Beyond Panaceas in Land Tenure Systems in Ghana: Insights from Resilience and Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems

Land tenure basically refers to the system of formal and informal institutions governing people’s relationship with one another and with the land and natural resources on which they depend. Historically, customary land tenure systems that rely on traditional institutions for managing access to communally owned lands have been the dominant medium for land allocation in Ghana and most of sub-Saharan Africa. For several decades, tenure reforms have focused on transforming the African land tenure system from the customary system through land nationalization and privatization. Among other issues, the goals have been to promote tenure security, economic efficiency, and sustainable resource management. Thus far, these tenure reforms have yielded mixed results. Current problems include bottlenecks in land administration, weakening of traditional institutions, and increasing marginalization and landlessness among vulnerable groups. Based on insights from the literature on resilience in social-ecological systems, this chapter highlights the need to move beyond the search for panaceas in land policy toward institutional frameworks that can mediate the complex and dynamic relationships between people and land. The chapter proposes adaptive governance as an institutional framework that can promote an integrated approach to managing land and other natural resources with the aim of building the resilience of communities and regions against the impacts of various drivers of change.