Post Type: Article

In a USAID IMPACTblog post last week, Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and Environment Assistant Administrator Eric Postel shared his observations from a recent trip to South America. While in Cartegena, he heard about the Government of Colombia’s efforts – with the support of USAID’s technical assistance programs – to restitute land, formalize property and implement rural development as the country emerges from a long-running internal conflict. The Government of Colombia intends to resolve 360,000 land restitution cases in the next ten years, which would restore rightful ownership of land to many of Colombia’s 3.9 million officially-registered Internally Displaced Persons. In addition to its land restitution efforts, the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is implementing an ambitious project to strengthen the land rights of smallholder farmers, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian communities by issuing formal titles guaranteeing individual and collective rights.

Postel concluded that “even modest amounts of assistance from the U.S. to the Colombian Government to support of land tenure programs help build peace and security in the country.”

Policy makers and practitioners face significant governance challenges that must be addressed in order to achieve the successful long-term sequestration of carbon on forested lands. Identifying successful models for devolving authority over forests to local stakeholders, managing conflicting claims over forests and the underlying lands, and ensuring the participation of local stakeholders in decisions regarding the distribution and use of benefits derived from successful carbon sequestration are all important aspects of Deforestation and Forest Degradation as well as augmentation of existing carbon stocks (REDD+) efforts to mitigate global climate change.

Over the past year, the USAID Land Tenure and Property Rights Division has produced a series of reports that look at risks and opportunities for land tenure as it relates to REDD+; case studies on property rights issues related to forest carbon; and case studies on experiences with benefit-sharing from projects in a number of countries, including Mexico, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Nepal and Mozambique. We have also produced a guidebook about REDD+ and Carbon Rights and an Institutional Assessment Tool for Benefit Sharing under REDD+, both of which are intended to help USAID Mission staff and others better understand these complex issues and address them in relevant programming.

We invite you to download and use them and, as always, welcome your feedback, including recommendations for improvement or additional tools and methods. If you have any question about these or issues related to tenure, property rights, and climate change, please contact Peter Giampaoli of the Land Tenure and Property Rights Division.

REDD+ Overview and Property Rights
Land Tenure and REDD+: Risks to Property Rights and Opportunities for Economic Growth
International REDD+ Institutions and the Role of Land Tenure and Property Rights

Carbon Rights
REDD+ and Carbon Rights: Case Studies
REDD+ and Carbon Rights: Lessons from the Field
Forest Carbon Rights: A Tool for Framing Legal Rights to Carbon Benefits Generated Through REDD+ Programming

Devolution of Forest Rights
Devolution of Forest Rights and Sustainable Forest Management, Volume 1: A Review of Policies and Programs in 16 Developing Countries
Devolution of Forest Rights and Sustainable Forest Management, Volume 2: Case Studies

Sharing REDD+ benefits
Analysis of Institutional Mechanisms for Sharing REDD+ Benefits: Case Studies
Analysis of Institutional Mechanisms for Sharing REDD+ Benefits
Institutional Assessment Tool for Benefit Sharing Under REDD+

On August 2, 2012, USAID awarded the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights (STARR) IQC. The STARR program is a five-year contract with a shared ceiling of $700,000,000 designed to address resource tenure issues in support of key U.S. Government (USG) strategic objectives, including but not limited to, enhanced food security as articulated in the Feed the Future Initiative (FTF); climate change adaptation and mitigation; conflict prevention and mitigation; economic growth; biodiversity protection and natural resource management; women’s empowerment and gender equality; and reduction in the spread of infectious diseases (specifically HIV/AIDS). This program will employ a multidisciplinary approach to address complex resource tenure challenges as identified by USAID missions, Bureaus and offices, and by other USG agencies (including but not limited to Department of State, Department of Defense, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation). It will provide short and long-term technical assistance that is needed to respond to the needs and opportunities available for improving security of property rights and increasing land access. STARR will advance USAID Forward strategies and best practices by building knowledge, testing hypotheses and implementing innovative approaches to strengthening property rights and resource tenure as a means to advance key USG strategic foreign assistance goals. Technical management will be by USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights Division, Office of Land Tenure and Resource Management (LTRM), and Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment (E3). For further information on the STARR IQC please contact Mercedes Stickler or Stephen Brooks.

Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights (STARR) Indefinite Quantity Contract (IQC)
The STARR IQC is a broad, multi-faceted field support mechanism. It provides short and long-term technical assistance to respond to the needs and opportunities available for improving security of property rights and increasing land access. STARR advances USAID’s Way Forward strategies and best practices by building knowledge, testing hypotheses and implementing innovative approaches to strengthening property rights and resource tenure as a means to advance key USG strategic foreign assistance goals.

• Fact Sheet
• Scope of Work
• Reporting Requirements

IQC Award Winners and Subcontractors

Chemonics International, Inc.

• Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Inc. (CARE)
• International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) – University of Michigan
• Indiana University Bloomington
• LTL Strategies
• NORC at the University of Chicago
• Overseas Strategic Consulting, Ltd.
• Partners for Democratic Change
• The QED Group, LLC
• Spectrum Media
• Thomson Reuters
• Terra Global Capital, LLC
• Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management

The Cloudburst Group

• Banyan Communications
• Bixal
• CDR Associates
• Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
• Holistic Management International
• Indiana University
• Michigan Technological University
• Management Systems International
• Thomson Reuters

Development Alternatives, Inc.

• Cardno Emerging Markets
• East West Management Institute
• Environmental Law Institute
• Environmental Systems Research Institute
• International Center for Research on Women
• Land Equity International
• Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Namati
• Spectrum Media

Tetra Tech ARD

• CHF International
• Development & Training Services, Inc.
• Landesa Rural Development Institute
• LEAD Analytics, Inc.
• Mendez, England & Associates
• Michigan State University
• Stewart Global Solutions
• Winrock International
• World Resources Institute

The global community continues to focus on Voluntary Guidelines for Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, otherwise known as the VGs. A two day meeting, held in Rome July 18 and 19, attended by more than forty participants from UN member countries, multilateral and bilateral organizations, and civil society focused on developing strategies for implementation of the Guidelines.

Two implementation tracks are being discussed. In one track, bilateral and multilateral institutions intend to directly implement some aspects of the VGs through their development assistance programs. For example, USAID might work to help member countries address policy and legal reform challenges. The second track under consideration would be structured around a facility, possibly located at UN FAO, to provide competitive grants to member countries and/or civil society organizations to implement the Guidelines. Funding options for the proposed facility are under discussion. The FAO Secretariat will develop a concept paper for the facility in September, which will be circulated for comment through an e-consultation process, and presented to a wider audience in Rome in October. Consult FAO’s land tenure web site for further details.

Land tenure in Cote d’Ivoire is closely linked with ethnic conflict, power and economics. Beginning around the 1960s, President Houphouet-Boigny instituted policies that actively encouraged the clearing of new areas of land, the importation of labor and the establishment of laborers as agricultural settlers. This has been the cause of frequent conflicts, relating both to land rights and the ways in which different communities gain access to resources. Unfortunately, the recent crisis in Cote d’Ivoire has rendered existing customary, administrative and judicial mechanisms for managing land disputes less effective. Land conflicts have particularly been a point of contention in the west of the country as highlighted in a recent article from Al Jazeera. Resolving such contentious land disputes and putting in place a sound land policy environment will be a priority for Cote d’Ivoire as it seeks to recover from it most recent post-election violence and to improve its economic potential.

Working with customary legal systems to improve or ensure land tenure security or protecting property rights for people living under those systems is a substantial challenge. Much, though by no means all, development work focuses on improving the formal land administration systems – mapping, building cadastres, changing de jure laws, etc. But here is an example from Ghana of how to work with and within customary systems to create a more stable institutional environment – one that promotes investment and reduces conflict. The “Innovative Tools to Secure Land Rights in West Africa” project was developed by the Land Resources Management Centre with financial support from London-based IIED, this project helps to a) make customary land use agreements legally binding, b) support community-based land administration, including mapping and surveying using para-surveyors, and c) builds capacity for alternative dispute resolution related to land. Lots of experimentation is needed in this area so it’s good see what’s happening in Ghana!

Here’s a new book that addresses one of the most interesting puzzles in the land tenure field: how best to formalize customary or informal rights. With chapters by some of the leading lights in land tenure work (John Bruce, Lorenzo Cotula, and Andre Hoekema) it should be a good addition to the library.

CIFOR’s Forests News blog talks about the importance of recognizing community right to forests in order to promote accountability and clarify who should receive any benefits from REDD+ payments. The challenge of recognizing and enforcing community resource rights, which typically include overlapping property rights within forests, is discussed in this new CIFOR book (see chapter 9 “Tenure Matters in REDD+”) – the basis for a presentation by chapter author Anne Larson at the recent Rio +20 meetings. Although, as the blog points out, this is a particularly complex area, technologies and tools such as the social tenure domain model may increasingly help capture the intricate web of property relations that exists in many countries.

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.”