The consequences of restricting rights to land: understanding the impact of state-land tenure policies in Sri Lanka

Land tenure can be defined as the mode by which real property is held or owned, or the set of relationships among people concerning land. Understanding land-tenure systems has been key to achieving sustainable development because the terms of these arrangements structure the connection that people have with their lands, influencing what they do with it and how they treat it. Using a two-stage mixed-method design based on scenarios drawn from Sri Lanka, this article demonstrates that affecting control over land tenure and land rights do not always lead to predictable outcomes. Policy interventions often lead to the creation of new and unintended categories of relations between people and the land that run counter to original intentions. The research also demonstrates that relationships to land cannot be adequately captured by looking at legal rights, but rather requires identifying how people perceive or interpret them.