Post Type: Article

In Cote d’Ivoire, a UN-imposed embargo on the export of Ivoirian diamonds to other countries has been in place since 2005 due to concerns regarding the control of diamond-mining zones by former rebel groups as well as weak internal controls over the country’s diamond mining sector. Given these concerns and the role USAID’s Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) program has played in helping to improve countries with their Kimberley Process compliance, USAID commissioned an assessment of the land tenure and artisanal mining sector in Cote d’Ivoire in September 2012. Please see the report’s findings here.

Involving Local Farmers is Key to Success of Foreign Investment
Issued on November 13, 2012 by FAO.

According to a recent article from the IPS News Agency, women in Cameroon produce 80% of the country’s food needs yet own only 2% of the land. Though a 1974 Land Tenure Ordinance provides women with equal rights to property ownership, in reality customary tenure practices which discriminate against women sometimes trump national laws. In some cases, customary systems have provided women with secure rights to use land and resources however, recently women have experience greater difficulties protecting rights under these systems. Women’s property rights are particularly vulnerable after the death of a husband, as traditional tenure agreements often prohibit women from inheriting property.

“The inability of women to freely access and control productive resources places them in a weaker position in terms of agricultural productivity and economic growth, food security, family income and equal participation in governance,” said Fon Nsoh, coordinator of the Cameroon Movement for the Right to Food. Some local organizations, including Nsoh’s, are pushing the government of Cameroon to provide women with stronger property rights and communities with a greater voice in land negotiations, but the pace of change has been slow.

USAID’s JUSTICE project is attempting to address similar issues in Kenya. The project aims to strengthen women’s property rights by providing them with greater access to customary justice systems and raising communities’ legal awareness. Just last month, 14 women were elected as elders in the project area, meaning they are now part of the decision-making body for many disputes at the local level.

Globally, there is a strong push to devolve control over natural resources, including protected areas, to regional and local stakeholders. In many developing countries, communities with long-standing customary claims to land, forests, and other natural resources contest attempts by central governments to claim these resources as “public”, held by government as national resources. In many countries, local stakeholders continue to claim rights to access and use such resources, even at the risk of being penalized for illegal uses. These conflicts are not confined to developing countries.

In Arizona, voters will be voting on a ballot initiative Proposition 120. Proposition 120 would require amendment of Arizona’s constitution, declaring state sovereignty and jurisdiction over the “air, water, public lands, minerals, wildlife and other natural resources within the state’s boundaries”, including Grand Canyon National Park. According to a recent Reuters article, the amendment would not include Native American reservations or federal installations, but would encompass approximately 46,000 square miles, nearly 41 percent of the state.

Regardless of the outcome of the vote, it reflects the continuing disagreement between the Federal government and many stakeholders in Western states over the ownership and rights over resources, often called the “Sagebrush Rebellion”. Despite a well-established body of law and sophisticated systems for administering property rights and resolving conflicts, this dispute persists in the United States, largely fought through political and legal means. In developing countries where rules and systems for governing tenure and property rights are less developed, there is a continuing need for policy and legal reforms and processes that provide peaceful opportunities for stakeholders to debate this issue and decide how best to balance national and local interests in the allocation of rights over land and other natural resources.

According to AllAfrica.com, farmers in Liberia are blaming perceived climatic changes on the government’s policy of allocating large-scale concessions for mining, logging, and agriculture. A Liberian non-governmental organization, Green Advocates, organized a workshop in southeast Liberia during which farmers and other participants cited deforestation and forest degradation from large-scale concessions as a major factor in the changing climate in Liberia. Despite the tenuous nature of such attributions, the story highlights the increasing frustration of many rural stakeholders in Liberia over the government’s concession policy. Many participants also rejected the ongoing criticism of rotational slash-and-burn agriculture, practiced by many in areas of customary tenure, as the primary driver of deforestation in Liberia. They noted that the government continues to allocate concessions for logging and other land-uses that result in more widespread deforestation than the agricultural practices of farmers in rural areas.

USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation are supporting efforts by the Government of Liberia (GOL) to develop a comprehensive land policy, reform land administration, recognize customary rights over land in rural areas, and better coordinate the allocation of concessions with other land uses. The USAID Land Policy Institutional Support Project is providing technical assistance to the Liberian Land Commission and other GOL stakeholders to develop a national land policy, based upon a transparent, broadly based consultative process. The issue of concessions is one of many issues that the policy and subsequent legal reforms will seek to address.

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of people in India were marching for land rights. The marchers wanted the government to assure them that they will be given secure rights to agricultural land, homestead rights for landless people, tribunals to resolve land-related cases, and that the National Land Reforms Policy would be presented for public debate within six months. The government agreed to these and other provisions, including implementing the Forest Rights Act and setting up a Task Force on Land Reform – this brought the march to a halt. Here is the agreement. This powerful example of peaceful social change was the culmination of a four-year long effort by Ekta Parishad, a non-violence social movement in India.

Many stakeholders are concerned about large-scale land acquisitions. Communities, civil society organizations, and donors are worried, but so too is the private sector. A story from the CSR Asia notes the risks investors may face when they negotiate rights to use or purchase land. The story relates one example from Vietnam of a property development that actually won an Asia Pacific Property Award earlier this year for “best practices in the real estate sector across the world.” Unfortunately, the development was built on lands expropriated from locals who were irate about their loss – so angry that their protest march had to be broken up with tear gas and thousands of police. The story points out that: “[i]n Vietnam, it is estimated that 80 percent of all complaints filed to the government are related to land disputes and recent years have seen a growing number of protests by residents who are not happy with the compensation provided. Of course, land and potential disputes are not specific to Vietnam.“ Very true. Around the world, but particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, the number of such disputes is rising. To better address these concerns, and the risks they represent, the story suggests companies take the ISO 26000 Standards on Social Responsibility into account as well as the IFC’s Performance Standards. The story does not mention the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, but this new international agreement advances principles related to the recognition and respect for customary and informal land rights and for the land rights of women and vulnerable groups. Working in collaboration with local people to develop a more accurate and nuanced picture of the local property rights environment, and finding ways to direct more benefits towards communities, is essential for concerned and responsible investors.

According to a recent NPR article, lead poisoning from illegal gold mining has killed more than 400 children in northern Nigeria. Thousands more children have been left sick and mentally stunted.

As the price of gold has risen in recent years, subsistence farmers in Nigeria have increasingly turned to small-scale, illegal ‘artisanal’ gold mining to earn a living. The artisanal miners often use primitive processing techniques, which release significant amounts of toxic lead-laded dust into the environment. Doctors Without Borders called the situation “one of the worst cases of environmental lead poisoning in recent history.”

Because Nigerian artisanal gold miners lack secure rights to the land in which they mine, they have little incentive to invest in their land. Rather than investing in better processing equipment – which would reduce toxic emissions – illegal miners can simply move their operations to a new site, extract as much as they can, then move on.

While Nigeria’s situation poses unique challenges, there are perhaps lessons to be learned from USAID’s Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) project in the Central African Republic. The PRADD program has been successful at certifying property rights for artisanal diamond miners, which has created incentives for greater investment and better environmental stewardship in mining areas. By clarifying and formalizing mining rights, the PRADD program has demonstrated success at mitigating the environmental damage caused by mining, while also increasing diamond production and mining incomes. For information on the PRADD program see here.

On October 17th in Oslo, Norway, historic peace talks will begin between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Details on the negotiations are available in a recent article in the New York Times. This is a promising initiative with the potential to end the conflict and bring lasting peace and stability to Colombia. To illustrate the importance of land to the conflict, both parties have agreed that land and rural development will be the first issues to be addressed in the agenda proposed for negotiations. Recognizing the centrality of the land issue early on, President Santos upon assuming office, expanded the conflict resolution agenda to include a range of social issues including land and rural development. USAID supported this endeavor and beginning in 2010 directed resources to catalyze this process investing in policy and legal formulation as well as institutional strengthening and the establishment of regional and local land restitution offices.

A recent New York Times article features a conversation with Roy Prosterman, founder of Landesa, a Seattle, Washington-based NGO and partner in USAID Land Tenure projects in Kenya, Liberia and other locations. Prosterman founded Landesa, formerly the Rural Development Institute, in 1966 and has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. To date, Landesa has worked with local governments in over 50 countries to develop laws, policies and programs that provide secure land rights for the world’s poorest people.

In the article, Prosterman highlights the importance of land tenure and states that in the coming decades the issue will play out “largely through a range of new approaches, which will encourage governments to become widely and actively involved in land rights for the poor.” He also states that new challenges, such as large-scale land acquisitions by governments and the private sector, will require new solutions to protect the land rights of the poor.