- Bundles of rights are combinations of access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation rights that can be held over land - Rights are not fixed and can change over time, such as through tenure reforms that transfer rights between stakeholders - Understanding bundles of rights is important for conservation projects working with communities to clarify incentives, responsibilities and how shifting rights may impact conservation decisions

1. October 2019
BUNDLES OF RIGHTS IN
THEORY AND PRACTICE

2. SUMMARY OF KEY MESSAGES
• There are different tenure rights that are known as “bundles of rights”
• Rights are the product of rules, and tend to come with duties as well
• Rights are access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation
• Often combined rights can co-exist within the same area of land
• The bundles of rights are not necessarily fixed over time and can change
• Tenure types and bundles have different implications on land conservation
• Rights can be contested, and the sources of tenure security are diverse
• Granting tenure rights tend to have a positive effect on conservation

3. DIFFERENT CONCEPTS
• There are different concepts that come
together when we try to understand tenure
rights and who hold those rights in practice
• These concepts are:
• Rights holders
• Tenure types
• Tenure rights
• We will review some of these concepts, apply
them to a specific case, and suggest some
dilemmas linked to tenure rights recognition

4. TENURE TYPES
• The land tenure types are often described in very simplified categories:
• Private, when the right holders is an individual or a corporation
• Communal, when the rights holders are a local group or community
• Public, when the right holders is the state
• These land tenure types, however, can mask significant heterogeneity
in the depth, breadth, and quality of the type of rights associated to them
• Those different rights often come in “bundles of rights” since the rights
that right holders have to land (or resources) are often of different types

5. BUNDLES OF RIGHTS
Right holders often hold a combination of the following rights:
• Access: the right to enter a defined physical portion of land or area
• Withdrawal: the right to obtain the products or a resource from that
land, for resource or commercial purpose
• Management: the right to regulate internal use patterns and
transform the resource by making improvements
• Exclusion: the right to refuse others access to and use of a resource
• Alienation: the right to sell or lease either or both of the above
collective choice rights

6. Bundles of rights by tenure type

7. The example of Petén, Guatemala

8. Bundles of rights may change over time
The bundles of rights
can change as result
of implementation of
tenure reforms, and
negotiation among
stakeholders, among
others. Here is an
example, where
rights from state and
individuals were
transferred to the
user group in Petén,
Guatemala

9. Implications from the bundles of rights
• There is an important difference between land users (e.g. individual
owners) who hold a full set of rights, and other users who don’t. Holding
alienation right often has a critical role for the efficient use of a resource
• The right to exclude tends to create strong incentives for land users
(individual or community) to invest in improving the management of their
resources even if they are not able to alienate their land rights
• Even when rights holders have limited rights to the land, (e.g.
customary communities) they tend to invest in improving or maintaining
the governance structures adopted for managing their resources

10. TENURE TYPES AND CONSERVATION
• In private lands, the bundles of rights are in the hands of a private
person or entity, which have the power to exercise those rights, and even
the right to alienate the land. However, the public government can hold
the collective-choice right to define how the area is managed.
• In community lands: there are complex operational and complex
collective-choice actions defining the governance of the lands.
Communities can make their own decisions on how to manage their
lands, while in some cases those are constrained by statutory law
• In public lands, the bundles of rights are handled by governments
(national or local), which have the power to exclude other users from
entering these areas. Often, the difficulty is the state’s capacity to
enforcer those rights, including both monitoring and sanctioning.

11. SOURCES OF TENURE SECURITY
• The fact of holding a right does not
mean that it can be secured over time
• Tenure rights can be contested linked
to power struggles or economic shifts
• The sources of security may also vary
from context to context:
• An important source are the local
customary arrangements
• The government’s recognition to
occupy or control the land
• Formal recognition of tenure lands
through formal titling
• In many cases, tenure security can
only be achieved through a
combination of different sources

12. SOME DILEMMAS
There are several dilemmas associated with granting tenure rights.
Below we provide a few of those dilemmas, and there can be others.
• In many cases communities do not receive the full bundle of rights, which
may hinder their capacity to take full control of their lands and territories, but
that may ensure greater tenure security vis-à-vis external parties.
• Communities may receive full rights and the associated responsibilities, but
in the lack of resources to comply with the responsibilities, communities
may be in risks of having their rights contested by other stakeholders.
• If communities receive the full bundle of rights in the context of higher
commercial pressure over their resources, that can erode their decision
making systems and lead to unsustainable use of their resources.

13. WHY IS THIS TOPIC RELEVANT?
A more in-depth understanding of the bundles of rights has a high
relevance for conservation practitioners conducting actions with different
communities, and with different social groups within those communities.
This understanding helps to get more clarity on the following:
• The incentives that rights holders have to undertake conservation actions
• The different bundles of rights that co-exist within specific protected areas
• Who has rights to use what resource and how that affect conservation
• How is that shifting rights may affect conversation decisions over time
You may think of others based on your own experience in working with
communities and conservation, in which you have faced different situations

14. QUESTIONS
• How do you find out who land or forest users holds which type of rights in
contexts in which there contested claims on tenure rights?
• If WWF currently has activities which impact communities, and we are not
clear on these rights, then what should the project team be doing to
understand local tenure rights and do not disrupt existing arrangements?
• If WWF projects support local processes to secure community rights to
land, how can we assure that this will lead to conservation outcomes?

15. References
• Barry, D. & R. Meinzen-Dick. 2008. The invisible map: Community tenure rights Washington, DC.:
CIFOR, IFPRI.
• Cronkleton, P., Deborah Barry, J. M. Pulhin & S. Saigal. 2010. The Devolution of Management
Rights and the Co-Management of Community Forests. In Forest for people, eds. A. M. Larson,
D. Barry, G. R. Dahal & C. J. P. Colfer. London, Washington: Earthscan.
• Robinson, B. E., Y. J. Masuda, A. Kelly, M. B. Holland, C. Bedford, M. Childress, D. Fletschner, E.
T. Game, C. Ginsburg, T. Hilhorst, S. Lawry, D. A. Miteva, J. Musengezi, L. Naughton-Treves, C.
Nolte, W. D. Sunderlin & P. Veit (2018) Incorporating Land Tenure Security into Conservation.
Conservation Letters, 11, e12383.