Post Type: Article

No-take fishing zones in the Caribbean’s near-shore and reef areas may be an important strategy for sustaining marine ecosystems and conserving fish populations, according to preliminary research. Meanwhile, the increasing use of no-take reserves calls for recognition of the vital role that local communities play in natural resources management and their rights to benefit from that management. Shared management of ecosystems and resources requires equitable and appropriate distribution of both responsibilities and benefits among all stakeholders.

In order to protect the Caribbean’s highly threatened near-shore and reef ecosystems, local communities must be engaged in decision making and stewardship of natural resources. If the community is not consulted, there can be significant local opposition and non-compliance because no-take reserves prohibit the main livelihood of these communities. In order to continue to earn a livelihood, fishermen have been known to sneak in at night or dynamite the reefs in order to push fish to the surface.

On the other hand, with sufficient resources, no-take areas have the potential to serve as tools of empowerment for the adjacent community. If the right to manage marine resources is recognized and local people are consulted in the establishment of reserves, the community can be an active partner in effective monitoring of human activities and ecosystem conditions. The state may help communities restrict access and enforce prohibitions by deploying coast guard, marine police, or other resources to patrol extensive open waters and coastlines.

This has worked in Jamaica, where subsistence fishers represented by organizations such as the Bluefields Bay Fishermen’s Friendly Society advocated for the establishment of a reserve in Bluefields Bay with strict enforcement of no-take restrictions.

When effectively monitored, no-take reserves provide an area for populations to recover free from fishing pressure. In the above cited study, fish grew bigger and laid more eggs and coral grew faster within the reserve. Rebounding populations then expanded into habitat outside the no-take areas. In the mid-1990s in St. Lucia, the total catch around an extensive closure of coral reef fishing grounds increased significantly, in some places by as much as 90 percent.

The gain in fish harvested and lives improved around the no-fish zones depends on government authorities working side-by-side with community leaders to agree on strategies for implementing codes of enforcement and rules of engagement.

Read more about a related USAID project: The Indonesia Marine and Climate Support (IMACS) is a four-year project that aims to improve marine resources management in Indonesia.

A new opinion piece describes how secure land rights can improve agricultural productivity and food security. In Why Strong Land Rights Advance Food Security, Eric Postel, USAID’s Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and Environment and Tjada McKenna, Feed the Future’s Deputy Coordinator for Development, explain what development practitioners can do to improve land rights and food security in a multitude of development projects.

This past July, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah unveiled the Feed the Future Progress Report on Capitol Hill as part of an event hosted by the Senate Hunger Caucus. The results were measurable—the U.S. Government has supported over 7 million farmers and 12 million malnourished children in just under 3 years. In order to fully realize food security goals going forward, we must address the lack of secure land tenure and property rights in many countries. Clear land use rights lead to increased investment in agricultural inputs and incentives to employ sustainable farming practices–both of which result in higher yields and ultimately improved food security. According to Dr. Gregory Myers, Division Chief for USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights Division, “In order to lift the next one billion out of poverty, we cannot rely on public resources alone – we must leverage private sector investment in agriculture. For USAID, private investment can be small, medium, or large, but it must be responsible and the rights of local communities must be recognized. Globally, we need more data on the impact of large-scale land investments.”

Recognizing this need, USAID is striving to build knowledge around land tenure and property rights, including large-scale land investments, through the Evaluation, Research and Communication (ERC) project. USAID’s Bureau for Food Security (BFS) leads the Feed the Future initiative and supports Agrilinks, a web site that captures new learning in food security and agricultural development, disseminates it among practitioners, USAID mission staff, and other donors, and connects those actors to each other in order to improve development outcomes around the world. Using a knowledge-driven approach to food security and agricultural development, Agrilinks aims to extend and multiply the impact of the learning and innovation developed through agricultural development research and practice.

Become a member of Agrilinks and take part in working groups, facilitated online discussions, closed e-consultations, #AskAg Twitter chats, and Feed the Future stakeholder meetings with other food security and land/resource tenure professionals.

The G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty in ten years through a partnership between G8 members, African nations and the private sector. In order to increase production at a rate needed to achieve food security, the New Alliance seeks to accelerate responsible investment in African agriculture and commit to coordinated policy reforms. Each of the nine New Alliance countries (Benin, Malawi, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania) have developed Cooperation Frameworks with G8 and private sector partners that outline their shared commitments and responsibilities.

The New Alliance recognizes that good land governance is critical to improving food security and nutrition; each country’s cooperation framework details commitments to strengthening land tenure and resource governance. Under the New Alliance, partners commit to support the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security and develop pilot programs for their implementation. The cooperation frameworks and key policy commitments related to land governance in each of the New Alliance countries are below.

Burkina Faso’s key policy commitments include providing incentives for private sector investment in agriculture; establishing and operating rural land agencies and village land commissions in 302 rural districts; drafting transparent procedures for access to land in state or local government-developed areas; delineating and registering the land areas already developed; and issuing documents relative to land use rights in all the developed areas, including for women.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework (English) / French
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Burkina Faso

Cote d’Ivoire’s key policy commitments include securing rural land tenure and facilitating access to land for smallholder farmers and private enterprises; demarcating village lands and issuing land tenure certificates; extending and operationalizing the land information system (SIF); and strengthening the capacity of all agencies involved in implementing the Rural Land Act.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework (English) / French
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Cote d’Ivoire

Ethiopia is committed to developing and implementing a transparent land tenure policy; strengthening land use rights to stimulate investment in agriculture; extending land certification to all rural land holders, initially focusing on Agricultural Growth Program (AGP) districts (woredas); refining land law, if necessary, to encourage long-term land leasing and strengthen contract enforcement for commercial farms; and further developing and implementing guidelines of corporate responsibility for land tenure and responsible agricultural investment.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Ethiopia

Ghana’s commitments include providing incentives for private sector investment in agriculture and developing a database of suitable land for investors.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Ghana

Mozambique’s key policy commitments include developing and improving the transparency and efficiency of land policy and land administration; developing innovative methods for increasing the availability and access to credit by smallholders; reforming land use rights (DUAT) system and accelerate issuance of DUATs to allow smallholders (women and men) to secure tenure and to promote agribusiness investment.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework (English) / Portuguese
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Mozambique

Tanzania’s key policy commitments include developing and implementing a transparent land tenure policy; providing certificates of land rights (statutory or customary) for smallholders and investors; and developing an instrument that clarifies roles of land implementing agencies.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Tanzania

Nigeria’s key policy commitments include adopting a Systematic Land Titling and Registration (SLTR) process that respects FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Nigeria

Benin’s key policy commitments include facilitating and safeguarding access to and use of land; extending the development of rural land ownership plans to cover the entire country; and setting up a trustworthy information system on rural land ownership.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework

Malawi’s key policy commitments include improving access to land, water and basic infrastructure to support food security and nutrition. The Government of Malawi has also committed to enact a new land bill by June 2015.
New Alliance Cooperation Framework
USAID’s Land and Resource Tenure Profile for Malawi

There is growing recognition among governments, civil society organizations and the media that clear, secure land tenure and property rights are a necessary condition for achieving food security and better nutrition. Devex is currently hosting a month-long campaign–“Land Matters”–which examines why and how land tenure and property rights are related to a variety of critical development issues, beginning with food security. According to Dr. Gregory Myers, USAID Division Chief, Land Tenure and Property Rights, “secure property rights create positive incentives that enable more efficient and effective investment in land, labor, capital, and improved practices in food production and nutrition.”

Visit the Land Matters campaign site

Since the ousting of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya in 2011, the country has been on a shaky path to peace and security. Libyans have been dealing with the consequences of Qadhafi’s rule and the short, destructive civil war that followed his ouster. Due to a long history of property expropriation by the Qadhafi regime and disregard for long-standing customary claims to land in rural areas, issues relating to housing, land, and property (HLP) rights are often the cause of grievances and conflicts.

In March 2013, the Ministry of Justice of the Government of Libya issued a Draft Law regarding properties expropriated by the state since 1978. The law includes provisions regarding restitution and compensation for those whose property was expropriated by the state under Law No. 4 – a provision the Qadhafi regime used to justify wide-ranging expropriations.

USAID’s Supporting the Justice and Security Sector through Property Rights (SJSSPR) Project elicited Libyan citizens’ significant concerns about HLP issues, supported local efforts to resolve HLP conflicts, and identified how HLP issues can be better addressed in order to contribute to long-term peace and security. The SJSSPR project supported a legal analysis of the Draft Law by Landesa, a U.S.-based organization with extensive international experience on HLP issues. Their analysis suggests that, with further refinement, the Draft Law could be an important step for achieving long-term peace and security by addressing historical HLP injustices.

The legal analysis noted that the Draft Law is an important first step toward resolving long-standing HLP grievances in Libya, but identified several opportunities for improving it. Those opportunities include specifying the historical period for which citizens can file compensation or restitution claims, providing details regarding the restitution process, and recognizing the right of women to participate in and benefit from a restitution program. See the full analysis of the Draft Law, including the recommendations and read more about Land Tenure and Property Rights in Libya.

A guest post by Dr. Steven Lawry, Global Lead, Land Tenure & Property Rights at DAI, a USAID partner and global development company committed to shaping a more livable world. Follow them @DAIGlobal

Outside of national parks and private land, roughly 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s land is administered under customary tenure—arrangements based on a society’s customs and history. In a highly uncertain economic environment, a customary land right has proven for many poor people to be the one reliable asset over which they have secure control. Yet despite its pervasiveness as the principal institutional arrangement for providing access to secure land rights, customary tenure is rarely recognized under statutory law.

Statutory recognition of customary tenure would afford customary rights holders many economic and social advantages. Of immediate benefit would be the potential to halt the growing phenomenon of state-owned land being sold or leased to large-scale investors even while it is held in common trust under customary tenure arrangements. Statutory recognition also has the potential benefit of bringing customary land administration under the domain of civil law, giving equal rights to women on matters of property ownership, inheritance, and use.

Customary tenure arrangements represent intact systems of economic, social, and cultural rights—so why not focus on protecting and deepening those rights? Neither the Universal Declaration of Human Rights nor the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights recognize the right to land among the rights that signatories agree to recognize and uphold. However, many of the protected rights, including the rights to shelter, food and livelihoods, arguably are contingent upon the right to land.

Several sub-Saharan African countries have taken important steps toward extending statutory recognition to customary land rights, on par with freehold and public tenure. Botswana was a pioneer in this movement; its 1968 Tribal Land Act placed customary rights at the center of the national tenure system, and made the administration of customary rights subject to civil authority, removing traditional authorities from the land administration process. Recent land policy reforms in Kenya, Mozambique, and South Sudan have similarly extended full statutory recognition to customary tenure arrangements.

International human rights law should codify the Right to Land, including the right to land held under customary tenure arrangements. This measure is long overdue and makes good sense, especially for sub-Saharan Africa, where a plurality of tenure systems—customary, freehold title, and public—should enjoy equal recognition before the law.

By Dr. Gregory Myers, USAID Division Chief, Land Tenure and Property Rights

On July 30, I had the pleasure of joining Landesa President Tim Hanstad at Global Washington in Seattle for a rich discussion of the Global Farms Race: Implications of Food Security, Poverty, and Foreign Investment.

At the heart of this conversation are the rights of communities and individuals to decide for themselves how to use and profit from land. Do they possess clear and documented land and resource rights? Who has the power to make decisions? According to a recent World Bank report, up to 90% of the land in Sub-Saharan Africa is undocumented, which makes it extremely difficult to determine who has a right to what land and resources. Consequently, decisions are being made for individuals and communities, rather than by them. This is unsustainable and will undermine the objectives we seek to achieve, particularly improved food security and nutrition.

Two of the biggest policy challenges are the lack of good data and out-of-date laws. In many countries in which USAID works, decades of civil war, fairly recent independence, and repeated changes in government have resulted in land records that are non-existent, incomplete, or overlapping – making it very difficult to figure out who owns what and how much land has been sold or leased to whom. Combine this with laws and policies that do not recognize the property rights of many citizens, and it spells potential disaster for smallholders around the world.

In the global farms race, the rush to purchase or lease agricultural land to feed the world’s growing population tends to overshadow the slower process of determining ownership and boundaries. Governments sell or lease what is legally public land to investors for agricultural export. However, the purchaser/lessor may find smallholders on the land. Frequently, commercial investors do not know that the land has been grazed or farmed by local people for centuries. So, who is the “bad guy” in this deal? Who is responsible for ensuring that local, indigenous and customary rights are recognized, or that they have land on which to make a livelihood? There are few “bad guys” in this scenario, but many bad decisions. It should be those who occupy the land, who in fact have property rights, who are responsible for making decisions about what happens with the land and who benefits.

Because these issues are so fundamental to global development goals, USAID is partnering with country governments around the globe to invest in programs that improve land governance systems. Together with our partners across Europe and in many bilateral organizations such as the World Bank, IFAD and FAO, we are encouraging governments to recognize that occupants indeed have property rights and that is a fundamental requirement for economic development and sustainable resource management. One of the most important tools to address the lack of clear land tenure is the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, which were adopted by the UN Committee on Food Security in May 2012. The Voluntary Guidelines provide a framework that policy makers can refer to when creating laws and policies to strengthen land tenure and resource rights. Improved access and rights to land create incentives for better agricultural productivity, which leads to better food security and nutrition.

In Ethiopia for example, a USAID-supported land certification program has helped to transform property rights, enhance agricultural productivity, and limit resource degradation. In the area where the land certification program was implemented, crop yields have increased between 11 percent and 40 percent per acre over three years with no other inputs. When people have land certificates, they are more inclined to conserve land, water, and wildlife and invest in productivity.

Secure property rights are also extremely important for women. We know when women do not have property rights, their home and land may be taken by relatives. There is a greater likelihood that their health and security are jeopardized and their children may be forced to work or marry at an early age instead of attending school. When women have more secure rights to land and resources, they are more likely to invest in agricultural inputs, produce food to feed their family, participate in household decision making, earn income, and access credit.

USAID is seeking to expand the knowledge and data on the impact of land rights programs and large-scale land acquisitions through a new Evaluation, Research and Communication (ERC) project, launched in May. Follow me on Twitter @Gregorywmyers where I share results and engage in the growing global dialogue on land and resource governance.

A guest post by Ashok Sircar, India Program Director of Landesa, a USAID partner and global organization that partners with governments to help secure land rights of the poor. Follow them @Landesa_Global

There is growing recognition that India cannot solve many of its critical development challenges if it doesn’t help the 20 million landless rural families and the millions more who lack legal rights to the land they till.

This recognition has sparked a flurry of promising state-level programs and a historic new national bill that aims to eliminate rural landlessness and land insecurity. These new programs are now recognized for their potential to dramatically reduce landlessness, hunger, poverty, and land insecurity in rural India and hold significant potential in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Myanmar, to name a few.

The draft National Rural Homestead Bill, 2013, now awaits formal approval and adoption. The proposed Bill envisions a democratic and market-friendly land reform program that would provide India’s 20 million landless families with tennis court-sized plots of land. Such a program would require less than one-half of one percent of the roughly 400 million acres of India’s present arable land to end landlessness.

This national program builds off experience with successful homestead land allocation in the states of West Bengal (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Karnataka and Odisha.

Research shows that these micro plots of about one-tenth an acre can provide significant economic and nutritional benefits to landless families by providing them sufficient space to grow food, build a house, keep small livestock, and develop other livelihood options. Not to mention the other tangible benefits: security, a stake in the future, opportunity, incentive, access to credit, and a host of government poverty alleviation programs.

Such land can be sourced through a combination of purchase on the private market and allocation of existing government land.

Already more than 250,000 families have benefited through the state programs. These families now have the incentive and opportunity to climb out of extreme poverty. And, just as importantly, they are building a positive relationship with their government.

Another promising state-level program has been implemented in Andhra Pradesh (funded by the Omidyar Network). The state uses low-cost legal aid workers to deliver landownership to millions of rural families. These paralegals fan out across the countryside ensuring that poor families have all of the documents they need to prove and protect their ownership rights, and making sure that all of those documents are correct and valid – at a cost of about $3 per family. This allows Andhra Pradesh to efficiently address a sleeping giant of a problem: the fact that 20 percent of land titles in the state have some irregularity that makes owners insecure—which we know dampens investment and growth.

Lastly, there has been renewed focus across India on the issue of women’s land rights. State governments can maximize the impact of existing land programs by including women’s names on land titles. Increasing evidence points to a strong association between women’s land ownership and myriad desired gains, including increased nutrition and schooling for children, and reduced domestic violence. West Bengal now ensures women’s names are included and come first on “pattas” (land titles). And Odisha is working with Landesa to address the needs of widows, abandoned women, and other women-headed households, many of whom are landless and vulnerable.

India’s national program on the empowerment of adolescent girls is even incorporating land rights into its curriculum to help ensure girls know their rights and can access their family land to support themselves and their families.

Getting to the root cause of poverty is difficult, but in the case of India, land rights can provide poor rural Indians with the opportunity to improve their lives and spark inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

In June, Ethiopian State Minister of Agriculture Ato Sileshi Getahun joined USAID/Ethiopia Mission Director Dennis Weller, to officially launch the Land Administration to Nurture Development (LAND) project. The LAND project builds on the success of two previous USAID projects that supported the certification of rural land rights, the reform of federal and regional laws governing land administration and land use, and the strengthening of government capacity to administer these rights. Those previous projects were the Ethiopia Land Tenure Administration Program (ELTAP) and the Ethiopia Land Administration Program (ELAP).

Under the ELAP and ELTAP projects, USAID, in collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia, surveyed over one million parcels of land. Two hundred thousand of these parcels received certificates that officially recognize the landholder. Since the projects began in 2004, poverty rates have fallen by more than ten percent in areas where property rights were strengthened through certification, and household incomes have increased by up to twenty percent. As a result of these successes, several donor agencies have committed to expanding the benefits of land certification to millions more households, primarily in the highland areas of Northwest Ethiopia.

The LAND project, which will be carried out under President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative and implemented by TetraTech, aims to translate the lessons learned and successes from the highlands to the pastoral areas. The LAND project has four components:

• legal and policy reform at the national and local levels;
• strengthening the capacity of national, regional and local land officials;
• strengthening the capacity of Ethiopian university and technical institutes;
• and increasing community land use rights in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas to facilitate market linkages and improve livelihoods.

Learn more about the impact of land certificates on income, food security and resilience among Ethiopian pastoralists.

A new report from the World Bank suggests that Africa, which is home to half the world’s uncultivated land, can significantly reduce poverty, achieve rapid economic growth, and increase food security by improving land governance systems and strengthening land tenure and resource rights.

“Land governance issues need to be front and center in Africa to maintain and better its surging growth and achieve its development promise,” says Frank Byamugisha, author of the report and lead land specialist in the World Bank’s Africa region. “Our findings provide a useful, policy-oriented roadmap for African countries and communities to secure their own land for building shared prosperity.”

The report’s action plan calls for:

• Championing reforms and investments to document all communal lands and prime lands that are individually owned.
• Regularizing tenure rights of squatters on public land in urban slums that are home to 60 percent of urban dwellers in Africa.
• Tackling the weak governance and corruption endemic to the land governance system in many African countries which often favor the status quo and harm the interests of poor people.
• Generating the political will of African governments to mobilize behind these land reforms and attract the political and financial buy-in of the international development community.

The World Bank also reiterated its support for and endorsement of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, calling the guidelines “a major international instrument to inform specific policy reforms, including our own procedures and guidance to clients.”

This is the latest in a series of high-level statements of support for the Voluntary Guidelines since they were adopted by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in May 2012. The focus of the international community is now shifting to implementation, which will require coordinated action by donors, stakeholder governments, civil society and the private sector. Both the World Bank and USAID are members of the recently launched Global Donor Working Group on Land, an international effort to improve information sharing and coordination to enhance the effectiveness of development programs that focus on land governance – including coordinating support to implement the Voluntary Guidelines.

According to Frank Pichel, USAID Land Tenure and Property Rights Specialist, “the World Bank Report estimates that 90% of rural land in sub-Saharan Africa remains undocumented. In the absence of formally recognized property rights, state governments have been known to allocate land for large-scale land acquisitions – disenfranchising any citizens with an informal claim. While governments may have good intentions, such as increasing food production, the existing inhabitants are often left worse off.”

Land governance was also a major theme of this year’s G8 summit in Northern Ireland, during which the U.S. announced a new partnership with Burkina Faso to improve transparency in land governance.

As a recent article in Devex notes, “land governance issues have been getting more attention from international development leaders lately. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest bilateral donor, is more engaged now than it has been in years, for instance.” From strengthening the property rights of artisanal miners to supporting land policy and legal reform in Liberia to piloting an approach to improve women’s access to customary justice systems in Kenya, USAID is investing in programs across Africa that strengthen land and resource rights, improve agricultural productivity, and enhance economic growth.

Learn more about USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights work in Africa.

 

 

On July 30, the Global Donor Working Group on Land was officially announced. The group is comprised of bilateral and multilateral donors and development agencies committed to improving coordination and information sharing to enhance the effectiveness of development programs that focus on land governance. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) will serve as the group’s inaugural chair. The donor working group is facilitated by the secretariat of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development.

As the group notes, “the combination of sharp increases in food prices starting in 2008 and continued volatility, together with the rapid expansion of land use for biofuels and growing concerns over climate change have led to a strong increase in interest in land in emerging-economy countries.” This increasing pressure on land has created development challenges for many countries. The Global Donor Working Group on Land was created to help respond to these challenges by improving land governance through enhanced coordination of donor-funded programs, increased information sharing of best practices and lessons learned, and better coordination in implementing the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

The group’s objectives are:

1. Improve exchange of information and lessons learned among donors and donor networks on land (main focus: tenure, governance, rural and urban);
2. Improve donor coordination on land governance at the international level (building on local, national and regional coordination), for example to build consensus around critical or emerging issues and international processes, and promote a value-added and synergetic approach between national, regional and international coordination;
3. Agree on joint action where suitable, on a case by case basis, for example in the context of the interaction with other land-related networks and platforms, such as the Committee on Food Security (CFS), International Land Coalition (ILC), African Union Land Policy Initiative (AU LPI), Global Land Tools Network (GLTN), G8/G20 and other stakeholders.

Dr. Gregory Myers, USAID Division Chief, Land Tenure and Property Rights, says “We are seeing increasing recognition by policy makers, donors, civil society, and the media that land governance is central to economic growth, food security, and sustainable development. Stronger land tenure and property rights create incentives for investment and trade and contribute to job growth and global prosperity. Between USAID and MCC, we are investing in 53 land governance programs in 32 countries in support of these key objectives. USAID welcomes the launch of the Global Donor Working Group on Land as a tool to help address these issues. We support this effort to enhance donor communication and coordination, improve transparency, and identify opportunities to leverage resources for maximum impact.”