Volunteer community leaders are building trust and hope among rural citizens and spreading knowledge about land rights

Every morning Luz Estela Velandia wakes up to jog. A spry woman in her late sixties, she is vivacious as ever. She has hundreds of medals from a career in athletics, but these days jogging is as much about her health as it is about her community.

While roosters squawk, she runs by neighboring farms and thinks about her neighbors. She considers a variety of land conflicts common in her village that have split families and divided neighbors. In one family, two brothers are fighting over who gets what land after their father passed away. Over there, a family has built a shack and occupied an empty space next to the dirt road. On another plot of land, which was granted to them by the government in the 90s, some 17 families are living and farming under one single land title, and none can agree on anything.

La Luna is located in the municipality of Fuentedeoro where 6 out of 10 parcels are informally owned. Historically, Colombian land owners are responsible for titling and registering their properties with the state, but due to costs, complicated land laws, and the absence of government services in rural areas, informal land markets thrive.

 

 

 

 

Some 60% of the properties in Fuentedeoro lack a registered land title. USAID is supporting government to update the land cadaster and deliver land titles.

In La Luna the majority of people do not have a registered property title, and the conflicts seem to be endless. The subject of land tenure has become one of Velandia’s passions. Over the last year, she has learned more about property issues facing her neighbors than ever before. So, when she finds time between jogging, crafting, and leading La Luna’s Community Action Committee, she is teaching people about land rights and how property is titled and administered under Colombia’s arcane laws. Like hundreds of other rural municipalities in Colombia, Fuentedeoro has a decades-long history of violence, tragedy, and the struggle for land rights that has shaped its collective psyche. Under these conditions, reaching the community is not always simple.

“Fuentedeoro is the kind of place where people won’t open the door to strangers or give out personal information. People do not feel safe, and with the recent presidential elections, there is still a lot of uncertainty in the air.

Velandia’s job is to allay some of these fears and assure her neighbors that the government’s objective to increase land tenure security in rural areas is a legitimate, long-term commitment. For the last five years, pressure to title property and strengthen the formal land market has been percolating in the municipality thanks in part to USAID-funded programming to establish a Municipal Land Office and to examine the titling of properties of families living on many parcels under one land title.

In 2021, Velandia became one of dozens of community outreach volunteers raising awareness about land rights, the benefits of land titling, and the ongoing land formalization campaign in Fuentedeoro. As a volunteer, she received training in land formalization issues and social issues with supporting a culture of formal land ownership. The training, which is provided under the USAID funded Land for Prosperity program, includes a kit of teaching tools designed to simplify concepts.

“Before this, I knew nothing about land administration and Colombia’s land laws,” she admits.

Volunteers and land titling specialists at work in Fuentedeoro, Meta in 2022.

Massive Land Titling

Fuentedeoro is one of 11 initiatives funded by USAID and supported by Colombia’s land entities, including the National Land Agency. In total, the Fuentedeoro parcel sweep or barrido predial, as it is commonly referred to in town, aims to net over 2,000 rural property titles for landowners, some of whom have waited 40 years for a registered property title.

Just as important, the campaign will update the municipality’s rural cadaster for more than 6,000 parcels. The cadaster, which was last updated in 2006, is a master chart of all rural properties. Not only have properties changed owners since then, but land has been subdivided among families or sold to newcomers.

This methodology was created and refined by USAID and the Colombian government following the 2016 Peace Accords. Parcel sweeps streamline the collection and processing of property information in order to reduce costs and provide land agencies with integrated and reliable land data. Until recently, neither local nor national government agencies had complete control over this information.

With USAID funding and technical leadership, for the first time ever, Colombia’s three major land administration agencies are cooperating, sharing information, and supporting land titling campaigns to reach a goal of updating more than 100,000 parcels and delivering up to 40,000 land titles over the next five years.

Playing Games

Large land formalization campaigns rely heavily on social workers and outreach, and community liaisons like Luz Estela Velandia are one of the most effective ways to ensure participation. Trusted and motivated neighbors can fill the spaces where the government has been absent. Many in Fuentedeoro have long distrusted the government and believe land titling is just a ploy to take their land away. To overcome this information barrier, Velandia mobilizes her neighbors through neighborhood Whatsapp groups, where she can quickly reach 150 families living in her village.

In the groups, she advertises outreach meetings where she then uses the teaching kit, which includes flip charts, games, and puzzles to improve recognition of complicated land topics. The memory matching game, which requires participants to match land administration concepts, is a crowd favorite.

“The kit is didactic and participatory,” she explains. “It has to be this way, because the subject matter is complex, especially for people who may not have a very high level of education.” The teaching resources are also an attraction. In her first outreach event, 60 people came to learn about the land titling.

“One of the first things we learn together is the difference between a registered land title and a carta-venta,” she says. The carta-venta is a notarized receipt typical of a land transaction in rural Colombia. Over three months, she has reached over 100 people with the community crash course in land rights.

Velandia is not always successful. One group of families living on a collective land parcel say they do not want to participate in the massive land titling campaign, which is free of charge. Over the last five years, the families have invested thousands of dollars in a lawyer who claims he will individually title their properties. Though the government cannot force people to title their land, the campaign still updates property information in the rural cadaster.

Benefits of a formal land market

“I tell people that, yes, they will have to pay property taxes, but a land title can also bring them government subsidies, programs, and better services. I tell them a land title represents their rights. And I tell them that women have the same rights as men to appear on a property title as a man.”

These campaigns to title thousands of properties at once form part of the government strategy to move away from a demand-driven land administration policy to one in which the government assumes the cost of first-time formalization. By doing so, it will alleviate major time and cost burdens that prevent most low-income rural landholders from seeking a valid title. Once a property is registered, future title transfers will be much less time and cost intensive. The Fuentedeoro campaign started in October 2021 and will take place over a period of 12-18 months.

For now, community volunteers like Velandia are becoming the government’s most important allies to increase public participation.

 

 

 

 

The Land for Prosperity Activity is raising awareness about land formalization among citizens and partnering with academic and educational institutions to prepare the next generations of Colombians for a culture of formal land ownership.

“The key is personalizing all these relationships. We spend time together and have coffee and teatime and we can be honest about what is happening in our lives. Especially for the women, I give the program more credibility.”

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

With USAID support, Puerto Rico, Colombia is strengthening land governance and improving opportunities to invest in public spaces

A Tragic Day

As she walks, Elizabeth Ríos seems to carry images of the guerrilla and paramilitary violence that shook the municipality of Puerto Rico for much of the 1990s and 2000s.

“We had security problems,” says Ríos looking off into the distance, recalling times she doesn’t know how she survived. “One day there were two dead, another day, three. The town was divided until 1999, when the guerrillas took control.”

It was on July 10, 1999, when some 2,000 guerrillas of the FARC’s now defunct 42nd Front stormed and besieged the entrance to Puerto Rico and surrounded the police station, which at the time was staffed by about 30 policemen.

“Those policemen were like cannon fodder,” Ríos still recalls with fear, evoking the images of horror in her mind. “The guerrilla shot them with rifles and threw gas canisters at them.”

The bloodshed ended after a 40-hour siege of the police station leaving five policemen dead. The remaining tired 28 policemen gave up when they had no more ammunition or food and were kidnapped by the insurgents.

For Ríos, who has been a member of the Puerto Rico municipal council for 15 years and knows the history of the conflict in the municipality, the FARC takeover also destroyed the local branch of the Caja Agraria, a gas station, and left the town’s population without electricity. To never forget this difficult chapter, with the support of Ríos and the council, the battle site was converted into a memorial park in 2013.

Untitled Parcels

The Parque de la Vida y de la Paz, as the memorial park is officially known, has a monument commemorating the fallen policemen and those who were kidnapped during the three-day siege. But the parcel of land where the battalion was once located has never been titled in the name of the municipality. In fact, hardly any public properties in Puerto Rico are titled. Following the 2016 Peace Accords signed with the FARC, formalizing public properties became a priority. Clear land rights are necessary for rural development investments. With support from USAID, through the Land for Prosperity program, Puerto Rico titled the parcel where the park stands. The procedure is relatively simple, but no less important.

In 2022, USAID partnered with Puerto Rico leaders to create a Municipal Land Office. In its first six months, the local land office, which is embedded under the municipality’s Secretary of Planning has identified dozens of public parcels in the municipality that cannot receive national or regional funding without a registered land title.

“Legalizing property is fundamental. If not, we find ourselves in this bottleneck that, if they are not legalized, no investment can be made in them. Historically, no one cared about legalizing property, and the land administration process was poorly executed. This is an example of a mistake from the past that brings us consequences today.”-Diana Navarro, Mayor of Puerto Rico

In the Municipality’s Name

With USAID’s support, the Municipal Land Office has titled 10 public properties including the parcels of the Municipality Offices, the Fire Department, Villa García Park, El Morichal school, Villa Suárez Park and the memorial to the police battalion, Parque de la Vida.

“To have a local land office in the municipality, with the support of development partners, is very important,” said Mayor Navarro. “We still need to title 43 schools, four health centers, and another 51 community spaces.”

In addition to legalizing and titling the municipality’s public properties, the Municipal Land Office can title private properties in urban areas. The office’s staff includes land surveyors, lawyers, and social workers who raise awareness and promote a culture of formal land ownership. For the 12,000 inhabitants of Puerto Rico, the office represents a place to go with questions and learn about the land formalization processes. This year, Puerto Rico has already delivered the 32 land titles for urban parcels, all free of charge. The initial goal is to title 400 properties.

Juan Eduardo Ruiz, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Planning, says it was vital to create a municipal land office in Puerto Rico because the office decentralizes land administration and improves coordination with Colombia’s national land agencies and property registry.

“Before this, the measurements of properties were never accepted by the IGAC’s cadastral offices because of differences, and a cadastral correction process had to be done,” says Secretary Ruiz. “Now we have the capacity to get it right.”

In the Meta Department, USAID is supporting a handful of land offices that have already titled hundreds of properties, including in neighboring Puerto Lleras and Fuentedeoro.

“I already knew about the Fuentedeoro Land Office,” Ruiz said. “I knew Puerto Rico would give strong results with an office here. It has been very well received in the municipality.”

Besides providing land tenure security for families who have lived in Puerto Rico for decades, among other benefits, landowners can access credit and government subsidies to improve their homes or for agricultural projects in rural areas since financial entities are more likely to lend money to people who have a registered property title.

“Now it is essential to legalize property in rural areas”, adds Mayor Navarro. With the resources that come from the payment of the property tax of the legalized properties, the Mayor’s Office will be able to raise money through property taxes to improve basic services in the municipality.

Puerto Rico has already delivered the 32 land titles for urban parcels and aims to title 400 properties.

This blog is cross-posted from the Land for Prosperity exposure site. 

This post originally appeared on LandPortal.

Mozambique’s 1997 land law recognises land rights acquired through customary practice and good faith occupancy, even without a formal title. However, the lack of transparent public confirmation or documentation can lead to conflict. Sr. Land and Resource Governance Advisor Karol Boudreaux discusses how a partnership between USAID and agribusiness Grupo Madal has helped the company and local communities address long-standing land-access issues and improve livelihoods.

What is causing conflict over land rights?

Mozambique’s land laws allow citizens to have their land rights confirmed by the verbal testimony of other community members – and this testimony creates a legal claim that is just as valid as title documentation, even without documented proof. Despite this, the lack of documentation of community and individual land rights can lead to tensions between neighbours over boundaries or rights to specific areas. It also places many Mozambicans in a weak position when investors seek rights to their land for forestry, farming, and other uses.

In central Mozambique’s Zambézia province, due to a lack of available farmland, roughly 50,000 smallholder farmers have started growing their crops on unused land legally held by the agribusiness Grupo Madal. Most of these farmers are women, using small tracts of land to grow mostly food for their families. At the same time, in the communities adjacent to Grupo Madal’s farms, thousands of others have acquired land rights, but very few have documented proof. This lack of documentation has led to tensions and conflicts between people within these communities competing over scarce land.

USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) programme is partnering with Grupo Madal and a local civil society organisation (CSO), the Associação de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento (Development Support Association or NANA) to raise awareness of land and resource rights and improving tenure security, while addressing harmful gender norms and promoting women’s empowerment and economic security.

The USAID-Grupo Madal partnership

In 2016, Grupo Madal changed ownership, prompting a shift away from an estate-based production model, which had been in place since Mozambique’s colonial period, to a more inclusive business model designed to intentionally integrate and benefit neighbouring communities. The company’s new approach has included an initiative to help resource-poor farmers who were using Madal land to transition into a more secure situation. The goal was to help the farmers feed their families and earn income, while providing a source of revenue for the company.

How the public-private partnership works

The partnership initially worked with 3,300 smallholder farmers (over 67% were women) from 14 communities adjacent to four Madal plantations. Through an innovative model for ‘ingrowers’ (mostly landless women farming on Madal land) and ‘outgrowers’ (women and men farmers with land in neighbouring communities), the partnership seeks to include these smallholder farmers in Madal’s supply chains.

After an initial assessment to gauge community needs, the partnership has focused on introducing land-use agreements and farming contracts for ingrower families to strengthen their land-use rights and provide an opportunity to enter commercial value chains to help increase incomes. Families farming on Madal lands now have access to larger plots, allowing them to grow and sell commodities to Madal and grow food crops for household consumption. Madal specifies the crops it requires, provides appropriate inputs and technical advice, and guarantees to buy the resulting harvest.

Madal has also recruited seven community members, four of them women, with farming experience and communication skills to support the company’s extension officers and increase engagement within the communities. Most Madal extension agents are men, so engaging women as community facilitators has improved the company’s ability to reach women farmers. This community-based extension model inspires other women by increasing their technical skills, self-esteem, and confidence.

Now, with greater tenure security, these farmers have also organised themselves into producers’ clubs. “Before, each one of us women farmers worked separately. Now we are organised in producers’ clubs,” said Florinda Francisco, an ingrower farmer. “We have confidence in working with Madal and we want to sell our production to the company because they are the ones who made the land available for us.”

Documenting and managing community lands

Neighbouring outgrower communities have also received help to document their collective land rights and their individual farms. Similar to the ingrower agreement, some may decide to sign contracts to produce crops for Madal, receiving inputs and technical support.

With support from NANA, communities clarify their boundaries using mobile applications to secure tenure (MAST), a participatory land-documentation approach that improves transparency and equity and emphasises social inclusion and gender equality. The approach begins by raising communities’ awareness of their legal land rights. Communities then establish land associations to manage their land and natural resources, engage in participatory land-use planning, and develop community land-use regulations.

Impacts and next steps

Since 2020, the USAID-Madal partnership has mapped 8,000 hectares in 14 communities adjacent to Madal lands through participatory processes, enabling 6,500 families to receive certificates of community land rights from the provincial government. A total of 1,300 ingrower farmers (85% women) have entered into land-use agreements on Madal lands, and 2,000 outgrower farmers (55% women) have delimited their family lands, opening up opportunities for them to benefit from contract farming.

The partnership’s approach to strengthen land claims and build trusting and beneficial relationships between companies and neighbouring farmers is uncommon in Mozambique. It has the potential to create a viable model for responsible land-based investment that benefits private-sector actors and communities, and improves women’s economic security. The Mozambique Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has already expressed interest in supporting expansion of this innovative model to other companies and provinces.

Grupo Madal sees this activity as a major opportunity to clarify land rights and build trust with communities. The partnership has helped Madal to focus on rehabilitating its historically unused landholdings and integrating communities into their supply chain with benefits for both. The company has also welcomed USAID’s support in engaging with farmers – most of whom are women – in a gender-responsive way.

Sensitising private companies to land-related issues and supporting them to set up inclusive models can benefit communities and help secure their long-term rights to access and use land. Despite inherent power imbalances, with support, farmers can work with companies to clarify their land holdings, giving them the security they need to invest in their plots. Smallholders can also increase their access to inputs, technical skills, and markets, thereby improving their livelihoods, food security, and well-being. Public-private partnerships can be particularly beneficial for women, allowing them to feed their families while helping to earn additional income. Working with companies and CSOs can help ensure community rights and needs are considered, and help aggregate community voices for greater impact. Further support from the Government of Mozambique is essential to scale-up and institutionalise these approaches. Taking this holistic approach, USAID is helping improve livelihoods for thousands of Mozambique’s women and men.

USAID’s Sustainable Landscape Opportunity Analyses (SLOAs) provide an overview of options available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land conservation, management, and restoration. SLOAs are created through a collaborative process with USAID Missions to help develop programming that aims to reduce carbon emissions and/or increase carbon sequestration. They provide an assessment of land-based climate mitigation opportunities at the national and sub-national level, reflecting the biophysical potential of the land, as well as potential priorities and constraints on different mitigation pathways.

To accompany the SLOA for Papua New Guinea (PNG), USAID has developed a new Geospatial Companion that can assist USAID/PNG in leveraging its SLOA findings for spatial planning, as described below. The Geospatial Companion is a visual tool that brings the maps and data included in the SLOA, as well as additional datasets as applicable, to life as dynamic resources that can be updated to reflect changes in information or priorities. Its user-friendly maps and data can be manipulated and combined to help decision makers visualize and identify where investments in land-based climate mitigation can be most effective, as well as help decision makers integrate climate outcomes with other development priorities. This Geospatial Companion can also serve as a model for the development of other SLOA Geospatial Companions in assisting USAID Missions and partners in leveraging SLOA findings.

SLOA Geospatial Companion: Papua New Guinea

The island of New Guinea hosts the third largest expanse of tropical rainforests on the planet, among other geographically diverse terrestrial and aquatic environments. PNG comprises the eastern half of the island and is the largest Pacific Island country both by landmass and population. The country has pledged to completely end deforestation by the year 2030 to combat climate change. At the same time, it is undertaking large road and electricity infrastructure projects to spur economic growth and address widespread poverty.

Understanding where to prioritize investments in PNG to most effectively make advancements in land-based climate mitigation efforts is complicated. There are a wide variety of land governance systems that exist for different types of land resources—from protected areas to agriculture concessions. Furthermore, among the country’s population of over 10 million people, more than 850 languages are spoken and there are more than 600 distinct tribes, each with their own traditional land governance rules.

To effectively support both PNG’s economic development and the country’s international commitment to protect its forests, USAID’s Geospatial Companion integrates and analyzes land-based climate mitigation datasets together with USAID geographic and programming priorities. It features maps of datasets that are referenced in the PNG SLOA and also includes additional information, such as the forest cover loss “hotspots” shown in Figure 1.

Looking at the SLOA data alongside complementary datasets allows users to visualize trade-offs or opportunities to develop programming that combines emissions reductions with other priority outcomes, such as biodiversity conservation (Figure 2) or infrastructure development. Dedicated climate change mitigation programs, as well as contributions from other development sector programs, are necessary for achieving USAID’s target of reducing, avoiding, or sequestering six billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2030.

The Geospatial Companion data and maps are part of a larger package of support that can be provided to USAID Missions. The scenario map shown in Figure 2 is one example–iIt is based on a spatial model that considers multiple criteria to identify locations where the potential for both climate mitigation and conservation benefits are highest.

Figure 2: By combining and strategically weighting different datasets in a spatial model, locations are identified where the potential for both climate mitigation and conservation benefits is highest.
Credit: USAID

The Power of Geospatial Information
Understanding the geographic scope of where the most effective mitigation opportunities might exist under a variety of scenarios can be extremely complex and difficult to conceptualize. In addition, a number of important local factors that are critical to sustainable and resilient development programming could be overlooked without proper analysis. Maps and spatial data are powerful tools to visualize this kind of complex information in space and time.

The SLOA Geospatial Companion helps guide USAID decision-making and is designed to improve the efficacy of USAID programming related to land-based climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation on the ground. Its scenarios can help USAID Missions and operating units identify pathways for reducing emissions while also responding to other development challenges. In PNG, the Geospatial Companion shows at a glance where climate mitigation potential, biodiversity, and land rights intersect. In other regions, governance, health, livelihoods, population, agriculture, water stress, energy, infrastructure, or other types of data might be used to determine further opportunities for increased climate action.

Around the world, USAID is helping thousands of rural women secure their rights to land – providing them, their children and their communities with the security they need to build a brighter future.

Mozambique

Floriana Mariano Jose, 69, never had her own land. Last year, she received the long-term right to use a half-hectare plot in Inhangulue, Mozambique, from local agroforestry company Grupo Madal. This was revolutionary for Floriana: her plot allowed her to move beyond subsistence farming and enter commercial value chains, growing coconuts and beans to sell. She signed a commercial farming agreement with Madal, which is providing her with seeds, guidance on how to care for these crops, and a guaranteed market for her produce. She feels confident having her land use rights documented on paper, knowing that her daughters and granddaughters will be able to continue to work this land in the years to come. As she said: “In addition to a guaranteed buyer and support to increase our production, there is a lot of work within the community to support women, to decrease violence against women, and to ensure that our husbands know they can’t take the money we make selling coconut and beans.”

Over the years, smallholder farmers encroached on Grupo Madal’s land in Zambezia, Mozambique. Rather than evicting these farmers, a partnership between USAID and Madal is resolving encroachment issues in an innovative way by providing long-term land use rights to over 1,300 people, 85 percent of whom are women like Floriana. These farmers gained access to land and formal farming contracts that will allow them to increase their income. The company is also revising internal policies and extension programs to improve outreach to women and supporting women in producers’ clubs to build agricultural and entrepreneurship skills.

Malawi

Joyce Daimoni is a 70 year old woman with physical disability who raised seven children and over 30 grandchildren in Chinthankhwa, Malawi. Following custom, she moved to her husband’s village when they married. Custom also dictates that once she left her maternal home, she was not allocated land there and would rely on his land for life. She has farmed the land her whole life, growing groundnuts and maize for the family to eat and sell. When a customary land documentation program started in her village this year, others in the community tried to stop her family from registering their land, saying the land belonged to the clan. Joyce sought help from the local Customary Land Committee and was referred to the Customary Land Tribunal, who decided in favor of Joyce and her husband. They were able to finally register their land, in both their names, and Joyce is relieved. “This means we are still going to be using the land. I am happy we can still cultivate the land and our children will be able to use this land too.”

USAID is working with the government of Malawi to document 10,000 customary land parcels in the Traditional Area of Mwansambo in Nkhoatakota District, making sure that women like Joyce are not left behind in the process. The land registration program will document land rights using gender-responsive approaches that include comprehensive gender equality and social inclusion community sensitization, capacity development for all stakeholders involved in registration process, household level dialogues on harmful gender norms, and skill-development training for women elected to leadership positions in land governance.

Zambia

When her husband passed away 15 years ago, Mary Nkhowani, 55, and her 5 children returned to her home village of Muzumbwa in Chifunda Chiefdom, Zambia, to grow maize for subsistence. She went from cultivating her husband’s land to cultivating her father’s land, never imagining women could hold land in their own right. When her father died, she inherited his land. But in rural Zambia, it is often not easy for women – especially widows – to hold land. Twice Mary experienced land grabbing by members of her extended family. Once a USAID-supported land documentation program began working in her village, Mary attended sensitization meetings and learned that women can own land; she then registered her land. Motivated by this life-changing experience, Mary volunteered to serve on the village land committee to help other women have land documented in their own names. “The certificate puts a seal on the land that it is mine and no one can grab it. It means peace for me in life and in death because there were a lot of conflicts over land. Everyone wants land and if you are not a man, no one thinks you are entitled. I feel very happy that the future of my children and grandchildren is now secure.”

In Zambia’s Eastern Province, USAID is promoting gender-responsive land registration and helping to resolve long-standing tensions over customary land rights. Over the past six years, USAID and local partners have documented the land rights of more than 30,000 parcels, benefiting 155,000 rights holders, nearly half of whom are women like Mary.

Ghana

When Grace Annison, 60, got married, she moved to her husband’s cocoa farm in Asorefie, Ghana. Over the past 40 years, Grace has worked on this land every day: during the cocoa season she prunes the trees, harvests the cocoa pods, and dries the beans. Throughout the year she plants pepper, cassava, plantains, and tomatoes for her family to eat and to sell, a crucial source of income in the cocoa off-season. The land and the fruits of her labor enabled Grace to raise her six children. However, as it is customary in the area, the land is registered in her husband’s name only. Grace hopes that if something happens to her husband, nobody will take the land away from her. “I hope to continue to farm the land to achieve my next dream to build a comfortable house for my family.”

USAID is working with Ecom Agroindustrial Corp., a global commodity trader, to empower women and shift gender norms that hinder their access to resources like land and extension services in cocoa communities in Ghana. Ecom is revising policies and procedures to increase gender-responsiveness in their engagement with cocoa producers. Over 2,200 farmers like Grace and her husband are also being trained on harmful gender norms that prevent women from accessing and controlling land, gender-based violence, and women’s empowerment.

India

Land is the most important asset for farmer Sumsurnehar Begam. Early in her marriage, Sumsurnehar and her husband farmed two plots of land in West Bengal, India: a small piece of land that he had inherited and another small plot they purchased. However, they never updated their land records, and continued to farm without any formal proof of ownership for years, unaware of the risks. After saving for many years, in 2020 they decided to buy a third plot. By this time, Sumsurnehar had attended land literacy training supported by USAID and PepsiCo and knew the importance of formalizing the land transaction. As the only member of the family who is literate, she took charge and was able to complete the registration process by herself, ensuring that her name was included on the title. This gave her economic independence and made her future more secure. For the past two years she has been cultivating rice and potatoes on this land, independently managing the small farming business. With her increased confidence as a farmer, she joined other women to lease land to grow potatoes and formally enter into the potato supply chain for PepsiCo. “I feel confident that I have my own land and the proper documents to prove it. This is an asset for my good and bad days.”

USAID and PepsiCo are partnering to economically empower women farmers in the PepsiCo’s potato supply chain in West Bengal, India. So far, over 1,100 women have benefited from improved access to land and agronomy training, growing their confidence and economic independence while supporting PepsiCo to meet business and sustainable farming goals.

Liberia

Like most rural women in Zor-Ganaglay community in Liberia, Mamie Kpahn depends on the land and natural resources around the Blei Community Forest for her livelihood. Responding to increasing pressure over natural resources, the Liberian government has enacted legislation and processes to allow communities to self-identify, create communal governance structures, and obtain formal documentation of their community lands. Mamie notes that even though women often use the land more than men, they have been traditionally excluded from decision making around land in the community. After hearing about the importance of inclusive participation, she decided to run for her local land governance committee and was elected as chairperson. Today she participates in every step of the decision-making process related to the community land. Recently she attended a boundary harmonization meeting and helped resolve boundary conflicts between hers and a neighboring community. “As a woman, I was proud to be in this meeting and be part of the decision making to bring us together as neighbors. I am happy that the two communities can be in peace and work together. This will help our children manage our land in the future.”

USAID is supporting Liberia’s customary land formalization process in 44 communities in six counties. This includes strengthening the governance capacity of communities so that they are empowered to make inclusive decisions and enjoy the full potential of their formalized lands and resources. The project uses gender-balanced facilitation teams to sensitize communities about women’s roles in land governance and provides women like Mamie with technical knowledge on land governance. Formerly excluded from these decision-making spaces, women now account for 43 percent of committee members in these USAID-supported communities, and many have been nominated to serve in leadership positions.

USAID is supporting small-scale, gender-responsive land documentation to secure farmers’ rights to customary land in Malawi.

“Here, men want to control everything and don’t allow women to talk. If we are aware of our land rights we can act and defend, and if we get divorced, we can still rely on the land to continue feeding our children.” -Margaret Dyson, landowner in TA Mwansambo

Margaret Dyson, a single mother of three, inherited her four-acre farm from her parents, who were granted the land by the village head person when they moved to the Traditional Land Management Area (TLMA) of Mwansambo 30 years ago.

Since then, her family has relied on natural boundary markers such as trees and streams to define their property and keep their land separate from adjacent farms. As local populations grow and land becomes increasingly scarce, these natural boundaries that have worked for decades may be removed or become less effective. As a result, formally documenting land ownership has become a critical part of the government’s strategy to promote inclusive sustainable development.

In Malawi, 70 percent of the population lives on customary land, held by communities and administered by traditional leaders, as smallholder farmers. Less than 10 percent have some form of land documentation. These rates are significantly worse for women due to gender norms that view men as the default heads of households who wield decision-making power over valuable assets like land. Though many parts of the country are matrilineal, meaning that land is passed down from mother to daughter, male relatives often still control day-to-day decisions about land use. Furthermore, though TLMA Mwansambo is matrilineal, it does not follow the traditional custom where men who marry move to the land of their wives’ clan; instead, women typically move to their husband’s village after marriage. Since they are assumed to have land rights in their own village under the matrilineal tradition, they are given no rights to the land in their husband’s village.

Because navigating these customary land rights traditions can be challenging, documenting and formalizing these rights is important. Land documentation not only provides rural populations with greater tenure security, it creates incentives for them to invest in their farms and can provide a source of collateral for expanded access to finance. Land documentation can also reduce land conflict and promote gender equality.

Inclusive Land Documentation Process

Following the 2016 Customary Land Act, the Government of Malawi launched several land documentation pilots across the country, permitting customary landholders to formalize ownership. In TLMA Mwansambo, the USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program is partnering with the Ministry of Lands to roll out the country’s most ambitious customary land formalization campaign to date, with an explicit focus on women’s land rights. Using participatory methods and socially inclusive approach , the land documentation campaign is targeting outreach to approximately 40,000 people. The activity expects to document upward of 10,000 land parcels in under one year.

The land demarcation process is gender-responsive, ensuring that both women and men are able to participate at each stage.

Following a comprehensive gender assessment in TLMA Mwansambo, ILRG sensitized all stakeholders on gender and social inclusion (GESI) issues before and during the land registration process and developed a series of tools to guide GESI integration across all steps of the process.

Over the course of eight months, teams of university graduates visit each village to carry out the land documentation work. After holding community sensitization events, they physically walk the boundaries of each parcel with landholders and use GPS enabled mobile devices to map the precise coordinates. Once the data are collected, a village map is produced and posted in a central area for community members to review and bring any corrections or objections forward. These sessions are held during times and locations that are accessible and safe for women to participate. Once maps are validated and finalized, the local government issues land titles to customary landholders.

“We know that we are gender focal points in the land documentation process,” says data collector Sylvia Kasiaya, 28. “When a man wants to only register his name to the land, we ask ‘What about your wife?’ They often say ‘No, she has her own land’, so we push back and inform them about the advantages of joint documentation, such as ‘What if you die, how will your wife and children survive?’ Sometimes it works and we see very little resistance.”

ILRG is also promoting shifts in harmful gender norms that hinder women’s land rights through a series of workshops and dialogue sessions. Now, women and men have opportunities to sit together to reflect on harmful gender norms—such as local marriage traditions which give women no rights to land in their husband’s village—and discuss how to change them in order to promote equal land rights, equal decision-making over land, and equal sharing of benefits from land. ILRG is also holding gender norms dialogues with traditional leaders like village head persons, who tend to be men, to identify the harmful gender norms that might hinder women’s land rights and devise concrete strategies to initiate change.

Promoting Community Leadership in Land and Natural Resource Governance

Another way women can be empowered is through engagement in land institutions. The 2016 Customary Land Act creates Customary Land Committees (CLCs), a group of community members elected to help oversee and resolve disputes that occur within the local land documentation process. CLCs are critical to guide data collectors, land surveyors, and government officials in their villages. By law, the CLCs must be gender balanced. ILRG is improving leadership skills for women elected to these bodies so they can meaningfully participate.

Rose Zuze has four children and was elected as a CLC member in Group Village Mwansambo. She accompanied Margaret and her neighbors to define the boundaries of her property.

“Single mothers have no power, so they need the CLC to defend their rights. Since I am a woman, I know their problems. In addition, women like Maragaret are empowered by the CLC. They see women in positions of leadership and believe that if I can be on the CLC, then they can also be in positions of power.”

These efforts help ensure that women’s names are included on land titles, which aligns with the joint objectives of the Government of Malawi and USAID to advance gender equality in land rights as a pathway for women’s empowerment.

“I put the farm in my name with the three children on the document,” said Margaret Dyson. “It is important because it gives us protection from eviction. With this document, I can prove this is my land.”

The campaign in Mwansambo is establishing the precedent for a socially inclusive and gender-responsive approach to land registration. This scalable approach may influence how the government carries forward the important work of ensuring secure land tenure as a pathway for sustainable development, building on Malawi Vision 2063’s goal to fully harness the potential of land as a catalyst for economic self-reliance, and the USAID/Malawi Country Development Cooperation Strategy to support gender-equitable and accountable development.

And Three Ways We Can Empower them to Lead More

Climate change poses incredible challenges for women and girls in the developing world. The impacts of climate change disproportionately impact women and girls by barring them from accessing increasingly scarce natural resources, leaving them more vulnerable to extreme weather events and limiting their opportunities for education and income-generating activities, which harms their overall health and wellbeing. 

Research shows that women’s participation improves the efficacy of climate change adaptation and mitigation programs. Yet, women are often barred from participating in climate action; an unfortunate fact that USAID’s Climate Strategy 2022-2030 hopes to counteract by centering the role of women and other marginalized groups on climate action. 

Last month, I had the pleasure of moderating an event entitled “Frontiers: Women Leading Solutions to Climate Change” to discuss a critically important question: How can we empower women to continue to lead the fight against climate change? 

This webinar, co-hosted by USAID and New America on the sidelines of the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), hosted seven powerful women in conversation about how climate change poses unique threats to women, and the ways in which women are uniquely positioned to find and deliver solutions to this critical challenge. 

Here, in the event participants’ own words, are five ways women are already leading on climate change solutions, and five ways we can help them become an even stronger voice in this fight.

1. Women uniquely understand the challenge, because they live it 

To quote American public interest attorney and author, Bryan Stevenson: “We cannot create justice without getting close to places where injustices prevail. We have to get proximate.” 

Women around the world are uniquely proximate to the impacts of climate change. Indeed, as USAID Chief Climate Officer Gillian Caldwell pointed out, climate change disproportionately impacts women and girls, limiting their opportunities for education and income-generating activities, harming their health and wellbeing, and increasing their exposure to gender-based violence and exploitation. Women and children are significantly more likely than men to die from climate disasters such as droughts and floods. 

But this inequity creates an opportunity: women understand from firsthand experience the impacts of climate change, and they see opportunities to address them on the ground. 

As an Agency, we are helping provide platforms and channels for women and girls to turn this proximity into power, by sharing their unique perspectives and the solutions they have developed. USAID’s new Climate Strategy prioritizes partnering with women and other marginalized groups on climate action and the U.S. Government’s new  Gender Equity and Equality Action (GEEA) Fund, is expanding resources for this work, helping advance women’s and girls’ leadership and participation to help tackle the climate crisis.  

2. Women see distinct signals, based on the role they play in the household

The division of responsibilities in a household gives women and men unique insights into opportunities to combat climate change. For example, Jamille Bigio, USAID’s Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, pointed out that women and girls often collect water and firewood for the household, and can therefore see changes to forests and water resources in a way that men do not. As they go about their lives, women frequent places within climate-vulnerable urban centers that men do not, and therefore have unique perspectives about infrastructure and affordable housing needs to make urban areas more resilient. And, women have distinct perspectives on green economic opportunities, based on the jobs they hold. 

These perspectives can serve as components of early warning systems for climate impacts and also allow us to spot opportunities for climate action. One example of compelling work at this nexus of gender and climate action is USAID’s partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, called AGENT, which recognizes women as agents of environmental change.

Our challenge as an Agency is to learn how to share and amplify the climate threat signals picked up by women and girls, and the unique solutions they propose.

3. Female leaders help communities better manage their natural resources

Studies show that when women are engaged as decision-makers —not just on climate action but on any aspect of community planning—their communities do a better job at managing resources and protecting against climate shocks. 

Rights and Resources Initiative Coordinator Solange Bandiaky-Badji shared that when Indigenous women manage community forests, they step up to protect land more effectively. Bandiaky-Badji shared a recent experience in Nepal, where Indigenous women worked collaboratively through the 2021 monsoon season to plant lime trees on over 25 hectares of government and privately owned farmland, and restore degraded land through aquaculture. The combination of these women’s traditional knowledge of land and focus on collaboration allowed them to ensure a productive harvesting season in the midst of a drought and a pandemic. The Nepalese government was so impressed with this effort that it has since provided these women with grants and subsidies to scale up their efforts. 

To echo Bandiaky-Badji’s words: “When we support initiatives that are conceived and implemented by women themselves, we allow them to lead instead of just being bystanders in climate solutions.”

4. Women are on the climate activism front line

As New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter said: Women are often the ‘rule takers’, men are the ‘rule makers’ … but, women regularly become the ‘rule breakers.’  Indeed, women are often the ones speaking out against entrenched interests and large polluters, even when doing so subjects them to threats and gender-based violence, and imperils their livelihoods and lives. 

Many of the most outspoken climate activists and land and environmental defenders, from Berta Caceres to Greta Thunberg, are female. Women have formed grassroots organizations, like Fuerza de Mujeres Wayuu in Colombia and the Mujeres Amazónicas in Ecuador, to mobilize against environmental threats, and have organized nonviolent protests on climate challenges ranging from deforestation in India to mining activities endangering water access for rural households in Latin America.

As Gillian Caldwell observed during the panel: “Many of these brave women are standing up against powerful companies that are threatening the survival of the planet and in many cases these companies are working in close coordination with governments.” 

5. Women don’t’ just speak up for themselves, they speak up for the vulnerable

Gillian Caldwell made the point that women are better equipped to speak to the justice and equity considerations of climate action, whether those relate to gender, or to the protection of other vulnerable groups. Tracy Farrell, Director, North American Region, International Union for Conservation of Nature, echoed this observation, pointing to a study of 300 forest groups across the world that found that groups run by women were more inclusive and just.

Women leaders don’t just promote people-centered policies; studies find that their decisions are more planet-centered. In her remarks Farrell pointed to USAID’s AGENT project, which found that female parliamentarians tend to make policies that are more inclusive of the environment. 

Three Ways We Can Empower the Leadership of Women on Climate Action

There is so much more we can do to support and amplify women’s leadership on climate, and help empower a new generation of climate leaders. As Jamille Bigio rightly pointed out: “There are women leaders on the ground already advancing solutions, and they just need our support to help amplify their work.”

Event participants shared three ways in which we can further empower women to become leaders in the fight against climate change. 

1. Ensure the women’s tenure rights are secure 

Research shows that strengthening women’s land and resource rights has a striking and positive impact on women’s empowerment, allowing them to play a leading role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Secure tenure rights also make women more resilient to climate shocks.

Yet, as Bandiaky-Badji explained, women legally own less than one fifth of the world’s agricultural land, and in Africa, fifty percent of legal frameworks governing land and forests do not contain community-level provisions specific to women. Farrell pointed out that this lack of land ownership limits women’s access to finance and other resources to implement climate change solutions.   

To equip women to lead on climate change, we must invest in ensuring women have equal and secure rights to land and natural resources within their communities. USAID is supporting work to strengthen women’s land rights in a number of countries, including new work in Cote d’Ivoire to help women exercise and protect legal rights to land and through its Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure (MAST) approach.  MAST is helping women in three countries register land rights at the same rate as their male counterparts. 

2. Train women to be leaders, and build their decision-making capacity 

Rili Djohani, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Coral Triangle Center, stressed that if we want women to lead on climate change, we must provide them with leadership training and mentorship opportunities. These efforts give women the confidence to demand a seat at the table, and also help shift gender norms and normalize women’s participation and leadership in rooms typically dominated by men. 

For example, the Coral Triangle Initiative has created an intergenerational mentor program that links senior female leaders with up and coming leaders. 

And while leadership training is a critical component of building up women’s voices, so is job training and other support that empowers women economically. The Coral Triangle Initiative has engaged women in seaweed cultivation and trained them to make seaweed snacks to sell on the local market. Djohani shared that training women to make and sell these products not only helps them improve livelihoods and empower economically, but also gives them the skills to engage in other decisions in the village. 

USAID has also focused on building the leadership skills of women who work in industries at the front lines of climate change. For example, through the Engendering Industries program, USAID supports women’s meaningful participation in male-dominated water and power sectors to improve gender equity and improve business outcomes.

3. Explicitly define the role of women in national and international climate policies 

Farrell pointed out that a critical piece of empowering women to lead on climate change is explicitly including them in national and international frameworks, policies and mechanisms aimed at curbing emissions, reducing deforestation, adapting to climate impacts and financing climate solutions. USAID’s AGENT initiative found that 80% of newly revised Nationally Determined Contributions include gender in some way. This is a significant stride that must be taken up by other climate frameworks and policies. 

Farrell recommended that countries adopt Climate Change Gender Action Plans to ensure women are included holistically in climate action, and that their participation is tracked with indicators. 

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As this panel made clear, while women face disparate impacts from climate change, they bring unique solutions and the courageous leadership that we need. Supporting women with secure rights, training, funding, and opportunities to shape policy can in turn increase women’s engagement and empowerment to make the necessary progress we need to tackle the climate crisis.