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Volume 59, Issue 330, June 2023

Perception of rural community on the importance of land certification and its benefit on tenure security, in Soddo Zuriya Woreda, Southern Ethiopia

Bisrat Hailemichael, Melaku Bekele, Tamirat Teshome

Ethiopian Forestry Development, Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, Wondo Genet College of Forestry and Natural Resources Hawassa University, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Land is a basic resource for improving the livelihoods and considered an asset to accumulate wealth for the rural community in Ethiopia. It is poorly managed and losing its productivity because of land degradation. Lack of tenure security greatly impacted successful implementation of land management interventions through public and community initiative. This study is conducted in Soddo Zuriya Woreda with the objective of analyzing farmers’ perception on importance of land registration and certification for ensuring land tenure security for sustainable implementation of soil and water conservation practices. A total of 149 household respondents were selected from three Kebele/village using probability proportional methods to determine the sample sizes. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used to analyze information in which quantitative data collected from sampled households using structured questionnaire whereas the qualitative data were collected from focus group discussions and key informants’ interviews and field observation. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize and analyze the data. The result showed that there is gender imbalance in land holding in which men dominate for generating livelihoods and income for the family in the rural community of Soddo area. Gradually, women are gaining equal rights with men in accessing land to rent and inherit their parents. Land certification has also benefited the local farmers in terms of reducing border conflict, secured land holding right and guarantee for compensation; promote gender equity that increased access to credit and increased land investment on soil and water conservation. Land certification has benefitted the rural farmers access to credits that majority of sampled households accounting 83.2% got rural credits affording farm inputs cost after land certification. Majority of sampled households accounting 70.5% responded that land certification enabled them to build trust for investment on soil and water conservation practices. Land certification also enabled the rural community to get timely compensation in case of expropriation from the land because of various development activities. However, the participation of women in the land registration and certification program and their representation is very much limited. Findings of our study also indicated that farmer perceived positively the importance of land registration and certification to ensure tenure security. Besides the perceived tenure security have a positive and significant effect on the likelihood development and investment on soil and water conservation activities. Thus, the rural land certification program has brought positive impact on the perception and importance for investment on soil and water conservation activities in small holder farmers while the land degradation is severe in communal land.

Keywords: Certification, Land, Registration, Perception, Tenure Insecurity