Investor push urged to help secure indigenous land rights

SOURCE: THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
By Megan Rowling

A Yawanawa Indian splashes in the Gregorio river during the Mariri Festival in the village of Mutum, in the Amazon forest of Acre state, Brazil, Aug. 11, 2014. REUTERS/Odair Leal

 LONDON, Feb 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Conditions are ripe for a global leap forward in recognising the land rights of indigenous people and forest communities, but investors and the public need to pressure governments to make it happen, an international network of forest policy groups said.A rising number of politicians and businesses realise that if plans to exploit natural resources and expand agricultural production are to succeed, they must consider local peoples’ concerns and ensure they benefit too, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) said in areport released on Wednesday.

Key countries, including Indonesia, Peru and Liberia, are poised to make legal reforms or roll out policies that would give communities greater security on their land.

But political will is often lacking, RRI coordinator Andy White told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“I think we are on the brink of major change, both for saving forests and recognising rights, but it’s going to require a push for governments to take that next step,” said White.

“That push we hope will come from both the major investors – the private sector – as well as the citizens of their own countries,” he added.

The report said “a critical mass” of actors, including governments, aid donors and companies, now acknowledge that secure local land rights are “a prerequisite for addressing poverty, conflict, deforestation, and the climate crisis”.

The new global climate change agreement adopted in Paris in December advocates forest protection as an important way to reduce planet-warming emissions of carbon dioxide.

It also urges respect for indigenous rights, and the use of traditional knowledge as a guide for adapting to climate change.

A growing body of evidence shows communities are crucial to maintaining forests as stores of carbon, the RRI report said.

COSTLY CONFLICTS

New research by consultancy TMP Systems suggested that efforts to protect forests by turning them into reserves may be underestimating the impacts on local people.

Proposals to use international funding to set aside 12 to 15 percent of forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo as protected areas, and Norwegian aid to do the same for 30 percent of Liberia’s forests, could affect an estimated 1.3 million people through displacement or damage to their incomes, it said.

The costs of establishing those areas would be “significant”, running to hundreds of millions of dollars, suggesting the need for lower-cost approaches to keeping forests healthy and reducing emissions, the analysts said.

A separate TMP analysis of 362 disputes with communities over the use of land and resources in developing nations found that such tensions caused significant financial harm to investors in more than half the cases.

The study of conflicts in mining, energy, agriculture, transport infrastructure and forestry concluded that over 60 percent involved minorities and indigenous peoples, but in the forestry sector that number shot up to 90 percent.

White said companies, especially large multi-nationals, increasingly understand land conflicts can be expensive, leading to higher operating costs or even abandonment of some ventures.

“That is triggering government to take a more serious look at the urgency of straightening out land rights,” he said.

Free risk analysis tools have been developed to help businesses identify and address potential land issues.

TMP warned against assuming compensation can always provide a solution, because some communities will not put a price on their land and resources.

In its analysis, 93 percent of disputes were not over compensation paid to local populations, but other concerns – mainly displacement and environmental destruction.

“Investors and companies typically assume that disagreements can be resolved with money,” said TMP Systems founder Lou Munden. “But when you see that only one mining conflict out of 50 is driven by money, it makes you think differently about managing the risk.”

LIBERIA FEARS

According to the RRI report, governments in 33 low- and middle-income countries have recognised indigenous and community ownership of 388 million hectares (959 million acres) of forest land. They have “designated” an additional 109 million hectares for such communities, though that offers a more limited set of rights.

The total of almost 500 million hectares is over 30 percent of the total forest area in those countries – up from 21 percent in 2002, but below a 2015 target of 42 percent set by RRI.

If countries in the early stages of recognising community land rights at a national scale – including India and Colombia – follow through, it would add more than 100 million hectares of indigenous and community forest land, and directly benefit over 200 million people, the report said.

But in Liberia, there is concern over attempts to water down a groundbreaking Land Rights Act before it is passed.

According to Constance Teague of Liberia’s Sustainable Development Institute, 18 civil society groups recently claimed changes made to the act’s core principles “would erode rural communities’ land rights, exacerbate poverty, and potentially set up the country for further unrest”.

White said he hoped governments in Liberia and elsewhere would respond to pressure from indigenous peoples, conservation groups and businesses that are “joining forces and seeing the urgency, as well as the logic, of securing land rights”.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Laurie Goering. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

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‘Community Lands’ Less About Saving The Past Than Securing The Future

SOURCE: The Star

By LIZ ALDEN WILY

Dec. 12, 2015, 12:00 am

Kenya’s new constitution provides for ‘community lands’. Group ranches and trust lands will be vested in communities. But why, some ponder, would modern citizens want to own land as communities? Is the constitution protecting old ways instead of leading us into the future?

This week I will answer these questions through a global lens. Next week I will zero in on constitutional directives and how far the proposed Community Land Bill delivers.

First, let’s be clear what community lands are. These are lands which communities own in common and then allocate rights to members. Lands for homesteads are usually allocated to families.

Off-farm lands are held by members collectively. Rules apply. Many are tried and tested ‘customs’. Others are new, introduced to meet new conditions. Rules get tougher as populations, land shortage, and threats rise. Boundaries become more precise.

Each generation is stricter than the last about who can use what and how, less tolerant of leaders who make deals behind their back, and more demanding to be consulted.

Customs that don’t fit citizen rights diminish, such as denying widows the right to remain on the land. Those who break the rules are not beaten but set to work clearing the road or cleaning the water tank.

In short, these are community based land governance systems, or what is known as customary tenure in Africa. Globally, between two and three billion people acquire and uphold rights through these regimes.

Over half the world’s land mass is subject to such norms. Formal recognition has soared in recent decades, but still covering only one fifth of community lands [http://www.rightsandresources.org/publications/whoownstheland/].

These operate in all regions. One million villages in China and another one million in India govern both farms and common properties. Vast tracts of Latin America have been transferred to communities, most to those who define themselves as Indigenous Peoples.

Seventy four per cent of the landmass of Australia, 40 per cent of Canada, significant proportions of forests in Eastern Europe, Sweden, Italy and Switzerland are also legally community property.

Cast your eye over national level data at http://www.landmarkmap.org to see multiple other examples.

The status of community lands is a vibrant issue in Africa. Millions still suffer the legacy of colonial denial that these are owned or that families and communities can be legal owners.

Post-Independence administrations invested millions to extinguish customary tenure through compulsory conversion of family farms into individually titled properties.

Formally titled lands cover only 10 per cent of the continent today. Only in South Africa and Rwanda is more than 50 per cent of the country area under formal title. In Kenya, the official figure is 19 per cent, more likely nearer 30 per cent.

Community lands cover between 50-67 per cent of Kenya. Figures are similar elsewhere (for example Tanzania, Botswana, Malawi and Benin), much higher in Congo Basin and Sahelian states.

Altogether 79 per cent of the continent is de facto community property. Not all jurisdictions recognise this – Ghana and Botswana were ahead of the game, and in a weaker way, Nigeria.

Others followed from 1990 (for example Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Benin and South Sudan). The land provisions of new constitutions set the ball rolling in most cases. Procedural community land laws follow.

Like Kenya, Liberia is currently debating such a law. Malawi, Senegal and Chad are not far behind. Others, like Equatorial Guinea, DRC and Sierra Leone, are working on new policies.

All aim to enable families and communities to be recognised as legal owners of their traditional properties – and as quickly as possible.

Reaching there is not easy. Governments get cold feet when they realise this will shift millions of hectares out of their control to their citizens: state landlordism and easy routes to benefit connected elites die hard.

However, derailing the outcome entirely is no longer an option. Those affected are more worldly-wise and less compliant. The digital era helps, alerting millions to legal transformations elsewhere.

Nor is it so easy to renege on constitutional reforms that quietly establish tenure security as a basic human right in land-dependent societies.

Especially as these rights already exist. The time it has taken post-colonial administrations to do away with the myth that whole continents were “empty of owners” before Europeans arrived has become an embarrassment.

Remedy can be swift. Progressive jurisdictions turn community lands into property overnight by conferring on customary rights full protection as property, and encouraging owners to double-lock this in formal entitlements.

The less adventurous stick with old norms, withholding protection to lands without title, which can take decades to secure. As only one community secured title after 15 years, Ivory Coast is among states revisiting requirements.

So why would communities want to retain collective rights? Or retain community-based regulation? The answers lie in the nature of their lands and the logic of retaining control over their property. Both have become more, not less, important in the 21st century.

Settlements and farms absorb little land. Farms cover only 13 per cent of the global land mass. Off-farm lands make up 90 per cent of untitled lands in Africa, most within community lands.

It makes sense to entrench these as common properties: forests and rangelands don’t serve so well when broken into small parcels. Intact, their role in livelihood is too great to sacrifice.

Collective tenure also helps keep the hands of elites off these shared lands, a need felt more urgently each year.

Retaining community-based governance is also practical. It survives and thrives precisely because it is so localised; accessible, relevant, and virtually cost-free to manage.

Disputes can take as long as needed to be resolved. Norms can alter as needs dictate. Instead of dying, such systems seem to remake themselves with each challenge.

In ways, this system has stolen a march on the modern state; as working devolution, right to the grassroots, flexible, owned by those it serves, and durable.

A number of jurisdictions now build on the spatial construct of community lands. In Africa, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Benin and Senegal come most to mind.

Economists are also rethinking growth paths that once seemed immutable. Despite 300 years of industrialisation, 80 per cent of economies are land-based in 2015, cover two-thirds of the world landmass, and support 87 per cent of the world’s population.

While urbanisation will continue, towns and cities take up only three per cent of the world’s land area (one per cent in Africa). Industries and wage-dependence will grow, they say, but not to the extent, or with the urban-rural divorce of society, once presumed.

Much more inclusive paths to growth are needed, and which corporatised rural ownership cannot provide.

And as UN agencies remind us, despite 84 per cent of permanently farmed lands being taken into large estates, smallholders disproportionately feed the world. Most sustain their lands through community-based assurance. Investing in these systems seems sensible.

Naysayers are also changing their tune. The World Bank, for decades the lead advocate of individualisation as a foundation for growth, now promotes collective and family ownership as more practical in many cases.

Tired of funding and legitimising remote and unaccountable centralisation, lawmakers look more keenly to devolution, and find that communities already have the basis in place.

Environmentalists are also getting nervous. The giant carbon banks of the Amazon and Congo Basin and several billion other hectares of natural resources fall within de facto community lands.

Lessons learned since Rio 1992 suggest governments have not proved the safe pair of hands promised when they took prime community resources into their custody. Communities often do a better job – and for free.

They do best when custodianship is founded on acknowledged ownership. These matters came up in the climate talks in Paris last week (http://www.landscapes.org/glf-2015/agenda-item/day-1-saturday-5-december-2/6-parallel-discussion-forums-2/commons-tenure-for-a-common-future/). Governments that invest in community lands could be on to a winner.

Next week’s question is whether Kenya’s new laws are going in this direction.

Liz Alden Wily (PhD) is an international tenure specialist, an Honorary Fellow of Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an Affiliated Fellow of Van Vollenhoven Institute of Law at Leiden University, and an Expert Associate for Katiba Institute.

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Publication: Legitimate Land Tenure and Property Rights: Fostering Compliance and Development Outcomes

SOURCE: CAPRI

This rapid evidence assessment published by Department for International Development seeks to address the question of which policies and interventions or approaches have been successful in fostering compliance with legitimate land tenure rights and what impact these strategies have had on development outcomes. These policies and interventions include among others: freehold ownership through formal titling, community land trusts and communal or customary ownership

The assessment identified 113 relevant publications. Overall, the literature reviewed provided mixed evidence of a link between the tenure strategies and positive development outcomes. No single policy, approach or intervention can, alone, meet the diversity of current and projected needs for tenure and property rights within any given country.

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Vacancy Announcement – Program Manager, Community Land Protection (NAMATI)

Source: NAMATI

DEADLINE: 20 NOVEMBER, 2013

DOWNLOAD: Application Details – Namati Program Manager, Community Land Protection

Namati’s Community Land Protection Program is hiring! We are thrilled to be expanding our team of land and natural resource rights advocates.

We are writing to ask for your help recruiting a “dream team” whose energy and expertise will help advance Namati’s land protection work to the next level. Specifically, we are looking for dynamic, experienced professionals to support the Program to scale-up its community land and natural resource protection work globally. The ideal candidates will have:

·       Five to seven years of field experience in one or more developing nations.

·       Extensive project management experience, preferably working in partnership with national or local NGOs.

·       Proven expertise and on-the-ground experience working in some or all of the following areas:

o   Land tenure security;

o   Community-based natural resource management;

o   Community forestry management;

o   Ecosystem regeneration/environmental stewardship;

o   Indigenous People’s rights;

o   Legal empowerment/paralegal training and supervision; and

o   Policy advocacy (both with governments and bilateral agencies).

·       Fluency in English and proficiency in a second language.

·       An advanced degree in a relevant field of practice.

We are looking for superstars who are excited to be a part of a new, start-up NGO that is innovative, agile, flexible – and growing fast. Please forward the attached TORs to any extraordinarily professionals who would be delighted to work for Namati, as well as to any lists that may help connect us. While the Community Land Protection Program is based in Oakland California, it is so important to us that we recruit top land and natural resource experts that we will accommodate the right people to work remotely.
Please ensure that any applicants that you send this to reply to employment@namati.org before November 20, 2013.

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Summary – Securing Community Land and Resource Rights

September 2013

Source: Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) ; IISD

“Scaling-Up Strategies to Secure Community Land and Resource Rights: An International Conference to Take Stock of Current Efforts, Identify Promising Strategies, and Catalyze New Alliances and Action” was held from Thursday 19 to Friday 20 September 2013 in Interlaken, Switzerland. The meeting brought together over 180 participants from 40 countries, representing a wide range of stakeholders from governments, local communities, indigenous peoples’ organizations, private investors, food and resource companies, and conservation organizations, who have a common interest in clarifying and securing the ownership of community lands and resources.The conference aimed to increase the profile and prioritization of community land rights as a global concern, catalyze new ideas and alliances, and secure commitments to take these strategies forward in the coming months and years. The co-organizers of the conference, Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), International Land Coalition (ILC), Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation and Oxfam, called on the international community to set a goal of doubling the amount of community land recognized and secured in the next five years. Participants met in plenary and in strategy sessions to discuss the five following themes to securing community land and resource rights: mapping and documentation; legal recognition and empowerment; expanding and leveraging private sector interest in securing community land rights; making community land rights a global priority; and deepening synergies between community land and resource rights and conservation efforts. The main priorities that emerged from the sessions, as well as opportunities for scaling up existing opportunities and recommended next steps, were compiled and reported on in plenary. The co-organizers of the conference planned to meet the following week to discuss the way forward…” Read IISD summary: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCALING-UP STRATEGIES TO SECURE COMMUNITY LAND AND RESOURCE RIGHTS

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