Author: Amrit Bhandari

Strengthening women’s rights to own and inherit property provides them with greater opportunities to generate income and exercise control over family resources, which can improve women’s ability to feed and educate their children. This simple but powerful message is highlighted by Deborah Espinosa’s recent Huffington Post blog In Kenya, Land Rights Bring New Hope for Women and Girls. Espinosa is a senior attorney and land tenure specialist at Landesa, which implements USAID’s Kenya Justice project.

The Kenya Justice project works with local communities and traditional authorities to improve women’s knowledge and practice of their rights, including the rights to own and inherit land and property. One of the project’s notable successes is that local chiefs and elders now require spousal consent (with witnesses) for all land transactions, including leases. The Justice project has also helped to elevate the status of women in the local community. Last year, for the first time, women were elected as tribal elders. As Espinoza notes, “women’s new roles as tribal elders and managers of family resources are creating a virtuous cycle – reinforcing the need for girls to be educated so they can assume important family and community responsibilities just like their brothers.”

The virtuous cycle has begun to produce tangible results. This year, for the first time, the number of girls enrolled in the local secondary school is almost equal to the number of boys, where boys had once outnumbered girls 3 to 1.

This week marks the first anniversary of the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (commonly referred to as the VGs) by the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The VGs are an international soft law instrument that outline principles and practices to which governments can refer when making laws and administering land, fisheries and forest rights.

The VGs are intended to: create a better environment for investments in agriculture, reduce land-related conflicts, recognize the rights of women, promote improved natural resource management, and address challenges related to global climate change. As Dr. Patrice Talla, Legal Officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), noted in a paper presented at the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2013, “By providing an effective basis for the governance tenure of land, fisheries and forests, the Guidelines provide a realistic method for achieving food security and protecting human rights by allowing vulnerable communities to ensure their own livelihoods through protecting their rights to their natural resources.”

Over the past year, the VGs have received increasing media attention and global recognition, including at the 2012 G8, G20 and Rio+20 meetings. The UN General Assembly has also encouraged countries to consider adopting the VGs. As awareness of the VGs continues to increase, demand for implementation is rising. As of April 2013, FAO had received requests for technical assistance to implement the VGs from 22 countries. “The real value of the Guidelines will, however, be determined by their contribution to changes in the lives and livelihoods of men and women around the globe, and particularly of the vulnerable and marginalized,” according to Andrew Hilton, Senior Land Tenure Officer at FAO.

In order to make improved land governance a reality, many organizations, including USAID, are working to support implementation of the VGs. FAO has become a focal point for implementation and has initiated a four-year program, which focuses on raising awareness of the VGs, developing capacity building tools, supporting countries with implementation, strengthening partnerships, and monitoring and evaluation. These capacity building tools will include technical guides and e-learning courses. The first of these technical guides, Governing Land for Women and Men, which focuses on the achievement of responsible gender-equitable governance of land tenure, was published earlier this year.

More recently, “under UK leadership, the G8 in 2013 is again focusing on implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines, and importantly, on creating more transparency around large-scale land transactions. G8 members are very serious about addressing land issues as they relate to food security and nutrition” says Dr. Gregory Myers, USAID Division Chief, Land Tenure and Property Rights.

Read more information on the Voluntary Guidelines from USAID.

Global climate change cannot be addressed effectively through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) without addressing land tenure and property rights systems. Critics of REDD+ initiatives fear that it could undermine indigenous and local claims as national governments enforce their central authority over forests.

USAID’s issue brief on Land Tenure and REDD+ identifies land tenure as the foundation for REDD+ success. The brief identifies critical challenges to REDD+ readiness and key priorities to ensure that REDD+ contributes to tenure security. Critical challenges include defining stakeholders, defining rights, and establishing responsibilities.

Political will to address land tenure and governance at both the national and local levels is crucial. Without clearly defining the rights of local stakeholders to participate in the governance of forests and share in the benefits from REDD+ management, there is a fear that the benefits from REDD+ will be captured mostly by central governments and political elites. Local stakeholders whose rights and claims are not adequately considered in REDD+ planning and implementation may continue to practice land uses that ultimately negate any additional carbon sequestered through REDD+ projects.

The right to full and effective participation will be challenged by REDD+ efforts being coordinated at the national level, which may prioritize expediency, statutory law, and centralization. Meanwhile, the right to benefit from carbon transactions is ill-defined, as is the responsibility to manage and protect forests. These challenges must be tackled by national governments in the early stages of REDD+ readiness. Rights of different stakeholders must be clarified and contesting claims managed prior to establishing REDD+ in an area.

In order to ensure that REDD+ contributes to tenure security, the issue brief recommends three priorities:

• Find the proper blend of centralization and decentralization to coordinate activities, reduce transaction costs, avoid corruption, and protect rights;
• Validate overlapping rights to trees, water, pastures, and sub-soils claimed by multiple stakeholders;
• Utilize standards as a tool for safeguarding rights in forest carbon projects.

See here for more information on land tenure and climate change.

In April, the U.N. Committee on Food Security (CFS) released the Zero Draft of the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition. The release of the RAI Zero Draft marks an important step in the process toward the adoption of a framework that will guide national regulations, international investment agreements, global corporate social responsibility initiatives, and individual investor contracts covering all types of investment in agriculture.

Greater investment in agriculture is essential for enhancing food security and nutrition, particularly in a global environment faced with dwindling natural resources, increasing populations, and the effects of global climate change. In order for food systems to meet present and future challenges, increased investment in agriculture is required. The RAI will provide a framework to help ensure that investment in agriculture is transparent, responsible, environmentally sustainable, and contributes to inclusive growth and poverty reduction.

The RAI – much like the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security adopted in 2012 – require an inclusive, participatory consultation process to develop a relevant, broadly validated set of principles that can effectively guide laws and policies. The U.S. Government (USG) recognizes the importance of promoting responsible agricultural investment and is supporting the RAI’s inclusive consultation and validation process. The USG, along with representatives from other governments, the private sector and civil society, will be participating in regional multi-stakeholder consultations on the RAI later this year. Input from these regional consultations will be used to inform the next draft of the RAI, due out in early 2014. There will then be negotiations to finalize the draft principles, which will be submitted for endorsement to the CFS in October 2014.

More information was presented at the 2013 World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty in a paper by Christina Blank, Chair of the Open-Ended Working Group and Permanent Representation of Switzerland to FAO, IFAD and WFP.

In Bolivia, where 65 percent of the population is indigenous and 83 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line, landlessness is one of the best predictors of poverty. While the Bolivian government has enacted policies to improve land access and tenure security, progress has been slow and as of 2009, only 37% of Bolivian land had been formally titled.

To address this issue, Mercy Corps – Red Tierras under funding from the private sector, has partnered with Fundación Tierra, a long-established local land rights organization, in order to assist rural communities in documenting their property rights.

Fundación Tierra has been working with local communities for years on land issues and with support from Mercy Corps – Red Tierras, was able to partner and bring to bear technology in order to increase the efficiency of their operations by utilizing handheld global positioning systems (GPS), digital cameras, an SMS based support line and a software system to manage textual and spatial details of property rights. Over the course of their pilot program working with seven target communities, the use of technology has resulted in an 80% reduction in the time needed to record rights and an estimated 25% cost savings, as compared to twenty three control communities. Property rights have now been recognized and documented at the community level for approximately 2,100 citizens and it is expected that the government will issue formal titles to these individuals in the coming months.

While formal titles may reduce conflict, promote security of rights and lead to better economic outcomes, USAID research suggests that additional examination of the benefits and use of formalization is warranted. In some cases formalization may not be appropriate or necessary to achieve increases in economic outcomes. As this research paper points out, land titling alone is not a panacea, but merely only one tool within a property rights system that might include inclusion of other documents pertaining to land rights, or even oral testimony.

While progressive laws in Bolivia allow indigenous communities to manage their own property rights, inefficiencies in the government and community processes in demarcating and recording rights has been a bottleneck in the formalization process. According to Program Manager Marcelo Viscarra, “The use of technology has allowed us to reduce the time and cost needed to document rights, and we look forward to scaling up this project across Bolivia… and Latin America.”

For more information, watch their video describing the activity. This project was not funded by USAID.

On April 30, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah will attend a land restitution event in Colombia, where he will witness the transfer of land titles to individuals who have been displaced by the country’s internal conflict. Inequitable land distribution – an estimated 0.4% of the population owns 62% of the country’s best land – was a fundamental driver of the long-running conflict, which has caused an estimated 4 million Colombians to become internally displaced. Colombia has one of the highest rates of internally displaced persons in the world, and indigenous peoples and members of women-headed households have been forcibly displaced at disproportionately high levels.

As we noted in a previous commentary, land issues must be addressed if Colombia is to achieve enduring peace and stability. The case for addressing land tenure challenges in Colombia was discussed recently in the April edition of Foreign Affairs, where Oliver Kaplan and Michael Albertus argue that targeted land reform may assist the country to develop a more durable peace process. They go on to note that the international community should assist in the land reform effort.

USAID has supported land governance reform in Colombia for more than a decade. The Government of Colombia’s current land governance programs and policies, including the USAID-supported establishment of regional and local land restitution offices and the development of the Victims and Land Restitution Law, seek to strengthen land tenure security, promote rural development, and restitute land to the country’s internally displaced.

As President Barack Obama said in a ceremony with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in May 2012: “[W]e all understand that peace is not simply the absence of war. True and lasting peace has to be based on justice and dignity for every person. And that’s why today is so important. Giving you and so many Afro-Colombian communities title to this land is part of ending this nation’s long conflict. It gives you a new stake in a new Colombia.”

See USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights Country Profile on Colombia for more information.

An April 10 article from the Thomson Reuters Foundation discusses the importance of securing land rights – particularly women’s land rights – in order to combat poverty, enhance food security, and increase vulnerable populations’ access to justice. According to the article, “when women have secure land rights, family health and education improves; women are less likely to be victims of domestic violence and are less vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS, and their participation in household decision-making rises.”

As the article points out, USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) have committed over $800 million to programs that improve land governance systems. USAID and MCC’s land governance programs – which aim to strengthen land tenure and resource rights for many of world’s poorest and most vulnerable people – often focus on women. For many women, access to land and property is essential for food production and sustainable livelihoods. Securing rights to land and property for women generate economic and social benefits, including: higher incomes, better nutrition, and decreased vulnerability.

For more information on women and land, see here.

On April 19, USAID released its first-ever Water and Development Strategy: 2013-2018, which emphasizes how sustainable use of water is critical to save lives, promote sustainable development, and achieve humanitarian goals. USAID’s development of this water strategy highlights the importance of sustainable resource governance across a wide range of strategic development objectives. According to USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah, “The impact of water on all aspects of development is undeniable: a safe drinking water supply, sanitation for health, management of water resources, and improvement of water productivity can help change the lives of millions.”

One of the water strategy’s main objectives is to “manage water for agriculture sustainably and more productively to enhance food security.” Sustainable management of natural resources cannot be achieved without clear rights to those resources. To that end, USAID works to clarify and strengthen rights to land and other natural resources, which in turn creates incentives for more efficient use of land and water, and eventually results in higher agricultural outputs and better conservation of valuable resources. Dr. Gregory Myers, USAID Division Chief, Land Tenure and Property Rights says, “When local communities feel secure in their rights to land, they invest more in agricultural inputs, work harder to increase their crop yields, and act as better stewards of the environment – all of which can lead to improved livelihood security.” Without secure rights or access to natural resources, there are fewer incentives to use water sustainably, which can threaten food security, lead to conflict, and on a much larger scale, contribute to global climate change.

Forest Trends, an International NGO, and others have noted that governments are increasingly recognizing the role of communities and indigenous people as forest custodians by recognizing their rights of forest control and ownership. A recent study by Dr. Anne Larson of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and others, confirms this trend. The researchers compared case studies from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, focusing on forest and land tenure rights, equity, and livelihoods. The comparison found that 200 million hectares – approximately 11% of the world’s forests – are under the control of communities or indigenous people, mostly in Latin America. In the interview, Dr. Larson states that legal recognition of forest and land rights alone is insufficient, noting that the role of the state is critical to enforcement of property rights, as well as in the creation of additional policies which enable communities to benefit from those rights. Even when forest rights of communities and indigenous people are recognized, important issues such as the decision-making, distributing benefits from forest use, and expanding the role of women in decisions over community-forest resources need to be addressed.

On April 10, representatives from U.S. NGO Landesa presented an impact evaluation on USAID’s Kenya Justice Project during the World Bank’s Annual Conference on Land and Poverty. Kenya’s 2010 constitution provided greater legal recognition of women’s rights to own and inherit land; the Justice project – which is implemented by Landesa – has piloted a model for improving community awareness and acceptance of those formal rights in order to make them a reality for rural women. The Justice project has worked to increase women’s knowledge of their rights and empower them in the role of elders, with a desired outcome of increasing women’s access to customary justice. Women and elders have been trained in legal literacy and specific skills, while students have created justice-themed drama skits, poems, songs and posters.

The impact evaluation found significant and large improvements in women’s knowledge of their rights, women’s confidence in the dispute resolution process and outcomes, men’s respect of women’s rights, and modest improvements in physical and social accessibility of the local justice system for women. According to the report, “Anecdotal evidence indicates women have started to gain access to more land and, importantly, women reported gaining more control over decisions pertaining to their family land, such as decisions over how to use the land, what to plant and where to sell crops, and women are controlling the proceeds derived from the land they access.” Elders were proud to learn that the constitution recognizes and empowers their role and “began to acknowledge that women play a significant role in the household economy and that perhaps it is in the interest of their families to empower women to take on greater responsibilities within the family and community.” Men reported being more likely to divide their inheritance equally between single sons and daughters, but were still hesitant to bequeath land to married daughters.

For more information, see Enhancing Customary Justice Systems in The Mau Forest, Kenya: A Strategy for Strengthening Women’s Land Rights (paper and presentation).