2001 Director's annual report overview
PROGRAMME FOR LAND AND AGRARIAN STUDIES 2001 Director's annual report overview
Ben
Cousins, Director
PLAAS continues to grow and to take on new projects and staff. This presents a number of challenges, not least of which is the sustainability of such growth. The year 2001 saw the completion of a twelve month-long ‘organisational change process’ which addressed key issues of institutional sustainability. This resulted in new governance and management structures, revised salary scales and conditions of service in line with those of the university, and staff contracts that offer a degree of security of tenure despite the vicissitudes of external donor funding. By the end of the year most of the new systems and procedures were in operation, bringing a sense of solid foundations and greater stability.
One of our innovations was to cluster researchers and projects into ‘focus areas’ co-ordinated by senior researchers. We hope that this will facilitate more effective links between individual projects, encourage coherence in our research, training and policy engagement, and facilitate strategic planning. The five focus areas are: land reform; agro-food regimes; community-based natural resource management (CBNRM); rural governance; and chronic poverty and development policy.
A major new focus for PLAAS in 2001 was the post-graduate teaching programme. Twelve students registered for the Post-Graduate Diploma in Land and Agrarian Studies, eleven completed the year, and three qualified to proceed to the MPhil. The teaching programme is carried out in collaboration with a number of other institutions and university teaching departments, giving it a truly multi-disciplinary character.
Public awareness of the importance of land reform has risen dramatically over the past two years as a result of events in Zimbabwe. PLAAS staff have responded to a large number of enquiries, from embassies, journalists and members of the public, on the difficult question of whether or not South Africa is likely to experience a similar wave of land invasions and farm occupations. Prompted by this growing interest in land policy, we have organised seminars on these issues, written a number of popular articles for the media, and initiated the Policy brief series which seeks to provide up-to-date information on land and agrarian reform and to stimulate debate on critically important policy questions.
PLAAS staff members have also continued to seek ways to engage with government policy makers. One opportunity was the national conference on land tenure organised by the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) in November 2001, and attended by a large delegation of PLAAS staff. Several PLAAS researchers were requested to present keynote papers or to lead working sessions, and they participated in lively debates in the course of the conference.
Several new projects were initiated in the course of 2001. These include a collaborative project with the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam and Noragric (the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at the Agricultural University of Norway), focused on the World Summit for Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in August/September 2002. This project asks the question: ‘sustainable development – what’s land got to do with it?’ and seeks to provide analytical tools for understanding the links between environment, development and land reform. This project is supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and the Norwegian Embassy.
A second new project is the Pan-African Programme for Land and Resource Rights (PAPLRR), which is operated in partnership with the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi, the Social Research Centre of the American University of Cairo, and Community Conservation and Development Initiatives in Lagos. This continent-wide networking programme seeks to develop and articulate an African voice on strategies to enhance the land and resource rights of the rural poor, currently under threat from a number of sources. The programme, supported by Ford Foundation, will host four workshops over two years, fund networking visits between regions, and publish research papers and policy briefs.
A large two-year training programme for DLA and the Danish environmental agency Danced was completed in 2001, under the title The integration of environmental planning into the land reform process. A total of 672 participant training units were delivered across six training courses, resulting in the training of over 100 individuals in various aspects of this topic. Independent evaluations of the quality of the training were highly complimentary. Another successful training event organised by PLAAS was a one-week short course on Governance and CBNRM, run in collaboration with the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) at the University of Zimbabwe. A total of 34 participants from nine countries attended.
A key factor in the high levels of productivity achieved by PLAAS staff is the number of successful partnerships with other institutions – at local, national, regional and international levels. At UWC we work closely with the Public Health Programme, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, the Law Faculty, the History Department, the School of Government and the Institute of Social Development. More widely, collaborative ventures include partners at the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch, the Legal Resources Centre, Surplus People Project, the Centre for Rural Legal Studies (CRLS), the National Land Committee, CASS, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) office in Mozambique, Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, the Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM) at the University of Manchester, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London, Noragric at the Agricultural University of Norway, the School of Fisheries Science at the University of Tromsø, and the Department of Administration and Organisation at the University of Bergen.
The organisational change process we carried through in 2001 was extremely challenging and time-consuming, but this did not mean any relief from the pressure to produce research findings and to disseminate them. It is a tribute to the capabilities of PLAAS researchers that the year saw them continuing to produce high-quality publications and other project outputs. These are detailed in the rest of this report. In their efforts research staff were provided with excellent back-up and support by a dedicated team of administrative staff. PLAAS itself published four research reports, five occasional papers, two regional newsletters, and five policy briefs.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to act as Director of a programme staffed by such creative, hardworking and committed staff.
PLAAS continues to grow and to take on new projects and staff. This presents a number of challenges, not least of which is the sustainability of such growth. The year 2001 saw the completion of a twelve month-long ‘organisational change process’ which addressed key issues of institutional sustainability. This resulted in new governance and management structures, revised salary scales and conditions of service in line with those of the university, and staff contracts that offer a degree of security of tenure despite the vicissitudes of external donor funding. By the end of the year most of the new systems and procedures were in operation, bringing a sense of solid foundations and greater stability.
One of our innovations was to cluster researchers and projects into ‘focus areas’ co-ordinated by senior researchers. We hope that this will facilitate more effective links between individual projects, encourage coherence in our research, training and policy engagement, and facilitate strategic planning. The five focus areas are: land reform; agro-food regimes; community-based natural resource management (CBNRM); rural governance; and chronic poverty and development policy.
A major new focus for PLAAS in 2001 was the post-graduate teaching programme. Twelve students registered for the Post-Graduate Diploma in Land and Agrarian Studies, eleven completed the year, and three qualified to proceed to the MPhil. The teaching programme is carried out in collaboration with a number of other institutions and university teaching departments, giving it a truly multi-disciplinary character.
Public awareness of the importance of land reform has risen dramatically over the past two years as a result of events in Zimbabwe. PLAAS staff have responded to a large number of enquiries, from embassies, journalists and members of the public, on the difficult question of whether or not South Africa is likely to experience a similar wave of land invasions and farm occupations. Prompted by this growing interest in land policy, we have organised seminars on these issues, written a number of popular articles for the media, and initiated the Policy brief series which seeks to provide up-to-date information on land and agrarian reform and to stimulate debate on critically important policy questions.
PLAAS staff members have also continued to seek ways to engage with government policy makers. One opportunity was the national conference on land tenure organised by the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) in November 2001, and attended by a large delegation of PLAAS staff. Several PLAAS researchers were requested to present keynote papers or to lead working sessions, and they participated in lively debates in the course of the conference.
Several new projects were initiated in the course of 2001. These include a collaborative project with the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam and Noragric (the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at the Agricultural University of Norway), focused on the World Summit for Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in August/September 2002. This project asks the question: ‘sustainable development – what’s land got to do with it?’ and seeks to provide analytical tools for understanding the links between environment, development and land reform. This project is supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and the Norwegian Embassy.
A second new project is the Pan-African Programme for Land and Resource Rights (PAPLRR), which is operated in partnership with the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi, the Social Research Centre of the American University of Cairo, and Community Conservation and Development Initiatives in Lagos. This continent-wide networking programme seeks to develop and articulate an African voice on strategies to enhance the land and resource rights of the rural poor, currently under threat from a number of sources. The programme, supported by Ford Foundation, will host four workshops over two years, fund networking visits between regions, and publish research papers and policy briefs.
A large two-year training programme for DLA and the Danish environmental agency Danced was completed in 2001, under the title The integration of environmental planning into the land reform process. A total of 672 participant training units were delivered across six training courses, resulting in the training of over 100 individuals in various aspects of this topic. Independent evaluations of the quality of the training were highly complimentary. Another successful training event organised by PLAAS was a one-week short course on Governance and CBNRM, run in collaboration with the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) at the University of Zimbabwe. A total of 34 participants from nine countries attended.
A key factor in the high levels of productivity achieved by PLAAS staff is the number of successful partnerships with other institutions – at local, national, regional and international levels. At UWC we work closely with the Public Health Programme, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, the Law Faculty, the History Department, the School of Government and the Institute of Social Development. More widely, collaborative ventures include partners at the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch, the Legal Resources Centre, Surplus People Project, the Centre for Rural Legal Studies (CRLS), the National Land Committee, CASS, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) office in Mozambique, Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, the Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM) at the University of Manchester, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London, Noragric at the Agricultural University of Norway, the School of Fisheries Science at the University of Tromsø, and the Department of Administration and Organisation at the University of Bergen.
The organisational change process we carried through in 2001 was extremely challenging and time-consuming, but this did not mean any relief from the pressure to produce research findings and to disseminate them. It is a tribute to the capabilities of PLAAS researchers that the year saw them continuing to produce high-quality publications and other project outputs. These are detailed in the rest of this report. In their efforts research staff were provided with excellent back-up and support by a dedicated team of administrative staff. PLAAS itself published four research reports, five occasional papers, two regional newsletters, and five policy briefs.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to act as Director of a programme staffed by such creative, hardworking and committed staff.
WORKSHOP: Can land and agrarian reform in South Africa create opportunities for smallholder farmers and help reduce rural poverty?