Policy Brief Issue 14 | February 2016 103188 SECURING PROPERTY RIGHTS FOR WOMEN AND MEN IN RURAL BENIN GENDER INNOVATION LAB Authors: Markus Goldstein, Kenneth Houngbedji, Florence Kondylis, The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) conducts impact Michael O’Sullivan, Harris Selod evaluations of development interventions in Sub-Saharan KEY MESSAGES Africa, seeking to generate evidence on how to close 1. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa are less likely than men to the gender gap in earnings, own land. They also use less land and have lower tenure productivity, assets and security over the land that they use. This gap is costly in agency. The GIL team is terms of lost productive output. currently working on over 50 impact evaluations in 21 2. Our early results showed that improved tenure security countries with the aim of building an evidence base through land demarcation increased long-term investments with lessons for the region. in cash crops and trees and erased the gender gap in land fallowing—a key soil fertility investment. The impact objective of GIL is increasing take-up of effective 3. It is important that interventions cover as much of a policies by governments, development organizations household’s landholdings as possible: we found that some and the private sector in order women shifted their agricultural production to plots of land to address the underlying that did not benefit from demarcation so that they could causes of gender inequality guard these less secure and less productive plots. in Africa, particularly in terms of women’s economic and Throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, policymakers seek instruments social empowerment. The Lab aims to do this by producing to strengthen the property rights of landowners and farmers in and delivering a new body of rural areas, where customary laws and norms tend to shape evidence and developing a people’s access to and ownership of land. Under customary compelling narrative, geared towards policymakers, on what works and what does not work in promoting gender equality. For more information visit us at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab law, women typically obtain secondary land use land survey and laid cornerstones to serve as rights through a male spouse or relative. These clear markers of property boundaries. Second, the undocumented rights can evaporate in the event program will deliver land certificates to households. of a spouse’s death or divorce. The lack of secure The World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab, in land rights for women and men can lead to under- collaboration with researchers from the Development investment and lower agricultural yields. Research Group and the Paris School of Economics, The typical policy response to the challenge of under- set out to evaluate the PFR program’s impact investment in land has taken the form of costly and through a randomized controlled trial. This study time-consuming land titling programs. The World provides the first set of experimental evidence Bank’s Doing Business 2014 report indicates that the on the causal impact of a large-scale land property registration process across the region requires formalization program. six steps and 120 days to complete on average, leading to a cost of about nine percent of the total HERE’S WHAT WE DID property value. Moreover, freehold titling programs tend To establish a rigorous estimate of the program’s to ignore the importance of customary law in shaping impact, the research team relied on a unique land access and use in rural contexts. This situation feature of the program roll-out. All PFR villages highlights the need to make land administration were selected through district-level lotteries that programs more efficient and cost-effective and to provided a public and transparent identification embed these programs within existing customary laws. of program and comparison communities. One year after the start of implementation, a survey SO WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT? was conducted in 291 of these communities to The Rural Land Use Plans (Plans Fonciers Ruraux, compare differences in outcomes between the PFR) in Benin represent a more decentralized, randomly-chosen PFR and non-PFR villages. The low-cost approach to land rights formalization. survey encompassed an expansive geographic The PFR program is innovative in its focus on area including data from 9 of Benin’s 12 regions. the formalization of existing customary rights The study sample covered households with at of individual landholders. The objectives of the least one parcel of land in their village, including program are to improve tenure security and 2,972 households with a total of 6,094 parcels. stimulate agricultural investment in rural areas. The researchers set out to study the initial impact The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) – of the first step of the program – land demarcation through its compact with the Government of Benin – on agricultural investment in Benin, prior to – provided technical and financial support to the the issuance of land certificates. The resulting PFR program. The program formalizes customary short-term effects shed light on the investment rights of rural households through two main steps. impact of integrating customary land tenure First, the program demarcated all land parcels in systems into the formal system of land rights. a community, assigned land rights through a full IMPACT OF PFR ON LAND FALLOWING 0.030 0.025 0.020 0.015 .015** .013 0.010 .011 0.005 .003 0.000 Male-headed Household Female-headed Household control treated HERE’S WHAT WE FOUND Improved tenure security through land The program also engendered an initial shift in demarcation increased long-term investments in agricultural production among female-headed cash crops and trees and erased the gender gap households when faced with changes in their in land fallowing—a key soil fertility investment. relative tenure security following demarcation. The demarcation of parcel boundaries led to an initial Since the land demarcation program covered most increase in tenure security as reported by the household but not all of the lands held by smallholders, early head’s right to sell land. These tenure security effects results from the study found that some women translated into an increase in long-term investment, both farmers moved their agricultural production from in trees and perennial cash crops, for both male-headed secure demarcated land within the village to land and female-headed households. One year after the start outside the village to guard those parcels that had of land demarcation, participant households increased not been demarcated. This shift could be driven their investments in cash crops such as oil palm and by underlying gender differences in tenure security. teak by 39 percent and tree-planting by 43 percent – Following demarcation within the village, women relative to the comparison group. These findings point likely feel more secure about the demarcated land to a substantial increase in long-term land investment. they control within the village boundaries and opt Early results also showed that the program erased to move their production and farm labor to relatively Benin’s gender gap in land fallowing, a vital practice to less secure land outside the village to protect it. In replenish soil fertility. Female headed-households in PFR comparison, men would be less likely to respond in communities were more likely to fallow their land when this manner since they already have relatively secure compared with both male-headed households in PFR tenure claims – even on the non-demarcated land villages and male-headed households in comparison outside of the village. The response of women farmers, villages. Strengthening women’s land security may however, results in a drop in farm yields on parcels have allayed their fear of land loss during fallow, within the village, leading to a 22 percent widening of leading them to undertake this important investment. the overall gender gap in agricultural productivity. CONCLUSION The early findings from this study highlight the complexity of rural land issues, but also offer promising policy recommendations. Hybrid land formalization interventions that recognize customary land rights can lead to important increases in investment in cash crops and tree crops for women and men and fallowing for women, even after a short period of time. Meanwhile, this study also highlights the need for a spatially comprehensive approach to land registration – through the inclusion of all lands held by rural households – to ensure that those with weaker property rights share in the full benefits of the program. A new round of data collection, which took place earlier this year, will shed light on the longer-run impact of demarcation on women and men. For more information on this study, download the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper: http://goo.gl/QttzZO FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Markus Goldstein mgoldstein@worldbank.org Rachel Coleman rcoleman1@worldbank.org 1818 H. St NW Washington, DC 20433 USA