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The NGO Namati, along with partner IDLO, has just issued a new report entitled “Protecting Community Lands and Resources.” Over the past decade there has been a strong shift in land tenure work away from projects that provide for individualized titling of lands and towards the recognition of customary tenure systems and the formalization of rights held by communities. Countries adopt various approaches to formalization but often pass laws that are, on their face, designed to help protect communities against illegal or coercive dispossession and loss of rights by documenting rights.

This report analyzes efforts in 58 communities in Liberia, Mozambique and Uganda to use national laws to document and secure their land rights. Using randomized control trials, the study compared groups that had varying levels of legal support from access to copies of laws to assistance from professional lawyers. Among the findings: “when communities have the responsibility to complete most project activities on their own, they are motivated to take the work more seriously, integrate and internalize the legal education more thoroughly, address intra-community obstacles more proactively, and claim greater “ownership” over the community land documentation process than when a legal or technical professional completes all this work on behalf of the community.”

The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Information Programs, recently published an article that highlights the PRADD project. PRADD has operated in the Central African Republic since 2007 and assists the national government comply with the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. The project goal is to increase the amount of alluvial diamonds entering the formal chain of custody while improving the benefits accruing to diamond miners and diamond mining communities. PRADD is managed by USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights Division in Washington. Online new aggregator, allAfrica, also ran the Department of State story.

The Rights and Resources Initiative has a new study out that explores the issue of community and indigenous people’s rights to forests and discusses how expanding the bundle of rights that communities hold over forest – by creating and enforcing communal rights to access, use, and manage forests and forest products – can lead to various positive outcomes. The study is a comparative analysis of the legal framework of the 27 most forested countries around the world.

Top on their list of policy recommendations: “Place tenure rights high on the global development agenda.”

On June 20th, the One Campaign posted a blog about USAID’s Kenya Justice Project. The TrustLaw blog of Thompson Reuters also picked up the story.

This innovative project works with local traditional authorities to increase understanding of the contributions women make to their community. This awareness effort is combined with discussions of the gender equality provisions of the Kenyan Constitution. Under the new (2010) Constitution elders and local leaders have increased responsibility for protecting and enforcing constitutional rights, including women’s rights to use and control property – something that customary legal systems do not always do. As a result of these conversations and, no doubt, other factors, elders in Ol Posimoru Kenya have drafted a new local constitution (a “katiba’) that agrees to protect women’s property rights. This is a small step forward but may set the stage for further improvements for women in Kenya.

The heads of four Rome-based agencies write about the opportunities to align food security initiatives and sustainable development as part of the Rio+20 agenda in a recent post to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs blog, Global Food For Thought. The article mentions the importance of strong tenure systems and notes that countries can use the Voluntary Guidelines for reference in drafting land and other resource administration laws.

In a recent New York Times op-ed Roy Prosterman and Darryl Vhugen of the U.S. NGO Landesa highlight some of what Myanmar’s government will need to do to promote sustainable growth in the country. It certainly needs to attract investment and at first blush things look very encouraging: a variety of investors are interested in a number of projects – particularly building out infrastructure. But the article points out that other infrastructure – the intangible, institutional infrastructure that supports a rule of law and protects rights, including property rights and rights to trade – also needs attending to.

Specifically, they point to the need to secure land rights for Myanmar’s people to protect against uncompensated takings and to encourage investment. As we’ve learned around the world, secure land rights create positive incentives to invest capital and labor in land and so help improve productivity while also encouraging the kind of “alertness” to profitable opportunities that motivates entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, as Prosterman and Vhugen point out, the current legal and policy environment is already falling short and proposed new laws threaten to make the situation even worse.

Weak rights may create short-term gains for some, but recognizing and formalizing the land rights of Myanmar’s women and men will help build the kind of institutional infrastructure that sustains growth over the long-term.

Last week, the United States hosted the 2012 Intercessional meetings of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). The KPCS is a voluntary process that diamond producing and diamond buying countries agree to, in order to prevent ‘conflict diamonds’ from entering the market. Ambassador Milovanovic and the State Department serve as the chair for activities this year; however, USAID is playing a role due to the increasing emphasis on development as a critical component to successful implementation of the KPCS.

Through implementation of the Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) Project, USAID has found that one of the most effective ways to address mineral conflict is to support economic development in the communities where these diamonds are produced, thereby reducing the dependence on small-scale mining and the potential for diamonds being used to purchase weapons. Despite clear linkages, such as those demonstrated by PRADD, development has not been at the forefront of efforts to support countries with their implementation of the Kimberley Process.

For this reason, USAID, the World Bank and the Diamond Development Initiative (an international NGO) convened a conference titled, Enhancing the Development Potential of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining. Hosting this conference immediately after official Kimberley Process meetings allowed government officials from diamond-producing countries, diamond industry companies, non-governmental organizations, and donor agencies the opportunity to discuss development models for addressing challenges facing artisanal miners.

USAID Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and the Environment Assistant Administrator Eric Postel opened the conference with these remarks, “USAID hopes this conference can further demonstrate the need to integrate development efforts within the Kimberley Process framework. Without improved governance and economic development, miners have limited incentive to operate within the rules of the Kimberley Process.”

Artisanal miners are the poorest of the poor, even though they produce some of the finest diamonds sold in the developed world. An estimated 20 million people rely on this work for their livelihoods with an additional 100 million reliant upon related services, yet artisanal and small-scale mining communities have little or no access to quality health care, basic education, and credit and financing. Conference sessions and many of the hallway conversations centered on the lessons learned and best practices to these socioeconomic issues, along with environmental concerns.

Sharing conference participants’ understanding of the wide range of challenges and possible solutions was the goal of the conference. Postel summed this up by commenting, “USAID hopes these lessons learned and best practices are shared and can serve as a basis for enhanced development of the artisanal mining sector and compliance with the Kimberley Process.”

The Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security is an internationally negotiated document by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) under the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). The negotiations, chaired by the United States, occurred over a nine month period and involved 96 member countries and over 30 civil society organizations. The document was adopted by the CFS in May 2012; attention will now shift to implementation of the guidelines.

National policies and customs on tenure vary widely from country to country, even between countries in the same region. The Voluntary Guidelines provide a framework for countries to use in the establishment of laws and policies, strategies, and programs which clarify and secure tenure rights. It accommodates for many differing viewpoints on ‘Best Practices’ and introduces a broad range of structures that can be relevant in all parts of the world.

The final (adopted) draft of the Voluntary Guidelines is now available from the FAO website in the following languages:

English I español I français I русский I العربية I 中国的

Released May 2012: Voluntary Guidelines At A Glance (PDF, 234kb)