the survey data.

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existence of off-farm income generation opportunities for the relatively better educated household heads accounts for that result. In this paper, it is postulated that younger and more educated household heads adopt land-conserving measures than the older and less literate heads. In relation to education, it is further argued that the level of awareness of a farm household about issues of environmental degradation and fertility loss could also influence a landholder s decision to employ on-farm conservation practices. For instance, relative to a farmer who confronts limited knowledge on sustainable land use and conservation methods, the one with good exposure to such practices is likely to adopt the most appropriate and cost-effective conservation method in response to actual or perceived reduction in crop harvest. As a proxy of landholders exposure and knowledge frontier, formal education is used here to provide an empirical test of this hypothesis. 4. Discussion of results Preliminary analysis of the survey data shows that ownership and administration of land in the focal area is governed by three dominant institutions. These are tendana, chieftaincy and family institutions. Thus, although private and public entities may declare ownership of land in these areas, these three institutions constitute the principal source of such access or ownership. Unlike the other two, tendana is a traditional land administration authority which is peculiar to northern Ghana. This authority is constituted by religious figures identified by the people as representing the earth god. They are suggested to be the immediate descendants of the early settlers on the land and thus exercise jurisdiction over a generally agreed landmass, made up of a village or villages and its surrounding land area. Among others, the tendana performs specific traditional and religious functions in their area of jurisdiction, which reinforces their control and influence within the respective societies. Some of these include the responsibility to allocate land and resolve land disputes, impose sanctions in respect of infringements of land rights and abuses and perform religious rites towards maintaining the sanctity and overall productivity of the land. As religious figures, the tendana also acts as the intermediary between the people and the gods (or the supreme spiritual authorities of the land). Among the respondents, about 36% suggested the tendana as the principal institution of land administration. Another 33% of the respondents have their lands owned and administered by the family, whereas 24% reported administration by the relevant chieftaincy institution. Ownership by individuals was marginal, forming only about 7%. The focus group discussion revealed that cases of individual ownerships arise from transfers from heads or representatives of these three institutions to individuals as gift rather than on the basis of any commercial transaction. Indeed, as custodians of these lands, these representatives are enjoined to administer the lands for the larger interest of the people. Profiteering or commercial transactions in land is therefore rare in these areas. Access to land by both indigenes and migrants therefore follows a basic procedure of placing a request with the appropriate institution and the payment of a token of appreciation. For indigenes or members of the same family, such requests are granted mostly for free. Inherently, these three systems give rise to the three distinct tenure regimes. As discussed earlier, these regimes are hypothesized to exhibit a continuum of tenure security, with potentially significant implications for the incentive to invest in land conservation. Among others, Table 2 reports the result of the empirical test of these hypotheses.

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Journal of Land Use Science

Table 2. Results of the estimated models (logit, probit and the marginal effects). Logit model Number of observations Wald 2(10) Pseudo R2 Conservation Freehold Leasehold Married Age Size Gender Rural Basic Secondary Post-Secondary Constant Ramsey RESET: 2 (1) Observed probability Predicted probability =683 =30.98*** =0.051 Coefficient Robust SE 0.503* 0.263 0.314 0.272 0.438 0.344 0.008 0.008 0.117*** 0.042 1.472** 0.598 0.425* 0.228 0.019 0.264 0.879** 0.392 0.655 0.774 3.595 0.766 =2.16 =0.1552 =0.13850 Probit model =683 =32.56*** =0.052 Coefficient

15

Probit model (marginal effects)

Robust SE dy/dx Robust SE 0.067 0.041 0.065 0.001 0.015 0.122 0.053 0.001 0.141 0.063 0.037 0.036 0.051 0.001 0.005 0.027 0.029 0.032 0.071 0.059

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0.281* 0.147 0.174 0.148 0.263 0.190 0.005 0.004 0.066*** 0.023 0.784*** 0.277 0.237* 0.126 0.004 0.143 0.514** 0.221 0.335 0.390 2.014 0.391 =2.62 =0.1552 =0.14047

Notes: *, ** and *** indicate significance at 10%, 5% and 1% levels, respectively. dy/dx is the discrete change in the dummy variable (Conservation) from 0 to 1.

The probit model was estimated alongside the logit model to achieve some comparison of the appropriateness of the assumptions on the distribution of the error term. That is, whereas the probit model assumes that the dependent variable of the model follows the standard normal cumulative distribution function, the logit model assumes the logistic function. The Wald 2 test statistic indicates that the coefficients of the independent variables in the model are jointly significant in explaining the incidence of major investment in land conservation by landholders in northern Ghana. The result of the RESET test also rejects the null hypothesis that the model is functionally misspecified. The results are also shown to be homoscedastic in the standard error. There is therefore sufficient statistical basis to assess the estimated models as well fitted, correctly specified and good for the present analysis. Indeed, the probit model predicts the probability of a household making a major investment in land to be 14.05%, which is comparable with the observed adoption rate of 15.52%. These test statistics also suggests the probit model has relative superiority over the logit model. Results of the probit model are therefore selected for discussion, alongside estimates of its partial effects. Among the tenure regimes investigated, the freehold (relative to lineage) was found to have a positive and significant impact on the probability of a household making a major investment in the land. The result shows that farm households using land under freehold tenure are 6.7% more likely to make major investment in the land than those under lineage. In the case of leasehold tenure regime, the variable shows a positive but statistically insignificant impact, even at the 10% significance level. The results suggest that as far as major investment in land is concerned, whereas tenure security under the

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leasehold regime (relative to the lineage) does not induce statistically significant differential impact on the decision by households to investment in land conservation, the freehold regime does. These observations reveal a very interesting aspect of the incentive structure of land tenure security in northern Ghana. Given the perspective that freehold land rights offer occupants much longer and stronger right to the land and the benefits accruing from any investment made in it, this finding is consistent with the longstanding argument that assured rights ensure greater incentive to invest in improving the productive capacity of the land by farmers (Uma, 1992). Furthermore, in view of the fact that families or communities tend to maintain ownership of (or at least, some interest in) lands used under lineage tenure regimes, the incentive to make major investment in such lands by the occupant is limited and not too different from the situation of landholdings under leasehold regimes. Thus, though lineage arrangements grant landholders considerable right to the land, the fact that ownership is not individualized but remains largely a common property of the larger family (or community) curtails the incentive to undertake major investments in land conservation. To the extent that the long-term use of that land is guaranteed only for as long as the circumstances of the family or lineage permit, tenure security is in reality not durable. As shown by the results, the incentive to undertake major investments in conservation under lineage regimes is therefore still limited and akin to that found under leasehold, statistically. A related explanation provided by Bekele and Alemu (2010) in their study of the Ethiopian Highlands observes that whereas a farmer s decision to invest in land conservation depends generally on the immediate or shorter-term risk he faces, the intensity of such investment rather depends on the longer-term risk. The paper further establishes that intense or major investment in land conservation occurs when tenure security is assured for at least the next 5 years. Similarly, in the context of engendering greater investment in land conservation by households in northern Ghana, the present findings suggest that assured right to access and use farmlands even under lineage tenure regimes is not enough. Durability of such rights in terms of stable access and use over predictably much longer time is fundamental for engendering significant and non-random major investment in land conservation. Following the expression of Uma, one could state that only durable and assured individualized5 right to land ensures major investment in land conservation in the study area. Again, this finding is similar to the results of other studies. In most of these studies, the general conclusion drawn has been that where the tenure security is strong, farm owners are more disposed to undertake investment in land conservation. For instance, a study by Kabubo-Mariara (2006) in Kenya reports that bequest right (which is synonymous to rights under freehold) is important in determining whether a farmer invests in land conservation practices or not, as against cases where the ownership of the land is retained by other person(s), community or the state (like those lands obtained from public schemes for enhancing land access). A meta-analysis of 46 cases studies provided in Raquez and Lambin (2006) further supports this finding. In the case of the household characteristics, the size and gender of the head of household are found to be significant in explaining investment decisions in land. Notably, both variables are positive and significant at the 1% level. In explaining the result for the household size variable, it is relevant to note that smallholder farming in the focal zone also tends to depend less on external inputs and more on family labour and local resources. Thus, the larger the household, the more hands it is able to mobilize in

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working on the farm and implement investments in land conservation. It is therefore consistent with general expectation that the larger the size of the household, the more likely the incidence of major investment in land. This observation also provides empirical support to the Boserups thesis, that within traditional agrarian production systems (as is the case of the study area), population growth and declining access to land for extensive farming engender intensification through the increased use of farm labour to compensate for the declining sizes and productivity of farmlands. This observation is also consistent with many others reported in the literature. In Kabubo-Mariaria (2006), except for investments in the construction of soil bunds (as a specific example of conservation investment), the variable was found significant in explaining the adoption of other forms of investment in land, which are terracing, the planting of drought-resistant vegetation and a combination of these methods. In relation to the gender of the household head, the estimated model unravels the gender dimension of the argument. In particular, the result indicates that relative to female-headed households, male-headed households are 12.2% more likely to make major investment in land conservation. Though this result is not consistent with the observed non-significance of gender in farm-level investment in land conservation in Kenya (as reported by Kabubo-Mariaria, 2006), it supports assertions in various literature on Ghana that female-headed households are more resource-poor and tend to lack capacity to make major investment in livelihood support strategies than male-headed households. It also supports the earlier argument that given the labour-intensive nature of farming in the focal area, the capacity to invest in land conservation is enhanced when households possess significant labour resources. This is found more with male landholders than their female counterparts. For example, in discussing the gender dimension of household poverty and capacity to invest in land conservation across African societies, Barbier (1998) makes similar assertion and argues that labour market discrimination against women as well as large labour demand on women in catering for the needs of their households plays a very important role in constraining females from investing in land conservation. To a large extent, such circumstances contribute to the well-noted gender disparities in especially rural livelihood settings in Ghana (GSS, 2000; NDPC, 2005). On the contrary, the marital status (i.e. married respondents as against never married, divorced, widowed or other state of non-marriage) and the age of the household head were found to be statistically insignificant in explaining farmer investment in land, not even at 10% significance level. In the study, it had been hypothesized that relatively younger landholders would show higher probability of investing in farmland as compared with the older ones. This result, as well as that for the marital status, is found to be similar to the observation made by Kabubo-Mariaria (2006) in Kenya that both marital status and age of the household head are not significant, statistically, in explaining investment in land conservation. In the case of the location dummy, households in rural locations are found more likely to invest in improving the productivity of their farmlands than households in urban locations. Given the similarity in the topography and climate of the communities in the three northern regions, a possible explanation for this result is that the livelihood sources of farm households in rural locations are less diverse and tend to depend more on farming on these lands compared with those in urban areas who tend to have better access to nonfarm livelihood sources. Farmers in rural locations therefore have better motivation to make major investment in conserving these lands than those in urban areas. The result on education was mixed, as some of the variables were significant and showed the expected sign while others did not. Specifically, it is noted that whereas

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landholders with basic education, relative to those with no education, showed no statistically significant probability to make major investment in land conservation, those with up to secondary level education were 14% more likely to invest in land conservation. Similar effect was expected for even a higher level of educational training (i.e. postsecondary education) but the variable was found to be insignificant, statistically. A plausible explanation for this result is that landholders with at least post-secondary education are more likely to be active in off-farm incoming-generation activities and even more dependent on external inputs than those with limited education. Thus, major investments in conservation may not occur as critical for sustaining production and livelihood generally, unlike the less literate counterparts. 5. Conclusion and policy recommendations The importance of agriculture is well noted in the pursuit of sustainable and pro-poor economic development. For Ghana in particular, the growth of the sector is identified to have significant leverage on enhancing household income and living standards. These notwithstanding, major challenges confront the sector. A dominant one is the issue of land tenure insecurity. In arid and semi-arid agro-ecological zones such as northern Ghana, contemporary trends in population growth, land degradation, productivity losses and extremities in weather patterns make the subject of land tenure regimes and their implications on investment in land conservation all the more important. In this study, this nexus was investigated using data from a structured household survey obtained from the ISSER/ USAID Land Tenure Policy project. Among others, the study reveals that land in the focal area is administered under three dominant traditional institutions of land administration in Ghana. These are the tendana, chieftaincy and family institutions. Arising from these, three tenure regimes are identified in the area, namely, freehold, leasehold and lineage. It is further found that only 15.5% of landholders have made major investment in land conservation since the past 5 years. In explaining the trend, the study finds a continuum of land tenure security exhibited by these three tenure regimes, which then impact differentially on the decision to invest in land conservation by the holders. In particular, the results of the quantitative analysis reveal that whereas freehold tenure regime, relative to lineage, significantly increased the likelihood of major investment in land conservation by households, leasehold shows no important differential impact. Thus, while the existing literature theorizes assured rights to land as important in engendering increased investment in land conservation, these findings reveal that such rights must be durable and individualized to help realize such investments in the focal area. Development policy must therefore move beyond improving access and promote durable and private (individualized) land tenure security to help sustain the incentive for significant investments in land conservation. In other jurisdictions such as Ethiopia, Deninger, Ali, and Alemu (2009) and Tsegaye, Adgo, and Selassie (2012) provide evidence of the effectiveness of low-cost land certification systems in attaining similar purpose. In the latter paper, land certification is identified to account for over 15% increment in the adoption of land management practices among households in the drylands of the Amhara region of that country. The findings also reveal the gender dimension of this subject; which is, male-headed households are systematically more likely to make major investment in land conservation than their female-headed counterparts. It is recommended for policy to institute support

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mechanisms targeted at female-headed households to enable them implement land conservation as a livelihood support intervention. Consistent with the Boserup thesis, it is also found that the incidence of investment in land conservation is significantly associated with households with more labour resources. It is further found that rural-based farm units show greater tendency to make major investment in land conservation than their urban-based counterparts. However, contrary to expectation, age and marital status are not important determinants of the incidence of major investment in land conservation by households. In relation to education, a minimum threshold of formal training is required to significantly engender a positive and significant impact on the probability of major investment in land conservation by households. In promoting sustainable agriculture and investment in land conservation, development policy must regard educational attainment of up to such threshold as an important driver. Below such threshold, households might require more specialized training and education to create awareness and incentives for greater investments in land conservation.

5.1. Recommendations for future research As the opportunity did not exist for the current study to evaluate the role of extension and related training interventions in enhancing the capacity of landholders in investing in land conservation, future studies could explicitly measure the impact of such training activities. Also, notwithstanding the rigour of the test statistics of the estimated models and the general trend of extensive dependence on own labour for such major investments in land conservation by farm households in the study area, it is still conceivable that income or wealth could influence the propensity to invest in land conservation. This is because even in the face of weak tenure security, resource-rich smallholder households are likely to face disproportionately lower opportunity cost of capital to undertake such major investments in land conservation than their resource-poor counterparts. It is recommended for future research to investigate this factor.

Acknowledgements
My sincere appreciation to the lOasis Development Group of the Global Youth Alliance for the earnest support leading to this paper. Funding from the ISSER/USAID Land Tenure Reform Project for the original study underlying this paper is also appreciated as well as the contribution of Mrs. Freda Asem to the same. Nonetheless, all errors and omissions herein are entirely mine.

Notes
1. The MDP is a flagship project of the Earth Institute at the Columbia University, USA. The project adopts a community-led, integrated rural development model to fast-track the realization of the UNs millennium development goals in selected rural communities in Sub-Sahara Africa. Recent models have included Haiti, Cambodia and Jordan. Plural is used in this context to refer to the coexistence of different systems derived especially from both formal and informal institutions and rules for land use and administration in the country. Besley (1995) provides an extensive treatment of this argument with an application to Ghana. ISSER is the Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research, a research institute based at the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra. USAID is the United States Agency for International Development, which also maintains a country office in Accra, Ghana.

2. 3. 4.

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Individualized in this context is used to emphasize exclusivity of ownership to an individual, which then allows the land to be applied and the benefits captured more as a private rather than a common resource.

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