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USAID supports women leaders towards gender equality and women’s empowerment in land tenure, resource governance, and agroforestry value chains

By: Sarah Lowery, USAID LRG/DDI and Corinne Hart, USAID GenDev/DDI

In many countries men control who gets to use, own, and make decisions about land.

“We used to stay in a corner, quiet. If someone came to take our land or exploit our forests, we did not have the courage to try to stop them.” These words from a woman in Mecoburi, Mozambique reflect how women across the world often feel powerless to defend their rights to land and natural resources. For rural communities, land means everything, from the ability to produce crops for food and income to leveraging financial assets.

Although women play critical roles in agriculture and food production, they are less likely to access agricultural inputs and other productive resources and have fewer opportunities to engage in commercial agroforestry value chains. Even when laws and policy provide for gender equality, women face many other barriers to secure land rights, including weak implementation, gender norms that prevent women from owning property, unequal inheritance practices, limited knowledge about their land rights, time constraints to participate in land registration and governance activities, and increased vulnerability to gender-based violence.

Empowering women in land and natural resources

Since 2018, the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program has been implementing innovative and ambitious partnerships with communities, governments, traditional leaders, civil society organizations, and the private sector to promote gender equality and women’s economic empowerment by improving land tenure, resource governance, and making agroforestry value chains more inclusive across six countries. The program has impacted the lives of over 143,000 women who have benefited from documented land rights, participation in land and natural resource governance, and access to related benefits such as credit, agricultural extension, and livelihoods opportunities. Across Ghana, India, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, USAID supports the adoption of laws and policies that strengthen women’s land rights; ensures women’s participation in systematic land documentation processes; increases women’s participation in value chains; promotes changes in discriminatory gender norms; and minimizes risk of gender-based violence. In each of these countries, women have overcome harmful gender biases, stereotypes, and discrimination and are leading their communities toward more inclusive, environmentally sustainable land and natural resource management that brings economic benefits to all.

Meet the Groundbreakers

In Liberia, community land development and management committees are responsible for making decisions about the administration and use of customary land. In five communities surrounding the Blei Community Forest, USAID is raising awareness about customary land tenure rights. The project uses gender-balanced facilitation teams to teach the importance of women’s participation in the committees and provides women with technical knowledge on land governance. In the pilot communities, today women account for 43 percent of committee members, and many have been nominated to serve in leadership positions. Patricia Geh was elected vice-president of the Zor Yolowee Committee in a region with important forest resources, which are managed by the community. Because of this work, she explained, women now understand their rights and are actively participating in meetings, making decisions alongside men and elders. Patricia feels confident that she can help lead the community to use the resources in a sustainable way, saying, “We will ‘use some and keep some,’ so the future generations can enjoy them too.”

Similarly, customary land committees are responsible for documenting and administering land in Malawi. Despite laws that ensure women’s representation in the committees, many women have little to no information about their land rights, including their right to run for leadership positions. USAID is working with the Ministry of Lands in Malawi to document customary land in the Traditional Area of Mwansambo in Nkhotakota district and raise awareness about the importance of women’s participation in the documentation process, which aims to benefit at least 10,000 people by 2023. Deribe Kanjauke says that because of USAID’s gender equality efforts in her community, she is eager to actively participate and lead land governance initiatives in her community. Although at first people doubted that women could fulfill this important role, she was determined to overcome this barrier and represent women’s voices. Now elected to her village committee, Deribe said, “I want to see that the land documentation process goes according to the law, the way it is supposed to be. I want to make sure that women are not discriminated against or get their land grabbed and that when parents die, neither boys nor girls lose their land.”

In Zambia, USAID is working with 16 governmental and non-governmental organizations to increase awareness about women’s role in the sustainable and transparent management of natural resources that are critical to the livelihoods of rural communities. Nancy Mutemba, 26, works as a Community Liaison Assistant with USAID partner Frankfurt Zoological Society. She received USAID-funded training on women’s leadership and empowerment in natural resource governance, and explained that the training opened her eyes about her own abilities and the prevalence of deep-rooted gender norms that prevent most women in her community from controlling critical resources. “I understood that poverty was so real because our important resources and sources of income were being mismanaged and women had no say nor benefit. I decided to start including messages on women’s participation in decision-making at household and community levels during my community facilitation work.” Working with community facilitators like Nancy, USAID has helped increase women’s participation in wildlife law enforcement and in community governance. In Mukungule Chiefdom, where Nancy works, women’s representation in community resource boards increased from 25 percent in 2016 to 62 percent in 2020.

Secure land tenure is pivotal for rural women’s economic empowerment, leading to greater influence in household decision-making and the ability to enter and benefit from commercial value chains. In India, USAID is partnering with PepsiCo to increase women’s participation in PepsiCo’s supply chains. Since 2019, over 1,000 women have benefitted from training to learn the technical skills needed to enter the PepsiCo potato supply chain. In addition, these women farmers are guiding their farming families and communities to adopt sustainable farming practices that both increase productivity and meet climate change mitigation and adaptation goals. Sujata Pramanick is a 34-year-old potato farmer and women’s group leader from Barasat in West Bengal. Although she manages all activities on the family’s small farm that supplies potatoes to PepsiCo, only her husband’s name is listed on their land title and therefore his is the only name included on PepsiCo’s suppliers’ list. Over the past two years, however, Sujata attended several trainings on women’s empowerment and agricultural practices and was selected as a part-time Community Agronomist, responsible for disseminating information and supporting other farmers in her village. Receiving targeted technical knowledge for the first time enabled her to increase production on her family farm and encourage others to wear protective equipment and manage waste responsibly, so farmers and the environment are healthier. She feels valued not only in the community, but also in her household: she now actively participates in decision-making about household investments and expenditures, and this year Sujata’s husband asked PepsiCo to list her name as the PepsiCo supplier.

USAID is working with private sector partner Grupo Madal in Mozambique to solve potential land conflicts with communities in ways that benefit both smallholder farmers and the company. Due to scarce arable land and a growing population, farmers have encroached upon Madal’s lands for subsistence farming, creating conflict not only with Madal, but between farming families. Rather than evicting them, Madal worked with USAID to create a program that allows 1,300 farmers – 85 percent of whom are women – to secure long term use rights to the land. With these rights, the farmers can grow crops to feed their families and for profit in partnership with Madal. Odete Pereira, a 54-year-old mother of six, is one of the farmers working with Madal under this new program. She was recently elected president of her local producers’ club, a group of 20 women who work together to organize their production and engagement with the company and other potential buyers. The delimitation of land for smallholders under the USAID-Madal partnership decreased conflict between communities and the company and within communities. Farmers feel safer and more confident to use the land and engage in commercial value chains that can significantly improve their income-earning potential. USAID also supported trainings for the newly formed producers’ clubs, including a 12-week women’s empowerment and leadership training. Odete said the trainings changed how women see themselves and taught them to understand and recognize gender norms within their households. “I never knew women were allowed to participate in decisions with men. I saw a difference in my relationship with my husband. He realized I deserve respect. He used to go out and leave me with all the housework. Now he is back home when I need to attend training or meetings. Before, if we earned 100 meticais [USD 1.50] he said it was all his, even though I was the one who worked the land. Now we plan things together, and we know we need to save 20 meticais to make repairs in our house and spend 80 to buy food and school uniforms for the children,” she said.

Women like Patricia, Delibe, Nancy, Sujata, and Odete are paving the way toward equal land and natural resource rights, leading to social, economic, and environmental benefits for their families, communities, and other stakeholders. With greater participation by women in land and natural resource governance, women and their families are able to access a wider variety of income opportunities and overcome traditional barriers that prevent women from having equal rights to land. In addition, expanding leadership opportunities for women in land and natural resource governance gives women greater recognition and stature in their households and communities, which can lead to more responsible and equitable household expenditures, greater food security, more sustainable management of natural resources, and increased adoption of farming practices that mitigate climate change risks.

USAID is working to build the capacity of women leaders in developing countries by strengthening women’s land and resource rights, helping women run for elected bodies, and training them to meaningfully contribute to community governance. Increasing rural women’s access to land and natural resources is a core element in advancing gender equality, as land is the main asset of the rural poor. This International Women’s Day, USAID invites other organizations working towards gender equality to join them in advocating for women’s land and resource rights in developing countries, to help equip and empower the women leaders in other communities to be agents of change.

Balancing successful wildlife protection and expanding human populations leads to reduced human-wildlife conflict in Zambia’s North Luangwa Ecosystem

As the global community wakes up to the deepening biodiversity crisis, many of Africa’s wild spaces are under threat, not from guns and poachers, but from the shovels and agricultural fields of smallholder farmers trying to make a living. While a family growing corn or cotton may seem less ominous than a man holding a gun and poached ivory, the negative impact on wildlife can be equally devastating.

Each year, rural communities broaden their search for increasingly-scarce arable land and encroach on wildlife habitat. While this move makes sense from the farmer’s standpoint, this expansion intensifies human-wildlife conflict, often resulting in deadly human-animal confrontation, crop destruction, and attacks on livestock. Forests and wetlands converted to fields may never revert back to habitat for elephants, leopards, lions, antelope, and other key species that help to sustain a balanced ecosystem. This loss of habitat and change of land use represents a generational change.

To combat this growing trend, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Frankfurt Zoological Society are partnering with local communities in the North Luangwa Ecosystem of Zambia to strengthen the land and resource rights of rural communities, in the hopes of improving long-term land use planning to prevent encroachment into wildlife habitats, protect individuals’ rights to their land, and support sustainable livelihoods.

The Luangwa Valley is the oldest section of the Great Rift valley, a landscape along Africa’s largest undammed river that blooms with the rains from November to March. At the heart of the valley are the North and South Luangwa National Parks, bordered by an escarpment on one side and the Luangwa River on the other. The area’s abundant elephant populations were decimated by poaching in the 1980s, and rhinos were poached to local extinction. Since that time, large investments have helped to return a healthy population of elephants and other species to the area.

The valley is also home to 70,000 people and over 4,500 settlements in five customary chiefdoms, a population that has tripled over the past forty years. The chiefdoms are located in areas known as Game Management Areas, buffer zones to the national parks designed with the dual objectives that both wildlife and communities flourish. But these buffers are being pressured both by increasing wildlife populations, due in part to successful conservation efforts, and farmers. Each year, farmers prepare new tracts for agriculture, cutting deeper into habitats, within the current ranges and prime habitats of elephants and hippos, as well as predators.

Clarifying Land Rights and Usage

In Zambia’s customary settings, land ownership and conflicts are managed by chiefs and village headpersons, who typically allocate property by telling families that they can expand their plot from one edge to a tree some distance away. Unfortunately, these verbal records are easily forgotten and open to interpretation. In addition, headpersons are often open to influence and bias, and as a result may allow some farmers with connections or influence to expand farmland outside of planned agricultural areas as fertility declines on well-established fields.

“We spend most of our time resolving conflicts between households every agriculture season. It is tiring. I know generally where people have lived, but I am asked to make decisions with very little information,” remarks a headperson from Kafoteka Village Action Group in Chifunda Chiefdom.

Working with chiefs and local community resource management groups, USAID and Frankfurt Zoological Society are supporting land use planning and documentation of households’ land and implementation of inclusive and transparent land governance across these landscapes of hundreds of thousands of hectares. With more secure land rights, communities can better manage their land and designate areas for agricultural expansion that do not create conflict with wildlife.

With USAID support, community enumerators are now documenting customary land with GPS-enabled smartphones and large-scale maps. After holding sensitization sessions with communities about the customary land documentation process, enumerators walk each and every field boundary and record the names of landholders and potential beneficiaries, paying special attention to the rights of women and children. This leads to the production of a community map for validation, which is ultimately approved by the community and signed by the chief. The chief then distributes land documents, proving an individual’s rights to a particular piece of land, which not only decreases conflict but can lead to better long-term land use planning.

Preparing for the future is an urgent task. Using these community maps, the traditional leaders and community members then develop long-term land use plans that cater to human and wildlife needs.

“We know the elephants will not respect the boundaries of our fields or our land certificates. But if we can use land planning to decide where we should not allocate new fields, we may be able to live in peace,” explains Chief Chikwa. “With FZS [Frankfurt Zoological Society], we’ve done land use plans and identified the areas for conservation, agriculture, and expansion. These household field maps will feed into the bigger plan.”

The future of Zambia’s wildlife landscapes and those around the world will be determined by what happens in the multi-use zones surrounding national parks. Mapping customary land holdings and engaging in long-term land use planning is critical to reducing human-wildlife conflict. It can help communities strategically decide where to expand in order to reduce encroachment on animals’ habitats, and better balance community needs and conservation imperatives. Local communities must be active participants in this effort, helping to both secure their rights and ensure that Zambia’s rich biodiversity is protected for the next generation.

The U.S. government-supported Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade (PPA) offers a successful model for advancing responsible mineral sourcing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Great Lakes Region of Central Africa.

Minerals needed for our electronic devices such as computers and cellphones and renewable technologies such as electric vehicles are often sourced from conflict-affected countries with weak governance systems including the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  For these countries, mineral wealth can be a double-edged sword. Mining is a crucial economic sector and a direct source of livelihoods for an estimated two million artisanal and small-scale miners, but the sector is also known for its damaging effects: it can finance armed group activity, fuel corruption, and cause vast environmental damage, labor violations, and human rights abuses. 

Global demand for minerals is surging, especially for those minerals needed for low carbon technologies. More than ever before, we need better models to support responsible sourcing of minerals from high-risk areas. Responsible sourcing of minerals is an umbrella term used to describe sourcing designed to be “socially responsible,” “green,” or “sustainable” by implementing supply chain due diligence and sustainability schemes (Brink et al., 2019). For the last decade, the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade (PPA) has advanced responsible sourcing of minerals from the DRC and the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa. 

The Alliance is a multi-stakeholder effort that brings together leaders from the private sector, government, and civil society to advance supply chain solutions to the issue of conflict minerals. It focuses on minerals linked to conflict and instability in the region and prioritizes tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold. Jointly founded in 2011 by USAID and Department of State, the the Alliance offers funding and coordination support to organizations working in the Great Lakes region to develop verifiable conflict-free supply chains; align chain-of-custody programs and practices; encourage responsible sourcing; promote transparency; and bolster in-region civil society and governmental capacity. The  Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade Secretariat is managed by the civil society organization RESOLVE.

After ten years of supporting responsible sourcing, the leaders and influencers that make up the Alliance are assessing how to best address the next generation of challenges in responsible sourcing.  Since its inception, the Alliance has raised more than $2.5 million in private sector contributions, with an additional $36 million in parallel funding from USAID for mining governance and traceability projects.  Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade-supported projects include early support for the development of a conflict-free artisanal gold supply chain that led to the first export of conflict-free gold from the DRC to the United States, piloting community-based interventions to mitigate human rights abuses and increase women’s leadership in mining communities, and identifying and addressing barriers to responsible finance for the artisanal sector. Successful PPA projects such as conflict-free gold supply chains, may be scaled-up by large donors such as USAID. 

Virtual Delegation and the Next Generation

In December 2021, the Alliance held a virtual delegation to the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, where nearly 70 attendees from the private sector, civil society, and the U.S. government discussed shared objectives and alignment and U.S. Embassy priorities. 

Lucy Tamlyn, U.S. Ambassador to the Central African Republic; Michael Hammer, U.S. Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Marcia Eugenio, Director of the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking at the U.S. Department of Labor, opened the virtual delegation. PPA speakers included representatives from Apple, Google, Intel, and the civil society organization, IMPACT, among others.

“With its abundance of natural resources, the DRC is at the heart of the critical minerals discussion and will play a central role in the future of green energy,” Ambassador Hammer said in the opening remarks.

The Alliance members expressed continued commitment to responsible sourcing and identified shared challenges that would benefit from deeper engagement and collaboration with U.S. embassies in the region.  Alyssa Newman of Google reiterated that the Alliance, “is an important platform for connecting minerals governance to other issues and projects Google is investing in” and that Google would like it to continue to advance “due diligence and ethical supply chains, human rights, labor rights, and strengthen civil society and inclusive economic development.” Other potential areas of future collaboration that were raised included tax harmonization, the simplification of legal export processes, public-private co-investment opportunities, and the importance of tackling systemic issues including fiscal and governance reforms and land tenure.

As consumers and governments increasingly demand sustainable and ethical sourcing of minerals, public-private partnerships like the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade are playing an invaluable role in bringing stakeholders from across the mineral supply chain together to discuss roadblocks and advance key objectives. The Alliance brings large private sector players to the table with civil society organizations and allows members to collectively support promising projects to ensure that increased demand for critical minerals does not come at the expense of local communities. As Intel’s Adam Schafer reflects, “As a downstream company,  Intel’s partnership with the PPA [the Alliance] has been a crucial connection to engage with in-region programs and stakeholders to allow a responsible path for mineral sourcing. We look forward to continued collaboration as we work towards our goal to responsibly source all of our critical minerals.” 

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The Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade has a tripartite membership from across 47 partners representing private sector, civil society, and government. Private sector members represent several sectors, including electronics and communications, automotive, aerospace and jewelry. There are 25 member companies, which include Amazon, Apple, Ford, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Signet, and Verizon. PPA’s civil society and academic members come from 16 organizations and trade groups, including Global Communities, IMPACT, IPIS, Pact, Solidaridad, and The Sentry. Government representatives include USAID, US Department of State, US Department of Labor, GIZ, and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. The OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct is an observer. 

Photo credit: Mike Loch

In November 2021 a different kind of mobile library came to Bong County, Liberia. Through funding from USAID’s Land Evidence for Economic Rights, Gender, and Equality (LEVERAGE) Activity and in partnership with Landesa, Talking Books are bringing information about the Land Rights Act, passed in 2018, to 31 rural communities in the Panta, Gahn, and Wrumah clans. Talking Books are simple, hand-held audio players that deliver audio messages in local languages to low-literacy populations in areas without consistent electricity and/or internet connection.

The passage of  the Land Rights Act marked an important milestone for land rights in Liberia. The Land Rights Act provides for the first time a nationwide process for communities to legally certify and manage their customary lands. The Land Rights Act also strengthens rural women’s legal rights to access and manage land by recognizing women as community members, mandating that each community member be allocated land for housing and agriculture, and requiring equal participation by women in community land governance bodies. However, biased gender norms, widespread lack of knowledge about women’s land rights in Liberia, and gendered barriers to accessing information and services mean that women are often left out of decisions about land and are unable to exercise their land rights.

To address these issues, USAID is partnering with the NGO, Landesa, to pilot an information campaign using Talking Books to build awareness about women’s land rights in Liberia. USAID’s LEVERAGE program is distributing Talking Books to women-headed households, ethnic minorities, women’s groups, and youth groups. Each Talking Book contains eight pre-recorded “chapters” that explain the Land Rights Act in a variety of local languages and dialects using culturally relevant concepts. The chapters cover the basics of the Land Rights Act and other topics such as the steps that communities can take to map their lands and apply for a formal land certificate, how to create by-laws and committees to manage the land as a community, alternative dispute resolution, women’s legal land and property rights, and the differences between tribal certificates and deeds. The chapters teach the importance of, and the legal requirement for, equal representation of women on all land management committees. Messages also explain women’s and men’s inheritance rights and explain women’s and men’s land rights inside and outside of formal and customary marriages, consistently emphasizing the rights of women as citizens and community members.   

Instead of attending a one-time community training session, people can listen to the messages on Talking Books at their own pace, as many times as they like, and while doing other activities. This flexibility is especially important for women who face additional constraints on their time, mobility, and access to information and public spaces. Listeners can also record their questions and comments about the messages on the Talking Books for LEVERAGE activity staff. Using Talking Books also enables women, men, and communities to continue to learn about their land rights during the COVID-19 pandemic when frequent large gatherings are not safe.

After listening to the Talking Books, communities hold a town hall meeting to discuss their questions with local land tenure experts. Town halls include separate sessions for women to raise their questions and challenges with land rights in a setting that is less public and less influenced by gendered dynamics of public speaking. Questions that community members raise during town halls and that they record on the Talking Books will inform segments of Landesa’s nationally broadcast Land Is Life radio show. The show features prominent Liberian personalities andlinks communities across the country to a national conversation on women’s land rights. 

Bringing information on women’s land rights to women, men, and youth and fostering community conversations about women’s land rights at a time when Liberia’s communities are beginning the process of formalizing land rights and establishing community land governance bodies is critical. The LEVERAGE activity aims to increase women’s participation in land governance and supports their secure and equitable access to land according to the law. 

Why Women’s Land Rights Matter

Ownership and control over assets are central to women’s economic empowerment and their ability to contribute to local, national, and global economies. For many women, the most valuable of these assets are the land and natural resources from which they earn a living, provide for their families, and invest in their communities. Through programs, partnerships, research and policy reforms, USAID is working on the ground to address  the barriers women face to accessing and controlling land, as well as the benefits that secure land and resource rights bring to women, their families, and communities.

Across the U.S. Government, USAID is a leader in using evidence.  Evidence-based programming is a foundation for effective development. One of INRM’s main tasks is to assist USAID’s Operating Units with the use of evidence to support integrated ENRM programming. For example, using evidence and knowledge to strengthen gender equality and social inclusion is a core focus of INRM, which is reflected across all of its activities and buy-ins. INRM deploys a combination of methods for evidence generation and synthesis, aiming to improve the utility of knowledge products to inform future programming decisions.

See below for some related updates from INRM and resources from across USAID that explore the use of evidence to support the achievement of development objectives.

In this digest:

INRM’s current evidence work

• Applying systematic approaches to fill evidence gaps for artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Colombia
• Adapting analytical solutions to efficiently gather evidence on economic well-being in Madagascar
• Using a combination of methods to investigate impacts of COVID-19 on USAID environment programming
• Using evidence to test hypotheses about the effectiveness of participatory natural resources management strategic approaches

Additional USAID resources on evidence

• USAID Draft Evidence Framework
• Strengthening Evidence-Based Development
• Evidence in Action
• Advancing Gender and the Environment

Read the full digest here.