Author: Amrit Bhandari

A guest post by Ashok Sircar, India Program Director of Landesa, a USAID partner and global organization that partners with governments to help secure land rights of the poor. Follow them @Landesa_Global

There is growing recognition that India cannot solve many of its critical development challenges if it doesn’t help the 20 million landless rural families and the millions more who lack legal rights to the land they till.

This recognition has sparked a flurry of promising state-level programs and a historic new national bill that aims to eliminate rural landlessness and land insecurity. These new programs are now recognized for their potential to dramatically reduce landlessness, hunger, poverty, and land insecurity in rural India and hold significant potential in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Myanmar, to name a few.

The draft National Rural Homestead Bill, 2013, now awaits formal approval and adoption. The proposed Bill envisions a democratic and market-friendly land reform program that would provide India’s 20 million landless families with tennis court-sized plots of land. Such a program would require less than one-half of one percent of the roughly 400 million acres of India’s present arable land to end landlessness.

This national program builds off experience with successful homestead land allocation in the states of West Bengal (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Karnataka and Odisha.

Research shows that these micro plots of about one-tenth an acre can provide significant economic and nutritional benefits to landless families by providing them sufficient space to grow food, build a house, keep small livestock, and develop other livelihood options. Not to mention the other tangible benefits: security, a stake in the future, opportunity, incentive, access to credit, and a host of government poverty alleviation programs.

Such land can be sourced through a combination of purchase on the private market and allocation of existing government land.

Already more than 250,000 families have benefited through the state programs. These families now have the incentive and opportunity to climb out of extreme poverty. And, just as importantly, they are building a positive relationship with their government.

Another promising state-level program has been implemented in Andhra Pradesh (funded by the Omidyar Network). The state uses low-cost legal aid workers to deliver landownership to millions of rural families. These paralegals fan out across the countryside ensuring that poor families have all of the documents they need to prove and protect their ownership rights, and making sure that all of those documents are correct and valid – at a cost of about $3 per family. This allows Andhra Pradesh to efficiently address a sleeping giant of a problem: the fact that 20 percent of land titles in the state have some irregularity that makes owners insecure—which we know dampens investment and growth.

Lastly, there has been renewed focus across India on the issue of women’s land rights. State governments can maximize the impact of existing land programs by including women’s names on land titles. Increasing evidence points to a strong association between women’s land ownership and myriad desired gains, including increased nutrition and schooling for children, and reduced domestic violence. West Bengal now ensures women’s names are included and come first on “pattas” (land titles). And Odisha is working with Landesa to address the needs of widows, abandoned women, and other women-headed households, many of whom are landless and vulnerable.

India’s national program on the empowerment of adolescent girls is even incorporating land rights into its curriculum to help ensure girls know their rights and can access their family land to support themselves and their families.

Getting to the root cause of poverty is difficult, but in the case of India, land rights can provide poor rural Indians with the opportunity to improve their lives and spark inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

In June, Ethiopian State Minister of Agriculture Ato Sileshi Getahun joined USAID/Ethiopia Mission Director Dennis Weller, to officially launch the Land Administration to Nurture Development (LAND) project. The LAND project builds on the success of two previous USAID projects that supported the certification of rural land rights, the reform of federal and regional laws governing land administration and land use, and the strengthening of government capacity to administer these rights. Those previous projects were the Ethiopia Land Tenure Administration Program (ELTAP) and the Ethiopia Land Administration Program (ELAP).

Under the ELAP and ELTAP projects, USAID, in collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia, surveyed over one million parcels of land. Two hundred thousand of these parcels received certificates that officially recognize the landholder. Since the projects began in 2004, poverty rates have fallen by more than ten percent in areas where property rights were strengthened through certification, and household incomes have increased by up to twenty percent. As a result of these successes, several donor agencies have committed to expanding the benefits of land certification to millions more households, primarily in the highland areas of Northwest Ethiopia.

The LAND project, which will be carried out under President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative and implemented by TetraTech, aims to translate the lessons learned and successes from the highlands to the pastoral areas. The LAND project has four components:

• legal and policy reform at the national and local levels;
• strengthening the capacity of national, regional and local land officials;
• strengthening the capacity of Ethiopian university and technical institutes;
• and increasing community land use rights in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas to facilitate market linkages and improve livelihoods.

Learn more about the impact of land certificates on income, food security and resilience among Ethiopian pastoralists.

A new report from the World Bank suggests that Africa, which is home to half the world’s uncultivated land, can significantly reduce poverty, achieve rapid economic growth, and increase food security by improving land governance systems and strengthening land tenure and resource rights.

“Land governance issues need to be front and center in Africa to maintain and better its surging growth and achieve its development promise,” says Frank Byamugisha, author of the report and lead land specialist in the World Bank’s Africa region. “Our findings provide a useful, policy-oriented roadmap for African countries and communities to secure their own land for building shared prosperity.”

The report’s action plan calls for:

• Championing reforms and investments to document all communal lands and prime lands that are individually owned.
• Regularizing tenure rights of squatters on public land in urban slums that are home to 60 percent of urban dwellers in Africa.
• Tackling the weak governance and corruption endemic to the land governance system in many African countries which often favor the status quo and harm the interests of poor people.
• Generating the political will of African governments to mobilize behind these land reforms and attract the political and financial buy-in of the international development community.

The World Bank also reiterated its support for and endorsement of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, calling the guidelines “a major international instrument to inform specific policy reforms, including our own procedures and guidance to clients.”

This is the latest in a series of high-level statements of support for the Voluntary Guidelines since they were adopted by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in May 2012. The focus of the international community is now shifting to implementation, which will require coordinated action by donors, stakeholder governments, civil society and the private sector. Both the World Bank and USAID are members of the recently launched Global Donor Working Group on Land, an international effort to improve information sharing and coordination to enhance the effectiveness of development programs that focus on land governance – including coordinating support to implement the Voluntary Guidelines.

According to Frank Pichel, USAID Land Tenure and Property Rights Specialist, “the World Bank Report estimates that 90% of rural land in sub-Saharan Africa remains undocumented. In the absence of formally recognized property rights, state governments have been known to allocate land for large-scale land acquisitions – disenfranchising any citizens with an informal claim. While governments may have good intentions, such as increasing food production, the existing inhabitants are often left worse off.”

Land governance was also a major theme of this year’s G8 summit in Northern Ireland, during which the U.S. announced a new partnership with Burkina Faso to improve transparency in land governance.

As a recent article in Devex notes, “land governance issues have been getting more attention from international development leaders lately. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest bilateral donor, is more engaged now than it has been in years, for instance.” From strengthening the property rights of artisanal miners to supporting land policy and legal reform in Liberia to piloting an approach to improve women’s access to customary justice systems in Kenya, USAID is investing in programs across Africa that strengthen land and resource rights, improve agricultural productivity, and enhance economic growth.

Learn more about USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights work in Africa.

 

 

On July 30, the Global Donor Working Group on Land was officially announced. The group is comprised of bilateral and multilateral donors and development agencies committed to improving coordination and information sharing to enhance the effectiveness of development programs that focus on land governance. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) will serve as the group’s inaugural chair. The donor working group is facilitated by the secretariat of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development.

As the group notes, “the combination of sharp increases in food prices starting in 2008 and continued volatility, together with the rapid expansion of land use for biofuels and growing concerns over climate change have led to a strong increase in interest in land in emerging-economy countries.” This increasing pressure on land has created development challenges for many countries. The Global Donor Working Group on Land was created to help respond to these challenges by improving land governance through enhanced coordination of donor-funded programs, increased information sharing of best practices and lessons learned, and better coordination in implementing the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

The group’s objectives are:

1. Improve exchange of information and lessons learned among donors and donor networks on land (main focus: tenure, governance, rural and urban);
2. Improve donor coordination on land governance at the international level (building on local, national and regional coordination), for example to build consensus around critical or emerging issues and international processes, and promote a value-added and synergetic approach between national, regional and international coordination;
3. Agree on joint action where suitable, on a case by case basis, for example in the context of the interaction with other land-related networks and platforms, such as the Committee on Food Security (CFS), International Land Coalition (ILC), African Union Land Policy Initiative (AU LPI), Global Land Tools Network (GLTN), G8/G20 and other stakeholders.

Dr. Gregory Myers, USAID Division Chief, Land Tenure and Property Rights, says “We are seeing increasing recognition by policy makers, donors, civil society, and the media that land governance is central to economic growth, food security, and sustainable development. Stronger land tenure and property rights create incentives for investment and trade and contribute to job growth and global prosperity. Between USAID and MCC, we are investing in 53 land governance programs in 32 countries in support of these key objectives. USAID welcomes the launch of the Global Donor Working Group on Land as a tool to help address these issues. We support this effort to enhance donor communication and coordination, improve transparency, and identify opportunities to leverage resources for maximum impact.”

A recent story from NPR described how slum mapping can be a powerful negotiating tool when used as a public record of problems such as dark street corners, limited toilets, or illegal dumping. In one of the largest slums in Nairobi, Kenya – home to an estimated 200,000 people – maps of slum areas enabled community members and authorities to identify available space to lay municipal water pipes. Around the world, slums lack street names, addresses, and, due to their informal nature, property rights. In densely populated slums, governments are often unable to provide basic infrastructure or services – even if they are inclined to do so – due to a lack of roads and paths in the densely populated communities.

Kenya-based Spatial Collective helps slum communities collect data and visualize it through GIS mapping. Their spatial analysis allows the community to see available resources, current and future needs, trends and solutions – all of which local civil society organizations can use to encourage city authorities to provide basic services. In the article from NPR, a specific case is noted in which people moved their structures so that a municipal water pipe might be laid, and agreed to do so only because they were convinced they could replace their informal structures. These maps of informal communities in which no one has legally recognized property rights are providing some record of occupancy and community-accepted boundaries, allowing a degree of stability.

As the article states, at least “the map provided some assurance – if not of actual ownership, then at least of a shared record of the past that allowed people to plan together for the future.” It’s clear that using relatively affordable and easy-to-use technology is granting some degree of security where before there was none.

Strengthening tenure security in slums can help increase access to basic services, lower violence, and promote economic development. It can also increase social protection for vulnerable populations – particularly women and children. According to Cities Alliance, “while both men and women living in slums face hardships, women – especially widows – are particularly vulnerable. They are more likely to be victims of violence or subject to cultural norms that do not give them the same legal rights or status as a man.”

USAID is also currently exploring opportunities to use low-cost technology and participatory mapping to record property rights through the Evaluation, Research and Communication (ERC) project.

A working draft of a Washington Declaration Diagnostic Framework (also in French) has been prepared by USAID for use by the Working Group on Artisanal and Alluvial Production (WGAAP) of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). This tool is intended to help countries assess the status of their artisanal mining sector, and implement the principles outlined in the “Washington Declaration on Integrating Development of Artisanal and Small Scale Diamond Mining with Kimberley Process Implementation.”

Edits and comments on the draft Washington Declaration Diagnostic Framework will be collected by the Kimberley Process Administrative Support Mechanism through August 1, 2013. After finalization of the document, a pilot country will be identified in which to test the Diagnostic Framework.

The Kimberley Process, which has the objective of certifying rough diamond shipments as “conflict-free,” is not a development institution. However, it encourages the adoption of a number of best practices around economic development and actions in the artisanal and small scale mining sector.

Several of the Washington Declaration’s policy goals emerged from lessons learned under USAID’s Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) program. The PRADD program, which began in Central African Republic (CAR) in 2007, has worked to clarify and strengthen the property rights of artisanal miners. The result has been better monitoring of the artisanal diamond mining sector and improved livelihoods in artisanal mining communities. In CAR, legal diamond production in PRADD’s longstanding areas of intervention has increased 450% since 2010, compared to 21% for the rest of the country.

USAID recently announced that the PRADD program will be continued and expanded to Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea under a new successor program, PRADD II.

Land tenure security has been highlighted as one important link to food security in President Obama’s Feed the Future Progress Report, formally released this week. The report points out that in Tajikistan last year, the Feed the Future initiative supported the improvement of land rights and land use by working with the Government of Tajikistan to amend its land code to include ownership of land, use rights, and increased women’s equality. In addition, the U.S. government educated 38,000 rural citizens about their land rights and helped 6,838 farmers resolve their land issues through mediation and arbitration.

The May/June issue of FrontLines featured a story about how Feed the Future is supporting the expansion of a USAID-funded network of legal aid centers in Tajikistan that have helped more than 100,000 farmers learn about and assert their rights. Through the support of one NGO in the network, “Rural Women,” the number of registered women-led family farms in four districts increased almost threefold, from 87 to 240.

USAID Mission Director Anne Aarnes explained, “When women have more rights to land, there are cascading benefits for food security and poverty [reduction]. We have seen this firsthand in Tajikistan … When women gain freedom to farm, they grow healthier food for their families. They plant crops that last more than one season because they have faith that the land will still be theirs when the crops mature. It is inspiring to talk to women who went from not earning any money to being able to earn enough to send their children to university and to bring their sons home from migrant work abroad.”

USAID Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg added, “Women’s access to land tenure, inheritance laws, to control what happens in agriculture sectors is key to development. If we could simply give women the same access to land, technologies and capital for farming that men have, we’d increase world food production by 30 percent. That means 150 million people would have access to food.”

Over the next five years, Feed the Future is expected to support USAID in enabling 200,000 Tajik women, children and other family members to escape poverty and undernutrition.

Follow the high-level discussion of the report, “Feed the Future: Growing Innovation, Harvesting Results,” during a panel on July 25 at 1:00 p.m. (Washington, DC). USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah will join former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, as well as members of Congress and participants from civil society and the research community to discuss the collective action required to achieve food security, address future challenges and highlight successes in advancing global food security, such as those outlined in the new Feed the Future Progress Report.

Live tweets of the event:
@FeedtheFuture
@USAID
@GlobalAgDev

A recent study in Ecology Letters suggests that protected areas in Tanzania are becoming increasingly important as a climate change adaptation measure. When surrounding landscapes become degraded, the protected areas serve as islands of habitat for several species of dry-land birds. The authors of the study conclude that the protected areas should be maintained as an effective means for achieving conservation and climate change adaptation objectives.

While the targeted use of protected areas is likely to continue to be an important strategy to ensure the survival of bird species and other wildlife throughout the world, critics have long argued that the “fines and fences” approach is ineffective. Many governments lack adequate resources to manage, monitor or enforce rules in parks and reserves. Critics also contend that protected areas amount to a “land grab” by conservationists because they push out people who have long depended upon such areas for their livelihoods.

An emerging alternative approach is community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). CBNRM typically involves the devolution of resource and/or land rights to local communities in combination with the development of sustainable wildlife-based livelihood options. To achieve conservation objectives, the conservation community must consider these more inclusive and incentive-based natural resource management (NRM) models.

By supporting CBNRM and other more inclusive conservation models, USAID is working to ensure that wildlife conservation does not restrict the rights and existing claims of local communities. USAID supports models that include:
1. The devolution of land and natural resource rights to local communities – in particular the right to exclude and sanction unauthorized uses;
2. Incentives for the community to adopt local or co-management arrangements (in collaboration with wildlife authorities); and
3. The development of alternative income-generating strategies, such as ecotourism, that also support conservation objectives.

The CBNRM model has been successfully employed in Namibia and elsewhere in southern Africa. Namibians have formed community conservancies and are legally empowered to benefit from eco-tourism businesses. Importantly, both wildlife numbers and ecosystems are rebounding after decades of war and poaching, and conservancy members’ lives are improving.

Learn more about Namibia’s CBNRM model.

See also: “Tenure and Indigenous Peoples: The Importance of Self-Determination, Territory, and Rights to Land and Other Natural Resources.”

Property rights are inexorably linked to taxes, largely because property taxes are often one of the easiest taxes to collect, particularly in developing markets with significant informal sectors. Indeed property taxes are often levied and paid around the world even when citizens lack deed or title to their property. From the point of view of the government, the details of who owns the property are often less important than the fact that the tax is paid – and threat of demolition or foreclosure is often enough to ensure that occupants pay the tax, whether they are the legally recognized owner or not.

Unfortunately, in many emerging economies, property tax appraisal and revenue collection is done in a way that lacks transparency. The process is often manual and conducted through physical visits to the property, which creates ample opportunity for rent seeking by the assessor and/or tax collector, and leaves citizens with little faith that their taxes ever make it into government coffers. Furthermore, property taxes are often seen as inequitable, with political elite, cultural leaders and large-scale land owners perceived as not paying their fair share. Greater transparency and improved collection processes can help eliminate the perception, and sometimes the reality, of this disparity. Broad-based property taxes can ensure more efficient land use and encourage large land holders who are not making productive use of the land to divest themselves of property.

A recent article in The Economist highlights the use of property tax as one of the most efficient and least distortive ways for governments to raise funds, particularly in emerging economies that on average earn less than 2% of revenue from property taxes – as opposed to the average of 5% in developed economies. Property taxes are particularly important for emerging economies seeking to decrease their dependence on international aid. Property taxes can also help create a closer link between citizens and government. When citizens pay taxes, it creates a greater degree of accountability by the government regarding how tax revenues are spent and a pressure from tax payers to ensure tax income be invested locally.

These themes – taxes and transparency – were a major focus of the 2013 G8 Summit in Northern Ireland, which featured commitments from G8 countries to establish the automatic exchange of information between tax authorities and improve transparency in land transactions. In coordination with these commitments, the U.S. has announced two partnerships: one with Burkina Faso to improve transparency in land governance and one with Guinea to improve transparency in extractive industries.

Increasingly, companies that depend on forests for their products are recognizing the need to establish environmentally and socially sensitive forest management practices. With government agencies and large corporations demanding paper products that have been certified by a third-party organization, companies have seen that certification generates returns on investments.

According to Kim Carstensen of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), speaking to the New York Times, an estimated 10-12% of the world’s commercial forests are now certified and in the past five years, the number of companies with FSC certification has grown to 25,000. Tetra Pak, the multi-billion dollar container manufacturer, relies on paper from an estimated 2.5 million acres of harvested forest every year. Tetra Pak will not use wood that has been cut illegally or wood from places where there are violent disputes with indigenous people over the ownership of forest resources. Like the International Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests, FSC principles include recognition of tenure and use rights and responsibilities and indigenous peoples’ rights.

However, according to Greenpeace, with increased growth and demand for FSC certification, it “has not been successful in applying its system and standards consistently.” Greenpeace and other advocacy organizations allege abuses and conflicts involving FSC-certified companies in the Congo Basin, Indonesia, and Brazil and argue that FSC certification alone is not sufficient to stop unsustainable logging of intact and high conservation value forests.

FSC is actively trying to address weaknesses in its certification system and strengthen its oversight of certified companies. Both consumer expectations of companies’ practices and sustainable operations are putting pressure on less responsible operators. In March 2013, Greenpeace released a four-point action plan, which states, “While FSC faces challenges, we believe that it contains a framework, as well as principles and criteria, that can guarantee socially and ecologically responsible practices if implemented correctly.”

Certification of socially and environmentally sustainable forest management practices also reflects the goal of the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020. TFA2020 is a nascent public-private partnership supported by the U.S. Government to promote voluntary efforts to reduce tropical deforestation caused by commodities production, including pulp and paper.