Why tenure reform is key to curbing land degradation

Environment, Food and agriculture, Global, Headlines, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Máximo Torero is chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome.

Women farmers clearing farmland in northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

ROME, Feb 25, 2026 (IPS) – Agricultural land has long been one of the most important sources of security across generations. Writing about China almost a century ago, Pearl S. Buck noted in The good land“If you keep your land, you can live.” That is true today. When farmers own land, they invest in it. When they don’t, they extract what they can today without thinking about tomorrow.

This decision at the household level becomes a structural problem at scale: land degradation (today, 1.7 billion people live in areas of decline in agricultural productivity — reflects systemic underinvestment in land, often rooted in insecure land tenure. The good news is that this means that reforming and enforcing land tenure can be a powerful tool to combat land degradation and food insecurity.

Globally, only about a quarter of the land is formally recognized. In sub-Saharan Africa, where customary systems dominate land tenure, communities have been exposed to intrusions, poor dispute resolution, and exclusion from services and finances. More than 1.1 billion people believe that could lose rights to their lands for the next five years. This perception of insecurity has intensified amid increasing financial pressures and displacement.

Evidence of Ghana and Malawi shows that farmers with informal or seasonal rental arrangements are significantly less likely to invest in soil restoration, water management or productivity-enhancing practices. This is because they could lose access to land before those investments generate returns for several years. Without land as collateral, farmers also struggle to access the credit, insurance and financial services needed to finance such improvements.

Customary systems have persistently disadvantaged women, who make up half of smallholders, in terms of inheritance and transfer rights. Globally, women occupy only 15% of agricultural land, and even when they do, they are susceptible to losing it in the event of divorce or death of a spouse.

Limited legal access to land, combined with weak access to credit, insurance and inputs, has reinforced cycles of low productivity, land degradation and vulnerability for women farmers.

When land tenure is weak or contested, increasing demand for land can fuel conflict. In Colombia, post-conflict agricultural expansion into forest areas has tensions generated where land claims remain unresolved. Similar disputes have arisen in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where weak legal recognition of customary rights and insecure land claims mean vulnerable households to land disputes, especially when large-scale land acquisitions occur.

These recurring tensions have strengthened the case for strengthening land governance as a basis for stability and development. In fact, some 70 countries have started agricultural policy reforms since 2012, when the UN endorsed internationally agreed principles that protect legitimate tenure rights, including customary ones. But many legislative reforms have been slow to translate into practice on the ground. Dispute resolution systems remain weak and the rights of women, indigenous peoples and customary landowners are still not consistently recognized.

The change could not come sooner. Reverse even 10% of degraded farmland could feed 154 million more people a year. Without government intervention, the world could face a deficit of farmland twice the size of India by 2050.

Of course, secure land tenure alone will not automatically restore the land. Half of the world’s agricultural land is controlled by the largest 1% of producers, many of whom operate intensive production models that can accelerate land degradation when not accompanied by strong environmental safeguards. Therefore, land tenure reform must be accompanied by effective regulation, targeted incentives, access to financing and extension services, and strong institutional capacity.

Rising demand for land, climate stress and large-scale land acquisitions will continue to test the durability of these reforms. Whether these pressures translate into instability or resilience depends on political decisions. If governments want farmers to restore land, they must first make sure they can conserve it.