ABSTRACT
We found that stakeholders approach tenure reforms with different assumptions about their goals. Donors and some government officials tend to promote individualization, agricultural investment, and land market as the most important goals, while others, including community members and advocacy groups, tend to focus on the stabilization, social inclusion, and gender equity elements of the programs. Hence, each of the reform efforts we examined is riven by differences among proponents and detractors about their ultimate aims. Certification, then, emerges as a canvas on which different interests paint their own visions of what just, inclusive, secure, and productive tenure arrangements look like. Development theory toward customary tenure remains stubbornly grounded in the assumption that it constitutes a severe institutional barrier to smallholder agricultural modernization. Uncritical acceptance of this assumption continues to lead policy makers to ill-starred investments in reforms intended to promote agricultural investment while failing to take account of the larger social, economic, and cultural benefits afforded by existing customary tenure arrangements. This realist synthesis has revealed how beneficiaries have used the resources provided by certification to build more socially inclusive and secure customary systems, and not to discard them.
