THE IMPACT OF LAND TITLING ON LAND CONSERVATION BEHAVIOR - AN EMPIRICAL CASE-STUDY FROM HONDURAS

In recent discussions of the problems of environmental degradation emphasis has often been given to the importance of clear rights to own and use environmental recources as a means of ensuring that users bear the costs of their actions. In the context of land degradation this has been reflected in the interest in clarifying rights to land, usually through expanded programs of land titling. This paper gives the results of a study carried out by the author in the Santa Barbara region in Honduras about the impacts of title ownership on land conservation behavior. The study indicates that title ownership has only a very limited impact, because the pre-existing informal land rights were not actually insecure, i.e. the titling program did not increase security of tenure very much, and because the farmers had only limited access to other important factors constituting an enabling environment, such as credit or extension.