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Land Tenure in the Cook Islands

Incorporation: a possible tenure innovation

Incorporation: a possible tenure innovation

In considering new forms of tenure, the present degree of utilization of the land must be born in mind. While almost all the land in the group is used to some degree, whether for planting, gathering of wild fruits or the collection of building materials, only an estimated eight per cent is actively used for housing, public utilities and crops other than the coconut.2 A further eleven per cent may be said to be planted with ‘economic’ stands of coconuts,3 though much of this land could be more fully utilized. The remaining eighty-one per cent of the land is markedly under-utilized: much of it because it is at present regarded as unusable.

Owing to strong individual ties with particular areas of closely settled land (through investment in houses, crops and other improvements, as well as sentimental associations resulting from continued use for subsistence, burial of relatives, access and other purposes) innovation is more likely to be successful if it relates to those lands which are at present little used. Moreover, as the people are not dependent on those lands for their livelihood, they would probably be prepared to experiment with

2 In the pre-contact era these lands provided medicines, ropes, famine foods, building materials and other supplies, most of which are now obtained from trade stores. There is therefore no longer the necessity for each family to have its own bush lands.

3 I.e. not including areas on which only scattered coconut trees grow or which are not exploited systematically.

page 310 them more freely than with closely settled lands. Proposals for new forms of landholding, therefore, are restricted to these undeveloped areas.

The fact that most of these lands have not been commercially exploited since the introduction of a cash economy suggests the desirability of examining the possibility of alternative systems of tenure and work organization. The existence of a potentially productive soil and the dissemination of information on how to make it so has generally been insufficient to stimulate the extensive use of these soils. Since 1950 the Administration has tried to encourage the rejuvenation of the banana industry on Rarotonga1 on an individual basis, but despite prizes, propaganda and guaranteed markets the output has not reached one per cent of the quantity exported under the system of organization on a minor lineage basis which operated during the period 1906–15.2

Despite frequent proposals, no concerted attempt was made to rejuvenate the coffee industry after its collapse at the turn of the century until the necessary organization, credit and technical skill was recently introduced by co-operative societies and agricultural extension services. The replanting of coconut groves is being undertaken almost entirely by the co-operative societies and island councils, and on those islands where neither body has assumed this responsibility the industry remains undeveloped. The major problem now inhibiting the spread of coffee and coconut planting is the lack of security of tenure for the planter. Only those proposals which were associated with adequate tenure forms and the provision of credit and

1 But not on other islands owing to shipping difficulties.

2 See pages 253 and 261.

page 311 technical skills (i.e. the Citrus Replanting Scheme, the afforestation project on Atiu, and the Mauke fern land scheme) have responded with marked increases in productivity and planting. With the exception of citrus, all the above crops - bananas, coffee, coconuts, case timber and peanuts - are grown principally on land which is classed as unsuitable for agriculture.
For several reasons it appears desirable that these areas should be held and worked in relatively large tracts. As most of the lands concerned suffer from some defect: either excessive steepness, the existence of rock outcrops or leached soils, a considerable input of capital will in many cases be necessary to make them fully productive.1 New techniques of cultivation may be necessary and perhaps new crops. Innovations of this type can best be introduced with centralized management and an institution of sufficient size to operate cultivating and processing equipment and hire skilled staff. Such an institution could not function effectively without secure tenure of the land it was working. Fortunately, the undeveloped areas lend themselves to large-scale exploitation, as the average size of sections in those areas is many times larger than those in settled areas,2 and as numbers of contiguous sections can be

1 Most of the areas nevertheless appear to have a good productive potential given appropriate techniques of cultivation and soil conservation. At present Cook Islanders rarely crop land which lies at more than fourteen degrees of slope, but Dr J.E. Blaut informs me that he has himself measured land with a similar soil cover lying at sixty-three degrees and being actively cropped in Jamaica.

2 The average section in current use (excluding house-sites) in the four tapere of Turangi ma Nga Mataiapo was just under three acres in area, and the average unused section approximately twenty-eight acres in area. The used sections were generally the more fertile.

page 312 developed jointly1 (whereas in the settled areas the unused sections are scattered and thus not conducive to joint exploitation).

It is certain that the people would not be prepared to sell their rights in undeveloped lands, and while some individuals may be prepared to lease them to an outside person or group, the majority in all probability would not, thus precluding any major development from taking place. To be acceptable to the people, it is likely that any proposed enterprise would need to be so framed that the present owners retained some rights to the land and had a resonable assurance of an income from it. Perhaps the most appropriate tenure form under these circumstances is the ‘incorporation’.

Contiguous undeveloped lands in any particular locality could be incorporated into a single block, rights to individual sections being annulled and replaced by shares in the whole corporation in proportion to the separate rights previously held in the area. The land-owning corporation could work the land as a single unit for the benefit of its members, or could lease it to a local cooperative society or other enterprise in which the people had a degree of participation, either at a fixed rental or for a share of the profits.

If the people concerned were not anxious to lose their proprietary right to their particular sections in an untried project, it might be preferable for the owners to merely lease their separate rights to a co-operative society formed for the purpose, again for exploitation for the benefit of the owning group. This alternative, while it may be more

1 On several of the Southern Group islands there are a number of contiguous tracts (containing numerous family sections) of over five hundred acres each, which are virtually unused.

page 313 readily acceptable in some situations, would involve more cumbersome accounting procedures and should perhaps be regarded as an interim stage preceding full incorporation.
This form of tenure, which has been extensively tried on Maori lands in New Zealand, could facilitate the introduction of capital, managerial skills and modern techniques of production. Used to develop such virtually unused lands as the 620 acre Turangi valley on Rarotonga, the Mauke fern lands or the interior of Mangaia it would be able to employ as part of its labour force persons with inadequate lands of their own.1 The Turangi valley, for example, could be utilized for large-scale banana production (as it once was) but, as shown on page 265, the resident owners of the land would be unable to supply a sufficient labour force to work the project. All Turangi people would derive income from the project in proportion to their shares of land in the scheme, but such labour as they could not supply could be drawn from the underemployed surplus in Avarua.2 Being labour intensive, and utilizing land which is at present idle, such a project would help to overcome one of the major agrarian problems in the group - that of integrating a

1 Many persons employed in the citrus scheme and on Manuae plantation have insufficient land of their own on which to subsist.

2 According to the census of 1956, thirty-six per cent of persons then resident on Rarotonga had been born outside that island, but as the migration to Rarotonga has proceeded constantly for over a century, a large proportion of persons born in Rarotonga still have no land rights there as they were born of parents who came from other islands (in 1895 thirty-four per cent of Rarotonga's population had been born on other islands). In addition there are many Rarotongans whose land rights are so fragmented that they are unable to acquire the use of any portion of their lands. Avarua and Titikaveka are the districts containing the highest proportions of persons without land rights, and while no details of their numbers are available, I would estimate that sixty to seventy per cent of the population of those districts is without the effective use of planting land in which they hold rights.

page 314 growing under-employed and landless labour force with the large tracts of land which are not at present in use.

It might, perhaps, be appropriate to conclude this historical analysis of land tenure in the Cook Islands with the maxim so often laid down by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: that unless tenure reform is associated with improvements in technical skills, the provision of credit, transport and markets it is unlikely to result in increases in output or in the satisfaction of the people concerned. Furthermore, in a democratic society, proposals for reform must be evolved with the full participation of the people concerned, and must be accepted by them if they are to result in effective improvements to their social and economic welfare.

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