Redistributive land reform in 'public' (forest) lands ... - CiteSeerX

Progress in Development Studies 6, 2 (2006) pp. 123–145

© 2006 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/1464993406ps132oa

I IntroductionAccording to the conventional definition,redistributive land reform is a public policy thattransfers property rights over large privatelandholdings to small farmers and landless farmworkers (see, eg, Griffin et al., 2002: 279–80).The universally accepted definition, implicitlyand explicitly, excludes non-private lands(ie, ‘public’, ‘state’ or ‘communal’ lands). Theunderlying assumption in the dominant landreform literature is that lands that are officiallyclassified as ‘public/state’properties, especiallythose used to open up resettlement areas, arelands that are generally not cultivated andinhabited, and are without pre-existing privatecontrol. In such conditions, it is logical to con-clude that land policies that concern theselands do not recast any land-based production

and distribution relationships. The literature onland reform is strong on this point, and rightlyso. Yet, it becomes problematic when the useof the same lens is stretched as far as to exam-ine ‘public’ lands that are, in fact, under varyingdegrees of cultivation, imbued with privateinterests and marked by production and distri-bution relationships between the landed andthe landless and land-poor, between the eliteand non-elite, often not captured by officialcensus. The failure to recognize the potentiallyand actually contested nature of much of‘public lands’ risks removing them from thereach of redistributive reform, and so risks thecontinuation of many of the economic, socialand political problems associated with anagrarian structure that is dominated by thelanded classes as well.

Redistributive land reform in ‘public’(forest) lands? Lessons from thePhilippines and their implications for land reform theory and practice

Saturnino M. Borras, JrInstitute of Social Studies (ISS), Kortenaerkade 12, 2518AX The Hague, The Netherlands

Abstract: The conventional view in the land reform literature does not consider distributionof ‘public’ lands to landless and near-landless peasants as redistributive land reform. Questioningthe (formal) private property bias in land reform theory and practice, this paper rethinks somefundamental concepts and re-examines actual distribution in public lands in the Philippines.It concludes that redistributive reform can, in fact, occur in this type of land and the politicalprocess through which this outcome can be achieved could be highly contentious.

Keywords: Asia, forest, land reform, Philippines, property rights.

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This paper argues that much of the lands inmany developing countries today that aredefined as ‘public’ in public policy practicedo not actually fit the basic criteria used intheory to define public land. In the conven-tional land reform literature, ‘public’ landsare defined as unproductive and uninhabitedlands without existing land-based produc-tion and distribution relationships. In fact, inmany agrarian settings, public and privatelands are differentiated from each other onlyby their formal property rights categories;both land types in reality have developedcomparable pre-existing land-based produc-tion and distribution relationships and evenfarm-productivity levels over time histori-cally. The formal categories that initiallyinformed official state policies have, over timeand in many instances, been rendered obso-lete or meaningless by human activity, muchof it (though not all) passing unnoticed bycentral state authorities in distant nationalcapitals. And because redistributive landreforms are aimed precisely at adjustingpre-existing social and production relation-ships by transferring the effective controlover land-based wealth and power fromthe landed to the landless and near-landlessclasses, then they should be applied, in theoryand practice where appropriate, regardlessof whether the land in question is officiallyclassified as private or public. As will beshown in this paper, when it has occurred, theland reform process in public lands, like thatin private lands, has frequently proven to behighly contentious politically. Indeed, success-ful redistribution here appears to requirethe same complementation of mobilizationby autonomous peasant groups ‘from below’and initiatives by reformist state actors‘from above’ that is required in land officiallyrecognized as under private ownership.

The rest of this paper is organized asfollows: section II explores the relevant theo-retical issues in this study. Section III providesa national background on Philippine landreform and examines three local cases involv-ing public lands in that country. This section

provides the empirical evidence for this study.Section IV offers a short conclusion.

II Conceptual backgroundMost scholars understand land reform toapply only to land officially classified asprivate. Private lands are those where theentire bundle of property rights, from the‘right to use’ to the ‘right to alienate’, is underthe formal ownership and control of a privateentity that commands respect from non-owners and is legally sanctioned by the state(see, eg, Tsing, 2002: 97). Here, ‘public’ landis taken in its broadest sense, to mean landswhere full private property rights have notbeen applied and sanctioned by the state. The‘public land’ category takes a variety offorms from one setting to another, but forthe purposes of this paper, it loosely includesstate-owned (forest), indigenous or commu-nal lands and lands operated under customaryarrangements. In some cases, the socialrelationships in these types of lands are alsoreferred to as ‘informal tenure’ (World Bank,2003: xxv).

When a land reform policy is directed toand implemented in ‘public lands’, it is calleda ‘public settlement programme’ or ‘coloniza-tion’. Because few bother to interrogate theofficial story about such areas, and comparewith ground-level reality, many scholars,activists and policymakers alike simplyassume that such a policy does not alterpre-existing distributions of wealth andpower in society, hence does not constituteand promote redistributive reform, and there-fore is politically non-contentious. On thebasis of the official classification data alone,rather than carry out empirical investigation,even some of the most important land reformscholars have made explicit their rejection ofthe idea that public lands can play a signifi-cantly positive role in the pursuit of landreform objectives. Hence, Feder (1970) oncecalled the policy of land reform in publiclands ‘counter-reform’. Thiesenhusen (1971:210) explained, ‘[L]and reform usually con-notes a drastic change in ownership patterns

124 Redistributive land reform in public (forest) lands? Philippines



in the established private sector. On the otherhand directed colonization patterns on statelands or on a small number of formerly pri-vate farms frequently has little to do withmaking overall resource or income distr-ibution more egalitarian: only a few settlersbenefit’. Tai (1974: 234) explained that ‘publicland settlement (or colonization) is an attrac-tive idea. To settle people on new land andto develop it for agricultural use does notinvolve any basic alteration of the propertyrights of existing landowners; hence a public-land settlement programme will generateno opposition from the landed class’. Lipton(1974: 272) argued that, ‘the two Great [sic.]evasions of land policy [are] settlementschemes and reform of tenure conditions.Both are often included in a too-weak defini-tion . . . Such programmes fail to achieve theirstated goals because they do not attackthe rural power structure, which is rootedin an extremely unequal distribution of ownedland’. Finally, de Janvry et al. (2001: 279)have said that ‘countries with open frontiershave engaged in settlement programs, butwe do not include this form of access to landas part of land reform’.

In recent years, conceptual and policyinterest in landed property rights in general,and ‘public’ (forest) lands in particular, hasseen an unprecedented increase for severalreasons, including the growing concern forpoverty eradication. In the 1990s, mainstreamdevelopment thinking came to accept the lackof access to productive assets such as land asone of the key reasons why the rural poorremain poor (World Bank, 2003; Borras et al.,2005b). It is now widely believed that theestablishment of formal legal land rights (ie,private, legalized, state-sanctioned claimsover property) can make the rural economy‘secure’ for investments; and that theseinvestments would in turn lead to economicgrowth, and (because of the expected trickle-down effect) to poverty eradication (WorldBank, 2003: xix). Thus, international devel-opment institutions have launched systematiccampaigns for land privatization via formal

land titling (‘from above’) using modernsatellite survey and digital data bankingtechnologies.

Reinforced by this more recent neoliberalthrust regarding ‘asset reform’, the dominantdiscourse in land reform scholarship todayremains firmly private property rights biased.It is this deeply entrenched bias that has setthe benchmark for assessing what is and whatis not redistributive land reform. But it is abenchmark that, wittingly or unwittingly,rests on flawed official data. To better under-stand what redistributive land reform is andis not, we must return the discussion to twokey underlying issues. The first involves actualand effective control over the land resource –meaning, the power to control the nature,pace, extent and direction of surplus produc-tion and extraction from the land and thedisposition of such surplus. The second issueis the transfer of power to control landresources that has to occur, from landed eliteto the landless and land-poor peasants. Inother words, the direction of change mustcategorically traverse social classes but favourthe poor, and not remain within a social class,or within elite classes, or be from the landlessand land-poor to the landowning classes.Redistributive reform is achieved only whenthere is actual net transfer of (power for)effective control over the land resource tolandless and land-poor peasants, regardlessof whether it is in private or public lands, orwhether it involves a formal change in theright to alienate or not, ie, full ownership or‘stewardship’/lease, or whether it is throughindividual or collective/community formalrights (Borras, 2004, 2005). The presentdiscussion about the meaning of land reformbuilds on Anna Tsing’s notion of the essen-tial character of property rights. A closeobserver of the dynamics of property rightsin Indonesia, Tsing (2002: 95–97) explainsthat property rights are essentially socialrelationships, that ‘property is a social rela-tionship between nonowners and owners, inwhich nonowners are expected to respectthe rights of owners to their claimed objects’.

S.M. Borras, Jr 125



Those relationships are sanctioned andenforced – whether separately or jointly – byboth state and non-state institutions. Sincecompeting authorities may sanction orenforce such relationships, contending under-standings of resource rights may well emerge,and so involve social conflict. Property rightsinvolve dynamic power relations betweencontending groups of people that are notreflected in national official statistics. In thiscontext, Tsing (2002: 95) underscores the‘instability’ of property and property rights,and explains that, ‘a history of property isalways a history of shifting contests overmeaning and power in which the textualiza-tion and enforcement of particular propertyconcepts are only tentatively confirmed’.Likewise, emphasizing the decisive role of‘claim-making’ actors involved in effectingthe actually existing land-based relationshipsobserved by Tsing, Ronald Herring (2002:288) concludes that, ‘real property rightsare inevitably local; right means what theclaimant can make it mean, with or withoutstate’s help’. It is these effective socio-political relationships – these that actuallyobtain on the ground – that ought to berestructured by land reform in order toeffect a more egalitarian distribution of con-trol over, or ownership of, land. But since therelationship between owners and non-ownersremains the defining feature of formal prop-erty rights, the significance of state regulatoryinstitutions such as land and property lawsretains crucial importance.

1 Problems with the dominant viewsThe issues of effective landed property rightsin public (forest) lands and poverty eradi-cation are interlinked in many rural settingstoday. A significant number of the rural poorare located in lands marked by ambiguousproperty rights, as in the cases of severalcountries in southern Africa, Latin Americaand Asia (Christodoulou, 1990: 20). Forexample, 70% of Indonesia’s land is officiallycategorized as ‘state forest land’ despite‘unofficial’ private appropriation and use of

these lands; in reality, many of these landsare productive farmlands (Peluso, 1992;Tsing, 2002). In sub-Saharan Africa, ‘the vastmajority of the land area is operated undercustomary tenure arrangements that, untilvery recently, were not even recognizedby the state and therefore remained outsidethe realm of law’ (World Bank, 2003: xviii).1

In Bolivia, despite the sweeping land reformthat was implemented decades ago andrecent attempts at ‘regularization’ of landedproperty rights through land titling, themajority of lands have remained mottled byambiguous property rights (ie, contested‘public’ lands), fueling escalating class- andethnic-based conflict linked to competingland claims and socio-cultural and politicalanimosities (Kay and Urioste, 2005).

Despite growing evidence to the contrary,the conventional land reform literaturecontinues to imply that the public lands being‘colonized’ for resettlement projects, as asubstitute for or as part of land reform pro-grammes, are mainly uninhabited, unproduc-tive and uncultivated forest and free fromprivate elite control or interest. Employing adeductive method of reasoning, it is logicalthat the concept of redistribution would notapply here. But this conclusion is correctonly if the assumption about the actuallyexisting land-based production and distri-bution relationships holds true, which maynot always, or even often, be the case. In fact,as has been suggested, the social realitiesobtaining in much of the land formally cat-egorized as public are much more complexthan the conventional land reform literatureadmits and thus require a different analyticapproach. The ‘reality’ that is captured inthe official statistics, however flawed, is the‘reality’ that is most often accepted by orintegrated into the dominant discourse. AsHerring (1983: 269) has explained, flawednationally aggregated data are too oftenuncritically reproduced and used by scholars,policymakers and activists, and in the process,the number of problematic state policies aremultiplied. The over-reliance on nationally




aggregated official data alone does not resultin studies that fully and accurately reflectthe complexity and dynamism of propertyrelations in agrarian societies, but ratherproduces ‘findings’ that remain blind to them.To be sure, the social relationships that ani-mate local agrarian societies are not static,but are endlessly negotiated and renegotiatedbetween actors over time (see Li, 1996;Tsing, 2002: 95). One landlord may havecontrol over the land at one point, only to bereplaced by another later; or the terms of asharing arrangement between landlord andtenants may change over time. Neither is theagronomic condition of land permanent: itcould have been forest in the past, then defor-ested, then planted to various crops or con-verted into pasture, or reforested. All ofthese changes can occur while official cate-gories and documents remain unchanged,opening up gaps in the historical record andeventually leading to state interventions thatsimply do not make sense and can do muchharm. Herring (2002: 286) goes so far as tocontend that ‘states claim more than theyknow, and the mass publics know it’.

Looking from the ‘bottom up’, in terms ofdemographic and agro-economic conditions,there are two broad types of public lands,namely, uninhabited and idle land on the oneside, and populated and cultivated land onthe other side. The former (uninhabited andidle land) is what most land reform scholarsrefer to simply as ‘public land’. In this case andcontext, their argument that land policieshere do not constitute redistributive reform(or could even be a ‘counter-reform’) maybe accepted as valid and unproblematic.2

For the other type (populated and cultivated),the conventional assumptions in the landreform literature emerge as so problematicas to require rethinking. Many of these landshave pre-existing inhabitants and productiveactivities. Despite official classification as‘public’, these lands have been the objectof complex overlapping and conflictingland claims that have subsequently emergedthat are not easy to untangle or resolve.3

The implementation of state resettlementprogrammes, for example, has impacted onthe pre-existing communities in these lands.As James Scott (1998: 191) has explained, ‘theconcentration of population in planned settle-ments may not create what state planners hadin mind, but it has almost always disrupted ordestroyed prior communities whose cohesionderived mostly from non-state sources’.4

These variable ‘public’ land types moreaccurately reflect ground-level realities, includ-ing the reality of agriculturally productive land-holdings that are controlled by private entitiesin many parts of the agrarian world that haveescaped the lens of land reform scholars. Evendecades back, in Latin America and Asia,many so-called public lands had already wit-nessed varying degrees of settlement andcultivation and the creeping grip of privateinterests, though not always through formalinstitutional property rights instruments suchas private land titles or formal stewardshiprights. In Asia, the significant share of publiclands that were highly productive even beforeredistribution in the Taiwanese and SouthKorean land reforms attests to this. The landreform beneficiaries were even made to payfor the plots carved out of blocks of publicland in Taiwan (King, 1977: 211). In LatinAmerica, the evidence shows similar condi-tions. As Felstehausen (1971: 168–69; see alsoHobsbawm, 1974: 125–26) revealed,

An estimated 3 million hectares of well-drained, level savannahs are potentiallysuitable for agriculture, but many of theselands are already claimed and used by privateranchers. Technical observers report that since‘land has long been available for the taking,ranches are expensive. Ranch size varies from500 to 50,000 hectares or more’ . . . Thisstatement suggests the problem associatedwith figures used to show the theoreticalavailability of land in Colombia. Much of theland listed as available is already in farms andranches but is not included in statistical reportsbecause it is not titled or recorded. Such landsare often held under informal possession anduse arrangements. Occupation rights, in turn,are bought, sold and exchanged outside therecorded land transfer system.

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This observation appears not to have beenpicked up by either Felstehausen’s contempo-raries or succeeding scholars, despite itsimportant implications for land reform stud-ies. Meanwhile, a process similar to thatobserved by Felstehausen in Colombia in the1960s, ie, a kind of informal privatization ofpublic land over time and outside the purviewof state authorities – has also transpired insome Asian countries such as Indonesia (see,eg, Peluso, 1992; White, 1997: 124–25) andthe Philippines (see Wurfel, 1958 cited in Tai,1974: 261).

The growing literature on community-based natural resource management,5 legalpluralism and related fields of research,6 andmore recently environmental studies, havebeen generating powerful new analytic toolsthat help deepen our understanding of thecomplex nature of landed property rights inpublic (forest) lands.7 Yet, so far, the findingsabout existing complex resource uses, man-agement and control of these so-called publiclands have not been systematically integratedinto the land reform literature. The recentsurge of interest in public lands, mainly in aneffort to transform them into commercialcommodities via formal, private land titlingprocedures (see, eg, de Soto, 2000; WorldBank, 2003) partly contradicts the earlier(flawed) assumptions about these lands.8

More specifically, using cases from Thailand,Sato (2000: 156) showed some importantaspects of what these ‘forests’ might look likeon the ground. He explained,

[A] more effective analysis begins with thestudy of a specific people residing in a specificlocation, who are likely to be caught betweenvarious interests and power relationsrepresenting forces beyond the locale. Theanalysis of ‘ambiguous lands’ and the peoplewho inhabit them is particularly revealing forunderstanding environmental deterioration inThailand. ‘Ambiguous lands’ are those whichare legally owned by the state but are used andcultivated by local people. They do not fitneatly into the private property regime basedon fictions of exclusive rights and alienability,and consist of residual lands of statesimplification processes on land tenure.

Thus, as in Colombia, many of Thailand’sso-called forest lands that official governmentdocuments claim are ‘public’ lands, are inreality under the effective control of privateentities, elite or otherwise.9

The historical empirical evidence uncoveredby different scholars coming from diverse socialscience disciplines as described above informsus about the great diversity of socio-economicand political conditions of so-called publiclands. But in terms of land-based productionand distribution relationships existing in theselands, it is possible and useful to construct atypology, and three broad types are in factobservable. Type 1 involves land where landedelite (to include here: landlords, and companiesengaged in logging, mining, livestock andagribusiness) have effective control over landsofficially classified as public, and have imposedvarying land-based production and distributionrelationships with peasants and rural workers.Examples of these include many corporate-controlled plantations in Indonesia. Type 2concerns land where private individuals whoare neither poor nor as rich or ‘big’ as otherlanded and corporate elite, have effectivecontrol over land officially categorized as pub-lic as well as over the terms of farm productionand distribution arrangements with peasantsand workers. Type 3 involves land where poorpeasants have actual control over parcels ofso-called public lands that they directly till.The reality, of course, is far more diverseand dynamic than the typology presentedhere, but the latter is useful in terms of provid-ing concrete picture of the reality underneaththe architecture of state law.

In short, as these examples show, existingland-based production and distribution relation-ships in many public (forest) lands are diverse,complex and dynamic, and thus by implication,when carried out on certain land types, a land(reform) policy can result in multi-directionaloutcomes, as shown in Table 1.

2 Political struggles for land resource controlThe dynamic nature of property rightsamidst competing interpretations and claims




by different land claim-makers makes stateland laws relevant as institutional contextsand objects of these land resource conflicts.But these land laws are, as Houtzager andFranco (2003) explained, not ‘self-interpretingand self-implementing’. It is the politicalcontestation between pro- and anti-reformforces within the state and in society thatactually interpret and implement state laws,that makes landed property rights real. Thisis certainly the case of land reform in the

Philippines (Franco, 2005). In this context, an‘interactive approach’ in the study of state–society relations developed by Jonathan Fox(1993) is useful in examining how strugglesover the interpretation and implementationof property rights claims are won (or not) bylandless and land-poor peasants. As shownin the Philippine land reform implementationprocess, the most promising situation is whenthe two streams of pro-reform state andsocietal forces interact positively in pursuit

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Table 1 Possible outcomes of land (reform) policies in public lands

Existing condition Property rights prior to land Property rights after(reform) policy implementation land (reform) policy

implementation

Formal Effective Formal Effective

Outcome 1:Landed elite (eg, landlord/ State/Public Private landed elite Private Private

logging/livestock/ landed landedagribusiness/mining elite elitecompany) control over land,imposing tenurial relations with peasants

Outcome 2:Non-poor (but also not major State/Public Private non-poor Private Private

landed elite) control over non-poor non-poorland, imposing tenurial relations with peasants

Outcome 3:Poor peasants control over, State/Public Private poor peasants Private Private

and working on, land landed landed elite or elite or non-poor non-poor

Outcome 4:Poor peasants control over, State/Public Private poor peasants Private poor Private poor

and working on, land peasants peasants

Outcome 5:Landed elite (eg, landlord/ State/Public Landed elite (eg, landlord/ Private poor Private poor

agribusiness/logging/livestock logging/agribusiness/ peasants peasantscompany)�other non-poor livestock company)�control over land, imposing other non-poor control tenurial relations over land, imposing tenurial with peasants relations with peasants



of the common goal of implementing landreform, despite differences in agendas andmotivations between them. This positiveinteraction does not necessarily entail explicitcoalitions between state and societal actors.Parallel initiatives of these two sets of actors(who may even consider themselves adver-saries) toward a common aim also form‘objective alliances’ (Borras, 2001).

If this pro-reform state–society alliance ismost relevant in land reform implementationin lands with clear private property rights, it iseven more relevant in the pro-poor restruc-turing of agrarian relationships involvingcontested property rights in public landsprecisely because the anti-reform groupsrely on the ambiguity of the legal status ofproperty rights on the one hand, and therelative lack of knowledge of the landlessrural poor about the real status of theselands, on the other hand, to perpetuatecontrol over land resources. Thus by combin-ing the reformist initiatives ‘from above’ andsocial mobilizations ‘from below’, the anti-reform schemes could be countered anddefeated, as will be demonstrated in the casestudy on the Aquino estate in section III.

Finally, the land reform initiatives torestructure existing complex social relation-ships in public lands can result in differentoutcomes in terms of who benefits dependingon the existing state laws and policies. Land(reform) policies in public lands can alsoresult in different types and organizationof property rights: privatized/individualizedproperty rights, or in community/collectiveproperty rights, or a mixture of both, ie, com-munity property rights with individualized/privatized land use rights therein. The formand organization of property rights, it isargued here, is secondary. The principal issueis that such policies should be able to reformunjust and exploitative social and productionrelationships. This fundamentally differen-tiates ‘land reform in public lands’ from thecurrent pro-market advocacy for land priva-tization through formal land titling. Land pri-vatization through land titling programmes

are developmental and political campaignsinitiated by central states (neoliberal or other-wise) not always intended to reform actuallyexisting land-based social relationships but, inthe words of James Scott (1998), to ‘simplify’and render ‘legible’ these realities that charac-terize ‘non-state spaces’ in order to imposethe governance claim of the central state. Onmost occasions historically, redistributiveland reform included land-titling programmes;but often the latter were framed and imple-mented outside the context of the former.

Land (reform) policies in public lands, ifimplemented, can result in at least five broadoutcomes in terms of who benefits: (i) contin-ued and formalized control by landed andcorporate elite, (ii) formalized control by non-poor households, (iii) poor peasants losingcontrol over lands; landed and corporateelite and other non-poor households gainingcontrol, (iv) formalized control by poor peas-ants, (v) landed and corporate elite andother non-poor households losing controlover these lands; landless and near-landlesspoor households gaining control (see Table 1).Of the five possible paths, only the last twopossibilities are desirable from poverty eradi-cation and social justice perspectives. In thecontext of mainstream land policies, the firstthree paths are most likely to dominate, whilethe only chance that the last two typesof outcomes can occur on a significant scaleis when land policies in public lands areapproached from explicitly ‘redistributive landreform framework’.

III A view from the PhilippinesThe Philippines is good country case studybecause of: (a) the co-existence of formalprivate landed property rights and public/state (forest) lands, (b) a land reform pro-gramme that officially covers both private andpublic lands, (c) the existence of other rele-vant land policies, especially a land titling pro-gramme, (d) a long period of implementationof these land (reform) policies. These are con-ditions that can offer rich empirical materialsrelevant to the purposes of this paper.




1 National perspectiveApproximately one-third of the Philippineland area of 30 million hectares is agriculturalland (at least based on official land use classi-fication), and ownership and/or control oversuch lands has been largely monopolized bylanded classes, although only about one-thirdof these farmlands is reported in officialcensus as privately owned as of 1988 (seePutzel, 1992; Borras, 2003b), the year theComprehensive Agrarian Reform Program(CARP) began. The Gini coefficient for(private) land ownership distribution was 0.64in 1988 (Putzel, 1992: 30). The lack of controlover land resources has been one of the mostimportant causes of persistent poverty inthe country. By 2004, two out of everyfive Filipinos were poor. Two-thirds of thepoor are rural poor, most of whom are locatedin (upland) communities, precisely wherelanded property rights are ambiguous (AsianDevelopment Bank (ADB), 2005).

The exploitative agrarian structure in thePhilippines has been the cause and effect ofthe lop-sided distribution of political power insociety and the state (see Anderson, 1988;Kerkvliet, 1990; Putzel, 1992). The samesituation has also provoked periodic peasantupheavals that have won only intermittentconcessions from the state (Kerkvliet, 1977;Putzel, 1995, Rutten, 2000). A combinationof repression, resettlement and limited reformhas been the traditional way through whichthe elites and the state responded to peasantupheavals (Wurfel, 1988; Riedinger, 1995;Abinales, 2000), and so peasant unrestremained an important part of rural politicsthroughout the twentieth century. And, asFranco (2001) explains, the transition from anauthoritarian regime to a ‘national clientilistelectoral regime’ in 1986 did not lead to com-plete democratization of the countryside;even now, entrenched political elites continueto dominate the rural polity (see also Putzel,1999), although recent years have seen someerosion of these rural ‘local authoritarianenclaves’10 in a political process that can betraced back mainly to two factors: the series

of highly constrained elections held duringand immediately after the period of authori-tarian rule, and sustained social mobilization‘from below’ (Franco, 2001). However, thetransition period (1986–88) opened new polit-ical opportunities for partial democratizationwhich led to a heated policy debate on agrar-ian reform. After initially dragging its feeton the issue, the administration of CorazónAquino was forced to act after the militaryopened fire at a 20 000-strong peasant marchnear the Presidential Palace, killing 13 peas-ants. The subsequent policymaking processfor land reform in 1986–88, marked by intensepro- and anti-reform forces within the stateand in society, eventually led to the legislationof a land reform law: CARP.11

Based on the CARP law, all farmlands,private and public, regardless of tenurial andproductivity conditions, will be subject toagrarian reform. There are three broad typesof reform: (i) land redistribution of privateand public lands, (ii) ‘lease’, including lease-hold on lands legally retained by landlordsand ‘stewardship contracts’ for some publiclands, and (iii) on a small scale and limitedto the first few years of CARP implemen-tation, a stock distribution option for somecorporate farms. It is most likely that theoriginal intention by some state actors in theinclusion of public lands in land reform isbased on conservative agendas, but oncethe implementation started, unexpectedand unintended outcomes have begun tooccur (Borras, 2001).

Based on its mandate, CARP is supposedto carry out the reform in 10 million hectaresof the country’s farmland via land redistribu-tion, the estimated number of beneficiariescould reach some 4 million landless and land-poor peasant households, comprising close to80% of the agricultural population.12 TheDepartment of Agrarian Reform (DAR) isresponsible for redistributing all private landsand some government-owned lands. Manyof these government-owned lands have beenleased to big landlords and multinationalcompanies at nominal fees (David et al., 1983;

S.M. Borras, Jr 131



Tadem et al., 1984; Hawes, 1987; Putzel,1992; de la Rosa, 2005; Borras and Franco,2005).13 Moreover, there were also vasttracts of public land that were previouslyallotted for (re)settlement programmes andwhich have been integrated into the landreform programme. Many of these landshave, since decades ago, been populated andcultivated, where social and productionrelationships have emerged and persisted.Restructuring these relationships in favourof the landless and near-landless peasantsvia land reform can therefore be truly redis-tributive and pro-poor.

Meanwhile, the bulk of public lands areto be redistributed by the Departmentof Environment and Natural Resources(DENR), which implements CARP’s twobasic components in this land type: Alienableand Disposable (A&D) land and Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) pro-gramme.14 Many of the lands under theseprogrammes are actually cultivated farm-lands. Moreover, a few millions of hectares ofland in the Philippines have been, and are,classified as ‘timberlands’ in formal docu-ments, officially excluding them from CARP’scoverage. Timber lease agreements wereissued to individuals and companies for log-ging activities decades ago. However, bythe 1970s, many, if not most, of these timber-lands had already ceased to operate as such.The conversion to crop cultivation has beenwidespread since then. Thus, today, manylands formally classified as timberlands areactually crop-cultivated lands, whereonunreported and undetected share tenancyarrangements between landed elite andpeasants have emerged, proliferated andpersisted.15

By 2004, official reports estimated that 5.5million hectares of private and public lands,accounting for about half of the country’sfarmland, were redistributed to landless andland-poor peasants (see Table 2). These landscame into the hands of 3 million rural poorhouseholds, representing some two-fifths ofthe Philippine agricultural population.16

If these data are taken at face value, thelevel of land distribution that has beenachieved is comparable with that accom-plished in historically important land reformselsewhere. But interpretations of the actualamount of redistribution vary from uncriticalagreement with the official figures to outrightrejection. One of the most common reasonsoffered by activists and scholars who claimthat CARP’s land redistribution achievementis significantly less than the official claims isthat majority of the redistributed lands werepublic. These data are of course correct, sinceonly 1.7 million out of the 5.5 million hectaresredistributed to peasants were private lands –or one-third of the total CARP’s land redis-tribution achievement (see Table 2; the landcategories ‘KKK’, ‘LE’ and ‘Settlement’ underDAR are government-owned lands).

Riedinger et al. (2001: 376, emphasisoriginal), for example, argued for the exclu-sion of public lands from any accounting ofland redistribution accomplishment. Theydeclared:

This figure reflects the area distributed by theDepartment of Agrarian Reform (2 562 089 h)in the period 1972–1997 net of lands distributedas settlements (662 727 hectares), and KilusangKabuhayan at Kaunlaran (606 347 hectares) . . .The former two elements of the distributionprogram are netted out because they do notinvolve re-distribution of private agriculturallands.

Thus, using the conventional analytic tool inland reform scholarship, one would excludea priori from any land reform accounting allpublic lands that have been distributed topoor peasants. This is, of course, problematic.But without unity about what types of landsqualify for land reform, there will be no sys-tematic and full understanding of the extentof land reform accomplishment in that coun-try (and elsewhere). Explaining how andunder what conditions land distribution inpublic lands constitutes real redistributivereform is an important step towards properassessment of land reforms, in theory andpractice.17




2 Local perspectivesThree different local cases will, in varyinglengths, be discussed below. They all showthat: (a) effective control by private elitesexists in landholdings officially classified aspublic (forest) land, (b) actual land use oftencontradicts what is reported in official landuse categories; (c) different actors use differ-ent official laws and policies in order to claimor maintain control over these lands, and thatit is the actual balance of political powerbetween these actors that ultimately deter-mines whose ‘right’ becomes real and effec-tive, and (d) implementing different statepolicies and laws in contested public lands canresult in different outcomes, pro-poor or oth-erwise. The first case study presented is onethat has resulted in real redistributed reform.The case has been reported by government as

fully accomplished land reform, but dismissedby scholars and activists as non-redistributivebecause it involves public land. The secondcase is one that has not resulted in redistrib-utive reform (or not yet). It is an unfoldingstory about a persistent peasant struggle toacquire a piece of government-owned land.The third case is a critical overview of thecurrent land titling programme that is fundedand directed by the World Bank as well asan overview of CARP’s resettlement pro-gramme. It shows how potentially redistrib-utive policies can result in non-redistributive,or even anti-poor, outcomes.

3 The Aquino Coconut Farm, QuezonThe landholding in this dispute is a 201 hafarm with rolling hills, tilled by 76 tenants andplanted to coconut and citrus trees, located

S.M. Borras, Jr 133

Table 2 CARP’s land redistribution accomplishment, in hectares (1972–2003)

Total output by administration, under the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)

LAD type Output Marcos Aquino Ramos Estrada Arroyo (in ha) 1972–1986 1987–Jun 92 Jul 92–Jun 98 Jul 98–Dec 2000 Jan 01–Dec 03

OLT 521 326 15 061 340 045 141 620 18 708 14 889CA 197 553 13 482 120 828 47 767 41 964VOS 416 283 54 011 255 341 76 896 91 063VLT 443 110 20 737 328 654 73 345 67 097GFI 143 394 22 938 105 498 11 906 9 296KKK 775 328 142 321 543 738 68 520 51 651LE 79 168 11 041 25 781 41 201 971 784Settlmnt 633 475 41 022 193 207 352 497 35 276 39 997

Total 3 209 637 67 124 812 522 1 889 377 333 389 316 741

Total output under the department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) July 1987 – Dec 2003

LAD type Total output Aquino Ramos Estrada Arrovo (in ha) 1987–91 1992–97 1998–2000 2001–2003

A&D 1 295 559 533 273 360 699 131 301 270 286CBFM 1 042 088 566 468 496 585 221 035 –

Total 2 337 647

LAD, Land Acquisition and Distribution; OLT, Operation Land Transfer; CA, compulsory acquisition; VOS, voluntary offer-to-sell;VLT, voluntary land transfer; GFI, government financial institution; KKK, Kilusang Kabuhayan at Kaunlaran; LE, Landed Estate;Settmnt, Settlement.Source: Borras (2004); Borras et al. (2005a).



in Mulanay, Bondoc Peninsula, Quezon, anisolated town that is a 14-hour bus ride fromManila (mainly because of bad roads in thearea).18 It is ‘owned’ by the politically andeconomically influential Aquino family, whichis related to other equally powerful familiesin the municipio, and has been allied with thepolitical elite of the peninsula. The town ofMulanay, like the rest of Bondoc, is a settlerarea: it was one of the land frontiers openedfor settlement in the 1930–1960s, althoughelites from the outside were the ones ableto secure contracts with government to makeuse of these vast tracts of land as timber-lands or pastures. Slowly, some of these eliteswere able to secure private titles to theselands through fraudulent means, often inconnivance with corrupt judges. Othersopted not to secure private titles but never-theless exercise effective control over theland. Meanwhile, since the 1970s, the generalpattern of land use has been transformedfrom timberlands to crop cultivation, mainlycoconut, and share tenancy emerged andpersisted with the influx of settler-peasantscoming from various parts of southern Luzonand the Visayas (Franco, 2005a, b).

The Aquino estate has this typical his-torical profile, although the Aquino familywas able to secure a private title to this‘timberland’. Since the 1960s, the Aquinofamily has imposed tenancy arrangementswith sharing percentages ranging from 70–30to 80–20 in favour of the landlord, while thepeasants shoulder the bulk of productionexpenses. The Aquino family administeredthe coconut farm and controlled the tenantsthrough the overseer (katiwala). It was a hardlife for the peasants.

In the early 1980s, the clandestine com-munist New People’s Army (NPA) began toorganize the peasants in and around thevillage where the estate is located. Duringthat time, at least seven of the Aquino estatetenants joined the guerrillas in various capac-ities.19 In the open, the same tenants becameleaders of the militant peasant associationorganized in the municipality and controlled

by the NPA. The NPA’s indoctrination on‘genuine agrarian reform through agrarianrevolution’ became the most importantcampaign issue for organizing the landlesspeasants (see Kerkvliet, 1993; Putzel, 1995;Rutten, 2000). In fact the NPA became quitepopular in the countryside in the 1970sand 1980s, partly because of its campaignfor tersyong baliktad (the inverted sharingarrangement). This means that instead ofthe 70–30 sharing arrangement in favour ofthe landlord, the sharing scheme would beinverted to 30–70 in favour of the peasants.The Aquino estate tenants were hopeful thatthe NPA campaign would be implementedon their farm, as promised by the guerrillas.

In the mid-1980s, the NPA told the tenantsthat a meeting with the landlord had beenarranged, and that the tenants must them-selves put forward the demand for a tersyongbaliktad. The guerrillas would be present atthe meeting to intimidate the landlord intoagreeing to the peasants’ proposal. The meet-ing occurred, but the NPA did not show up.The peasants could not even open theirmouths to speak out what they wanted. Thelandlord verbally abused them, and thepeasants were made to apologize for takingup the landlord’s time. The peasants latersuspected that the NPA failed to show upbecause it was able to strike a deal withthe landlord on a ‘revolutionary tax’. Thisincident changed the peasants’ attitudetoward the NPA. It was a major setback tothe peasants’ effort to alleviate their difficultliving conditions. Meanwhile, during 1986–89,the village was subjected to militarization aspart of the government’s ‘total war’ policyagainst the communist insurgents. Twotenant-farmers from the village were killed inthe indiscriminate bombings by the military.

By the early 1990s, the NPA’s presencewas waning in the village. Yet the peasantsstill toiled under the onerous share tenancyarrangement. Around this time, the DARinformation campaign about CARP reachedthe village. The peasants became inter-ested. But it was only toward the mid-1990s




that they started to organize themselvesaround the issue of reforming the tenancyarrangement based on the CARP law thatdeclares share tenancy illegal and requires ashift to leasehold. The peasants becameexcited; to them, CARP’s leasehold was justlike the NPA’s tersyong baliktad, or even betteras their share would be slightly higher andsuch a contract would be legally secure,unlike the NPA-brokered arrangement.Hence, the tenants preferred leaseholdreform to land redistribution.

In 1995, they formed an association,SAMALA (Samahan ng Malayang Magsasakasa Lupaing Aquino, Association of FreePeasants of the Aquino Estate). They thenpetitioned for leasehold reform. In the meet-ing at the municipal DAR office, the landlordcame and shouted at and berated the tenantsin public, insulting them as stupid, ignorantpeasants who did not even know how tocompute a leasehold arrangement of 25% and75%. This outburst solidified the peasantranks and the solidarity between them andthe local DAR officials. Jointly, they elevatedtheir demand to compulsory acquisition. Thepeasants were agitated.

Part of the expropriation process is tosecure from the DENR the classification ofthe landholding to be acquired for landreform. When they got the certification fromthe DENR in 1995, they were faced with thebiggest surprise in their lives: the DENRdeclared that the landholding in question infact was ‘timberland’ based on a 1953 govern-ment classification; it thus could not possiblybe titled legally to any private entity. Thepeasants had mixed feelings: elated by thefact that the Aquinos did not own the land,but wary that their hope to own the landwould not be realized because timberlandsare not within the CARP scope for redistri-bution. This was a major dilemma at thisjuncture, leading to a temporary inertiawithin the organization.

Momentum was regained in the followingyear when the Bondoc Development Program(BDP), funded and operated by German

overseas development assistance (GTZ) andits partner NGO the PEACE Foundation,20

reached the village and began to assist thepeasants with their case. Their desperatesituation pushed them to quickly embracethe offer of the assisting NGO. In addition,the barangay and municipal councils hadelected new sets of officials who weresympathetic to the peasants. They passedresolutions supporting the peasants’ claim tothe land. The emergence of the broaderalliance proved strategic in their struggle.

Emboldened by the discovery of the illegalnature of the Aquino’s claim over the land andby the emergence of a broad front of allies,the peasants decided to declare a boycott onland rent. The landlord filed criminal charges(estafa and theft) before the municipal court.Several waves of arrests and detention ofthe tenants and peasant leaders occurredbetween September 1995 and October 1998.During this period, the landlord filed a totalof 108 estafa charges against the peasants.The peasants were jailed for a few days, thenwere able to bail themselves out, mainlydrawing on the common fund they hadcollected when they decided to launch therent boycott (they had set aside 25% of theirharvest as their ‘battle fund’).

The NPA returned around this period.However, instead of supporting the boycottcampaign of the peasants, the guerrillas triedto persuade the peasants to stop the boycott,promising that the NPA would mediate withthe landlord to reform the share tenancyarrangement from the onerous 70–30 to thegovernment’s leasehold arrangement of25–75. This amounted to a counter-flow in themomentum of the peasants’ campaign at thisjuncture. The peasants rejected these offers.

Together with their allies, the peasantsbrought the case all the way to the top-levelofficials of the DENR and the Office of theSolicitor General (OSG) in Manila. Theirdemand was elevated to the cancellation ofthe private title of the landlord, arguing thatit was illegal in the first place. They hada tactical purpose: the declaration of the

S.M. Borras, Jr 135



private title as illegal would quash all thecriminal charges filed against the peasants. Itwas not, however, an easy campaign: thepeasants participated in marches, demonstra-tions, pickets, pitching camp for several daysand on many occasions at the DENR nationalheadquarters, visiting the OSG in Manilasix times. Realizing the need to forge abroader coalition with other peasant groups inorder to strengthen their demands vis-à-visthe state, SAMALA peasants co-foundeda Bondoc-wide peasant alliance, KMBP(Kilusang Magbubukid ng Bondoc Peninsula,Peasant Movement of Bondoc Peninsula).The KMBP would later coalesce with anational peasant movement, UNORKA,21

and would forge a solidarity relationship withinternational civil society networks, especiallythe FoodFirst Information and ActionNetwork (FIAN) that is also actively advo-cating for land reform worldwide. Throughthese movement networks, the political reachof the local struggle of SAMALA peasantswas extended to the very centre of statepower. After persistent collective actions bythe peasants, in 1998 a strategic victory wasachieved: the OSG filed for the cancellationof the title of the Aquino family.

The DENR was slow in processing thecase. But finally, in November 2001, theDENR awarded the estate to the peasantsunder the CBFM programme. It was astandard CBFM stewardship contract for25 years, renewable for another 25 years; thepeasants were not to pay for the land. Thecase was entered in the official CARP recordsas accomplishment in the CBFM programme(ie, public land category). It was a decisivevictory for the peasants. The tenants who,since the land rent boycott in 1995, had begunto engage in intensive intercropping on theland, started to harvest farm productswithout having to pay any land rent. Theyplanned to sustain their demand for there-classification of their land from timberlandto cropland so as to secure a full ownershiptitle over the landholding. Meanwhile, thevictory in the Aquino case was watched

carefully by other peasants in BondocPeninsula who were in a similar situation. Notsurprisingly, several land claims by Bondocpeasants similar to SAMALA’s struggle havealready been filed before the DAR and DENRoffices (see Franco, 2005a, b).

4 The DAPECOL banana plantation, Davao del NorteThe continuing ‘battle’ to expropriate a penalcolony owned by the government illustratesanother aspect of the contested boundariesof public–private domains. This is the case ofthe Davao Penal Colony (DAPECOL) inDavao del Norte.22 This penal colony wascreated in the early 1930s and was allocatedabout 33 000 ha of prime lands. Much ofthese lands had been, to varying extents,settled and cultivated by poor peasants evenprior to its reclassification as a penal colony.The same site became the main area for thedevelopment of cavendish banana productionwhen the abaca sector dipped in the 1950sas a result of competition from syntheticalternatives. Since the 1940s, however,DAPECOL has been privatized, chunk bychunk, in what might be fraudulent salesat ridiculously low prices.23 In the late 1960s,cavendish banana production got into fullswing. By the early 1970s, there were only5200 ha left to DAPECOL.

The family of Don Antonio Floirendo, oneof the most important cronies of formerdictator Ferdinand Marcos, was amongthose who were able to ‘buy’ lands fromDAPECOL and in nearby areas. They report-edly forcibly ejected pre-existing settlementsof peasants.24 Today, the Floirendos havesome 3500 ha of privately owned bananaplantation. On top of these, the Floirendoseffectively control the remaining 5200 ha ofDAPECOL through a long-term contractthat started in 1969. Through his connectionwith Marcos, Antonio Floirendo was able tosecure the long-term lease contract with theDepartment of Justice (DOJ), the agencythat controls the penal colony (see Borrasand Franco, 2005).




The plantation started to operate fullyunder a purchase contract with the globalgiant Chiquita. Prisoners in the penal colonyworked on the banana plantation formeagre wages, but only until the late 1970s.Japanese buyers, the biggest market for thePhilippine bananas, reportedly protestedagainst the use of prison labour to producethe bananas sold to them. Since then, prison-ers have provided only marginal amounts oflabour in banana production. Sixteen yearsafter Marcos was overthrown, the Floirendosremain politically powerful. They survivedthe regime transition in 1986, and all theadministration changes since then; they havecontrolled the district representation inCongress and the governorship of theprovince. At the time of writing, Floirendowas paying the government a meagre PhP1000 per hectare per year lease rent, despitethe fact that the prevailing market rate for landrental for banana plantations in adjacent areaswas already around PhP 30 000 per hectareper year (see de la Rosa, 2005).

From the 1970s to the present, a series ofcollective actions by farm workers and theejected original settlers, in Davao and Manila,have failed to yield a favourable governmentresponse in this case. The DAR repeatedlyrequested the DOJ to turn over the land tothe DAR for redistribution, but were metwith negative reply. In 2003, and totallydisregarding the popular clamour for theredistribution of the DAPECOL land, theMacapagal-Arroyo administration renewedthe lease contract for another 25 years, with-out any significant improvement in the termsof the contract. It is widely believed that thelease deal between the Floirendos and theDOJ is graft-ridden.

The DAPECOL is government-owned,‘penal colony’ land, but in reality it is a mod-ern banana plantation tied to one of theworld’s biggest multinational fruit companies.It is public land, yet the case demonstrateshow difficult it is to have such lands redistrib-uted. The private elite interest is quiteentrenched. Arguably, and legally, it should

have been redistributed under CARP becausethe law exempts only penal colonies thatare directly tilled by prisoners. Besides, thelease contract here is tantamount to a con-tract disadvantageous to the government,which is illegal. If, hypothetically, DAPECOLwere to be redistributed, it would certainlyconstitute redistributive reform.

5 The Land Administration and Management Program (LAMP) and other related casesThe World Bank has recently funded andhas been directing a 25-year land-titlingprogramme, the Land Administration andManagement Program (LAMP).25 The aim isto generate individual private land titles inapproximately 5 million hectares of land tomore or less 2 million individual title holders.It has been pilot-tested in the province ofLeyte in 2002–2004.26 It has become a full-scale programme within the province ofLeyte beginning in early 2005, and is envi-sioned to be implemented all over the countryin the next few years.

Initial evidence shows, however, that theproject is likely to result in outcomes that areagainst the interest of the landless and land-poor classes. This is because the programmeis not placed within a land reform framework,and so the main basis for the land titles beinggenerated is the existing formal claims by anypersons – rich or poor, landed or landless,actually cultivating the land or not. In the pilotmunicipality visited for this study, officialLAMP records show that majority of thosethat have put forward claims were: (i) middleand upper class families, (ii) not living in thevillages where the claimed lands are locatedbut in distant town and city centres, (iii) mostof whom are not working the land, and (iv)many of whom have multiple land claims.27

The programme implementers have notrequired the ‘residency’ of the land claimantsbecause this would ‘complicate and slowdown’ the implementation process.28 Yet, theofficial claimants regularly paid the municipalland tax (amelyár) – which is one of the formal

S.M. Borras, Jr 137



bases for property rights claims, though inpractice, seems to be the main basis. In thesame pilot sites, tenant-farmers and farm-workers who have been cultivating the landsbeing claimed by others were not even part ofthe LAMP project in any way. Clearly, theprogramme is not concerned about reformingpre-existing exploitative production relation-ships in these lands. It is concerned solelyabout what quantity of lands it could survey,for which formal land titles could be gener-ated. It is thus not surprising that, in fact, theLAMP land-titling programme, in the initialcases cited, has institutionalized the verymechanisms that cause and perpetuateexploitative relationships and poverty.

Meanwhile, the way the LAMP has beenconceptualized and implemented has manythings in common with the way CARP hasbeen carried out in the land category‘Settlements’ (see Table 2; and relevantdiscussion in section III). Instead of imple-menting CARP in settlement lands in such away as to reform the actually pre-existingsocial and production relationships, in generalthe government has simply and convenientlyparcelled settlement lands into privateproperties based on existing formal landclaims – and many of these claimants werenon-poor households (see Borras, 2002;Feranil and Tapia, 2003, for cases in southernand central Mindanao). In this context, themain motivation for government officials hasbeen to generate as many formal land reformaward titles as possible, rather than to carryout real pro-poor reforms as mandated byCARP. In such cases, therefore, CARP’s landsettlement programme, like the World Bank’sland titling programme, has formalized andinstitutionalized, not restructured, pre-existing exploitative social and productionrelationships.

Finally, the various types of outcomeshown by the cases cited above that do notfavour the landless poor have also occurred inthe two CARP programmes for pubic landsbeing implemented by the DENR (A&Dland and CBFM programme). The annual

internal programme audit carried out bythe Presidential Agrarian Reform Council(PARC) has uncovered numerous cases ofanomalous distribution of public lands wherethe landed elite and other non-poor house-holds, including officials of governmentagencies and local government units, havebeen declared beneficiaries of the A&D andCBFM programmes (see PARC, 1994, 1995,1996, 1997, 2001).

IV Concluding remarksContrary to the popular assumption in theliterature that land reform in public lands doesnot constitute redistributive reform, theconceptual and empirical discussion here hasshown that redistributive reform can be, andhas been, achieved in ‘public’ (forest) lands.The problem with conventional land policiesbeing implemented in contested public lands,such as land privatization through land titling,is that there is a great risk that they will onlyformalize the current land claims by the elite,or worse, transfer control from the poor (orthe state) to the (private) elite. The casestudies examined here have shown that theactual interpretation and implementation ofland laws pertaining to ambiguous lands haveoccurred through the politically contentiousinteractions between state and societalactors. Specifically, it is the positive interac-tion between reformist initiative ‘from above’by state actors and social mobilization ‘frombelow’ by autonomous rural social movementgroups that have been responsible for ‘pro-poor’ interpretation and implementation ofland laws, as shown in the case of the Aquinoestate discussed in section III. However, thepro-reform state–society alliance does notautomatically guarantee successful outcomesbecause the anti-reform forces also mobilizetheir own state–society coalition, as shownin the case of the DAPECOL plantation.Nevertheless, the general absence of sus-tained mobilizations by autonomous ruralsocial movement organizations and initiativesby state reformists in CARP’s programmesinvolving public lands have most likely




facilitated widespread anti-reform outcomesin land policy implementation, as the annualofficial internal programme audit reports haveshown.

Clarification of the notion of redistributiveland reform in the context of public lands canlead to a different but better understanding ofland reform experiences, as in the cases ofSouth Korea and Taiwan, where public landswere in fact an important component of landreform, and of less successful past attempts atland reform, such as in Colombia in the 1960swhere elite-controlled public lands escapedthe analytic lens of many land reform schol-ars. The reconceptualization put forward inthis study can also facilitate a better under-standing of the challenges facing land policiesin many developing countries today, such as inThailand, Indonesia and Bolivia, as well as inAfrican countries where significant quantitiesof lands officially classified as public landshave in reality been appropriated privately.

Notes1. The more precise data about the extent of

‘informal’ tenure are those for urban areas.According to the World Bank (2003: xxv),‘more than 50 percent of the peri-urban pop-ulation in Africa and more than 40 percent inAsia live under informal tenure and thereforehave highly insecure land rights’. The Bankreport continues that, ‘while no such figuresare available for rural areas, many rural landusers are reported to make considerableinvestments in land as a way to establish own-ership and increase their perceived level oftenure security’.

2. But meaningful reforms can still occur in Type1 settings despite not being redistributivereform. See Fox’s (1993: 10) explanationabout the distinction between redistributiveand distributive policies; and Borras (2004)for a specific application to land reformscholarship.

3. In the context of the Philippines, refer toBorras et al. (2005a); Fianza (1999), Rodil(1994), Tri-People Consortium for Peace,Progress and Development (TRICOM)(1998), Gutierrez and Borras (2004), Vidal(2004); Corpuz-Tauli and Cariño (2004);

Colchester (1994: 71–72); Resurreción (1999:242–50); and Gaspar (2000). For the Mexicanexperience, refer to Harvey (1998) andVan der Haar (2000); for Guatemala seeHandy (1994).

4. See, eg, Leonen (1993); Broad (1994);Christodoulou (1990: 20), Doornbos et al.(2000), Arnold (2001: 164).

5. See, eg, Ostrom (2001); Arnold (2001);Colchester (1994).

6. See, eg, von Benda-Beckmann (1993: 116,2001); Roquas (2002).

7. See, eg, Leach et al. (1999); Johnson andForsyth (2002); Sato (2000); Li (1996).

8. Moreover, Doornbos et al. (2000: 2–3)explained that: ‘For most received economictheory, nature constitutes a pre-theoryconcept. In their original state, water, air, tim-ber, fish, land and such like are “free” . . .incorporating no prior human processing orexpenditure of human labour. They are openlyavailable to all without social or economicrestriction . . . As such, in economic account-ing, they become costless, and are beyondthe domain of economic theorizing . . . Thissimple exclusion of nature from economics issuddenly overtaken by a later phase where itis simply postulated that these free goodshave now become unfree, and have taken aneconomic incarnation as products. This trans-formation is not itself the subject of explana-tion in economic theory . . . The key toentering this fertile, though unsettled, theo-retical space lies in posing the questionunasked by mainstream economic theorizingand the social sciences generally, viz. thatenquiring into the conditions underlying thedemise of nature as a free good and itsreincarnation as an economic one. Implicitly, itjuxtaposes on the initial state of plenty, a newscenario involving the emergence of scarcity,markets and prices. But it is precisely in theinterim, the unrecognized space betweenthese two postulated states or phases ofnature that many vital concerns lie buried’.

9. For other similar settings elsewhere, see alsoColchester (1994); Platteau (1996); Gauld(2000: 236); Carter and Salgado (2001:263–65).

10. The term ‘authoritarian clientelism’ builds onthe concept of clientelism, and refers to situa-tions where ‘imbalanced bargaining relations

S.M. Borras, Jr 139



require the enduring political subordination ofclients and are reinforced by the threat ofcoercion’ (Fox, 1994: 153, see also Franco,2001, 2004, in the context of the Philippines).

11. See Putzel (1992); Riedinger (1995); Lara andMorales (1990); Hayami et al. (1990).

12. This was however revised/reduced in early1996 to 8.064 million hectares (see Borras,2003b). Moreover, some 2 million hectares offarms smaller than 5 ha (retained farms bylandlords) will be subject to share tenancy orleasehold reform which aims to benefit amillion tenant households. The average farmsize in the country is 2 ha, while the landreform award ceiling is fixed at 3 ha.

13. As such, these multinational corporations arenot the owners of the lands. By implication,the conventional thinking in this regard sug-gests that redistribution of these government-owned lands would be insignificant andnon-redistributive (see further discussionbelow). It is thus difficult to explain the impor-tance of taking back vast tracts of publiclands controlled by multinationals and havingthem redistributed to poor peasants and farmworkers. Some examples are the lands previ-ously controlled by Dole in the southernPhilippines and the experience in Mexico inthe 1920s wherein numerous public landsillegally appropriated by private entities,including American companies, were takenback and redistributed among poor peasants(Tannenbaum, 1929: 315–34; see also Striffler,2002, for the Ecuadorian experience andGriffin et al., 2002, for the Taiwaneseexperience).

14. It is important at this point to clarify someissues with regard to CBFM. In 1996, theDENR formally adopted the community-based approach to its forestry programme.The CBFM integrates existing related gov-ernment programmes: Integrated SocialForestry Program (ISFP), CommunityForestry Program (CFP), Forest LandManagement Program (FLMP), RegionalResources Management Program (RRMP),Low Income Upland Development Program(LIUCP), Coastal Environment Program(CREP) and Ancestral Domains/Land ClaimsProgram (ADMP) (La Viña, 1999: 18). Not allof these programmes are within the CARPscope, and the ISFP remains the major CARP

component. In reality, however, there are sev-eral overlaps between these programmes,especially between CARP’s CBFM and theancestral domain claims, which is nowhandled by another government agency(NCIP) under another law (IPRA). The con-fusion remains, eg, it is not clear how muchof the reported CBFM accomplishmentdata are in fact ancestral domain claims (andvice versa). The available DENR data arenot disaggregated according to CBFM sub-programmes; see also Gauld (2000). For auseful background on the CBFM program,see Garilao et al. (1999), especially La Viña(1999), Bulatao (1999), and Cristobal (1999);see Hirtz (2003) for IPRA.

15. See Borras et al. (2005a); Franco (2005);Carranza (2000); Corpuz (2000).

16. See Putzel (2002); Borras (2004, 2003b);Borras et al. (2005a).

17. Another crucial category that needs criticalclarification is the official ‘land redistribution’data based on market-based mechanisms,which the author has discussed elsewhere(Borras, 2005).

18. The data and information for this case studyare drawn primarily from a focus group discus-sion with more than a dozen peasants andpeasant leaders on the estate, plus severalone-on-one formal and informal discussionswith them. Many requested anonymity inthis study. Data and information from inter-views with the PEACE Foundation commu-nity organizers and leaders of KMBP andUNORKA, as well as provincial-regional-national DAR officials are also insightful.Borras (2004), Carranza (2000), Corpuz(2000) and Franco (2000, 2005a, b) are otherimportant sources of information and insights.

19. Based on a focus group discussion with agroup of farmers who requested anonymity.2001, Bondoc peninsula.

20. Philippine Ecumenical Action for CommunityEmpowerment – one of the oldest and largestNGO networks in the country advocating foragrarian reform.

21. UNORKA is Pambansang Ugnayan ngNagsasariling Lokal na mga SamahangMamamayan sa Kanayunan or NationalCoordination of Autonomous Local RuralPeople’s Organizations. See Franco and Borras(2005) for a background on the national




peasant movements’ continuing struggles forland and democracy in the Philippines.

22. Data and information for this case study aredrawn from numerous formal and informaldiscussions with various groups directlyinvolved in the dispute: leaders and membersof the three different groups of settlers whoaccused the Floirendos of having forciblyejected them from the land in the 1960s and1970s; leaders and members of various farmworkers’ groups in the Floirendo plantation,especially those under the umbrella ofUFEARBAI-UNORKA, including Eric Cabanitand Ben Isidro, Governor Rodolfo del Rosario,the late Antonio Javellana, and provincial,regional and national DAR officials. Theauthor also participated in numerous collec-tive actions launched by the various groups ofclaim-makers in this case, both in Davaoand Manila. Manapat (1991), de la Rosa(2005), and Franco (2005) are also usefulsources of information. An earlier study(Borras et al., 1999) with comprehensivedocumentation is equally useful.

23. Refer to Borras et al. (1999) for historicaldetails.

24. Interview with several of those who wereejected from these villages (see also Borraset al., 1999).

25. For a broader context regarding mainstreamland policies, see Borras (2003a).

26. For details of the programme, see LAMP(2002a, b).

27. Numerous internal LAMP documents wereconsulted. Focus group discussions withvillage officials, share tenants and farmwork-ers who were excluded from the LAMPproject, LAMP beneficiaries, as well as NGOsinvolved in the project, were also sources ofinformation.

28. Based on information gathered during the fieldinvestigation in July–August 2004 in theprovince of Leyte that included an informaldiscussion with the LAMP director, theexecutive director (Lino Aparente) of theNGO partner (WESLEYDEV) of the pilotprogramme, several key programme staff, theregional DAR director for Region 8, as well asseveral project beneficiaries; plus focusgroup discussions with beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in the pilot areas, and examina-tion of programme documents. The author

also personally observed a two-day majorprogramme evaluation workshop in July–August 2004 in Tacloban City. The compre-hensive evaluation of the initial phase of theprogramme, an evaluation commissioned bythe programme itself, has also come up withsimilar conclusions (see Lim-Mangada andRoquino, 2004). Interview with the EdnaTabadora, executive director of the CARPSecretariat at the DENR was also useful.

AcknowledgementsThis paper draws from the author’s PhDdissertation. I would like to thank JenniferFranco, Cristóbal Kay, and Ben White fortheir constructive comments on earlierrelated draft papers; Ron Herring and JamesPutzel for their critical comments on the partsof my dissertation that are related to thetheme of this paper; Lino Aparente, DaniloBernal, Danilo Carranza and Nestor Tapiafor various assistance during the fieldworkfor this research. Finally, I would like to thankthe two reviewers for their very criticalcomments and useful suggestions. However,I am directly responsible for the analysis, andany errors, in this paper.

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