Message to COP27: Land Rights and Recognition are intrinsically linked to Climate, Biodiversity and Environmental Safeguards
The 2022 United National Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) COP will be the 27th convening of this group and will take place from November 6th-18th. The stakes are higher than ever as a series of recent scientific reports has shown that global climate change affecting nature, people’s lives and infrastructure everywhere. Its dangerous and pervasive impacts are increasingly evident in every region of our world. These impacts are hindering efforts to meet basic human needs and they threaten sustainable development across the globe. (IPCC 6th report 2022) The same scientific consensus shows a growing recognition of the role of land, land tenure security and forests in climate mitigation, adaptation and resiliency goals.
Land provides the principal basis for human livelihoods and well-being including the supply of food, freshwater and multiple other ecosystem services, including cultural and spiritual, as well as biodiversity. Tenure is a critical element for the prosperity of people living in climate-affected areas and ensuring the long-term sustainability of ecosystems. This evidence has led to greater attention of the international community in support of the recognition of tenure rights, and increased investments, as for example within the Government and Private Funders Pledge of $1.7 Billion USD, announced during the UNFCCC COP 26 — which can be better supported by Indigenous-led Shandia Vision.
The climate and land interact with, and influence, one another (IPCC 2019). Mounting evidence demonstrates that insecure land and forest tenure rights, as well as inadequate recognition of customary access, affects the ability of people and communities to advance climate adaptation and mitigation (IPCC 2018). Land use, spatial planning and regulations that incorporate Indigenous and local knowledge have high levels of mitigation and adaptation capacity to climate collapse (IPCC 2019). Scientists, global leaders and thinkers and First Nations peoples around the world continue to stress the value of listening to Indigenous voices and local communities to guide climate actions related to land and forest use.
Global Land Alliance understands that climate adaptation, mitigation and resiliency pathways are cross-cutting across all of our programs in advancing land governance to achieve healthy relationships with land, life and natural resources, emphasizing local and Indigenous knowledge. Likewise, land tenure projects need to include climate change mitigation, adaptation and resiliency strategies therein due to this inherent relationship.
Global Land Alliance believes in the following principles for land-based climate solutions:
Securing Rights to Land and Forest for Communities: Recent research demonstrates that tenure insecurity is a significant indirect driver of deforestation and a recent global assessment found that land tenure security interventions largely led to positive human well-being and environmental outcomes (Tseng et al., 2020). The core of GLA’s work is to advance perceptions of tenure security, and land governance which enables conditions for tenure security. By scaling up solutions of land issues, GLA sets the foundation for improved results through our four programs: Prindex, Land Administration, Community-Based Resource Management, and Community Land Access and Security.
Promote Land and Forest Governance Devolution: We understand that communities know their land most intimately, and that rights-based approaches that center local empowerment, inclusion, participation and consent are key to improve land governance agendas. Global Land Alliance knows that actions to devolve power and rights to local governments and communities are enabling conditions of positive forest and livelihood outcomes. Industries seeking to exploit local lands claimed by communities, such as logging, mining, energy, and agriculture. Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge can contribute to reducing the vulnerability of communities to climate change (IPCC 2022).
Supporting Indigenous self determination, recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and supporting Indigenous knowledge-based adaptation is critical to reducing climate change risks and effective adaptation.
Support Community-Based Resource management. Community-based resource management is an umbrella term to describe the use, management and conservation of natural resources by communities. Community-based resource management can include statutory rights and/or customary arrangements. Customary tenure systems are comprised of a set of (usually informal and unwritten) rules and norms that govern community allocation, use, access and transfer of land and other natural resources. Customary tenure is often associated with indigenous and local community administered land in accordance with their customs. Community-Based Resource Management empowers local communities to manage natural resources and encourages a long term decision-making horizon.
Enhance Livelihoods and Sustainable Stewardship. When communities obtain financial support from external actors or material benefits from their activities it can provide the incentives for investment in sustainable long-term positive land, forest and livelihood outcomes. There is a need for both short-term and longer-term material benefits for communities to manage land and forests sustainably. Ideally, many of these material incentives come directly from rights devolution and the management and use of forest resources by communities.
Identify Land Governance Policies that may promote Deforestation: A detailed diagnosis or understanding of how land formalization campaigns or policies may promote deforestation. For example, in one land project GLA identified a government policy which required the majority of the landholding to be in cultivation. This policy promoted the use of slash and burn practices being implemented in order to show agricultural cultivation and justify land rights claims from individuals seeking to gain possession over informal land parcels. GLA has also seen that projects, specifically within environmentally protected areas, can be instrumental in identifying unsustainable practices and helping to explore alternatives that promote sustainable livelihoods and resource conservation.
Create or fortify partnerships among stakeholders which uphold environmental safeguards. Communities, civil society groups, and local governments often are aware of climate change threats and are actively working to mitigate these. Land projects that collect cadastral information identify local-level stakeholders and, furthermore, obtain valuable information on the realities of local communities. Land projects have the potential to identify and unite stakeholders on various levels, making communal/civil society concerns and needs heard while also allowing for the implementation of larger national and international frameworks, standards, and goals which seek to combat climate change.
Promote Gender- and Socio-Economic Based Equity. Reducing inequality has positive climate outcomes. The participation of women in decision making processes can contribute to a more equitable and socially just adaptation to climate change. Especially at the local level, women can be agents of change to enable both increased gender equity and climate resilience. 8 out of 10 people displaced by climate-related events are women.
How do we promote these land-based climate solutions? Recent illustrative projects include:
Opportunities Assessment on Collective Tenure Rights in 18 Countries, Forest Carbon Partnership Fund – in partnership with Rights and Resources Initiative à a study to better understand opportunities to advance collective land tenure security in the context of REDD+.
Environmental and Social Impacts of rural land titling projects, Inter-American Development Bank a study to generate lessons learned and socio-environmental management tools based on projects that were financed by the IDB, which will serve as benchmark for the design and implementation of future operations and contribute to reducing social conflicts and improving social and environmental management.
Cross country analysis of Environmental and Social safeguards for five IDB land tenure projects, Inter-American Development Bank - GLA’s cross disciplinary team examined the operational barriers to implementing social and environmental safeguards in land tenure project implementation. The study provides recommendations for operationalizing the standards and norms around gender equality, women’s land rights, social inclusion and community participation, among others.
Left Out? Risk to Informal Wives from Proactive Land Tenure Formalization and Titling Campaigns - GLA is self-funding research study which demonstrates that rural women in informal marriages, especially secondary spouses, are systemically being left out of formalization campaigns. Furthermore, they are at risk of being in an even worse state than before these campaigns. Inclusion of informal wives is essential to ensuring that women and their children from these informal relationships have equal opportunity to men to benefit from formalization campaigns.
Land for Prosperity Activity, Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) Task, USAID in partnership with TetraTech ARD Colombia - GLA’s Community Participation and Inclusion Desk champions community participation throughout every project’s lifecycle. GLA’s international team of GESI experts highlighted COVID19-related barriers and the risks of excluding vulnerable population and provided solutions and tools to facilitate their inclusion.
Gender-Focused Opportunity Assessment for Securing Collective Forest Tenure in 18 Carbon Fund Countries, World Bank in partnership with Resource Equity International à GLA completed a study to better understand gender- based opportunities to advance collective land tenure security in the context of REDD+.
Securing Forest Tenure: Analytical Framework, World Bank - co-contributed and co-authored an Analytical Framework as a product of a World Bank initiative on Securing Forest Tenure Rights for Rural Development, which seeks to enhance the World Bank’s capacity and effectiveness when dealing with land rights issues in forest areas. The overall objective of the initiative is to provide information and guidance—to client countries, indigenous peoples and local communities, World Bank managers and staff, and other donors—to strengthen forest tenure security in forest landscapes as a foundation for rural development.
Securing Forest Tenure: Forest Tenure Assessment Tools, World Bank à GLA served as a technical advisor on the Forest Tenure Assessment Tool (FTAT) pilot study in Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar. The FTAT aims to assess community forest tenure security in specific contexts (national and sub-national) by providing methodological guidance and working with key stakeholders to score 42 indicators of the 9 key elements of forest tenure articulated in the Analytical Framework.
Agroforestry Development Program, Dominican Republic, Unidad Técnica Ejecutora de Proyectos de Desarrollo Agroforestal de la Presidencia and the Inter-American Development Bank à assess the social risk of displacement, meetings with local community leaders, focus groups and interviews in Hondo Valle provided the basis for the methodology, in 7 watershed areas of the Dominican Republic.
Analysis of Laws Affecting Indigenous and Local Communities’ Rights and Access to Freshwater in a set of Focus Countries, The Nature Conservancy à study which analyzed legal access to freshwater rights and resources in Colombia and Ecuador, as well as prepared and scoped for a full analysis to take place in early 2020 in Gabon, Angola and Brazil
As the parties of the UNFCCC convene in Egypt next week, GLA seeks to call maximum attention to the role of land and forest use in climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience and to continue to lift up the voices of local communities and Indigenous peoples whose long histories of land stewardship can help to show the way forward for managing the land-related elements of climate change.