Evaluating the Role of Private Land Tenure Rights in Sustainable Land Management for Agriculture in Kenya

Kenya continues to face a challenge of declining quality of land, in a situation where agriculture is a major contributor to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and to rural livelihoods. Land is a complex resource composed primarily of soil, water and biodiversity. Thus the management of such a complex resource sustainably is a challenge for a country like Kenya. International law and policy is useful in providing principles on land stewardship, which can be adapted nationally, through law, policy or development plans. These include international approaches include the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, and the Rio + 20 Outcome document. These provide normative support for national law and policy tools, to provide solutions that govern prevention and reversal of land degradation. Importantly, the purpose of land tenure rights is critical, as they provide a direct entitlement to land owners to make choices on how they utilize land. As such these can be enhanced with sustainability obligations, and can complement the role played by land use legal provisions, such as agriculture laws. This paper makes the argument that tenure rights can provide a supplemental incentive for the legal system to require stewardship practices by land owners.