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Land access and ownership for women remains severely unequal compared to men despite the fact that women are active participants in the agricultural sector and provide the majority of agricultural labor in much of sub-Saharan Africa. A recent USAID gender analysis of customary land allocations found that female-headed households in Ethiopia and Zambia not only receive less land in customary systems, but also less productive land. Land of lesser quality was more commonly received through gifts or loans than through inheritance, purchase or rent. The study also found that younger women received the least productive land, and that female heads of household often face higher levels of disputes over their land. In addition, women have less access to land rental markets compared to men, which means that women who do not receive a sufficient amount of land to meet their needs through allocation are less able than men to obtain more land through the market.

While gender biases in customary land allocation systems are well-documented, there have been no rigorous empirical analyses to characterize the extent and nature of these biases. This study is the first post-evaluation analysis of quantitative data to investigate gender bias in customary land allocation systems. It provides an important contribution to our shared knowledge and understanding of women’s land rights. This rigorous approach was made possible by utilizing USAID’s land tenure impact evaluation datasets and illustrates the value of these data to advancing future research in topics related to land tenure.

The study provides several key lessons for future land sector programming by USAID and other donors:

1. Donors supporting formalization programs must identify and address gender biases where they exist in customary systems. Efforts to title, certify and/or register land rights within customary systems often crystalize existing allocation patterns. If women have fewer or poorer-quality plots of land to begin with, land programming may deepen these inequities by making them more formal and durable over time. To reduce risks, donors can take steps to: (a) understand patterns of gender inequity in land allocations prior to initial project design phases; (b) develop a strategy to address these inequities and proactively integrate it into project design and implementation; and (c) monitor and evaluate outcomes through the course of the project to ensure that risks are effectively addressed. 
2. Land quality matters. Donors who do take stock of existing gender biases in the design, monitoring or evaluation of land sector programs often only consider inequities in the quantity of land held. Placing additional focus on land quality will help donors to identify systematic gender inequities and the best approaches to addressing these. The quality of a plot importantly determines its immediate productive value for food security and income generation as well as its longer-term value as a transferable asset. Project evaluations—including baseline and endline data collection, should collect data about land quality to determine the net effect on gender equality.
3. Women have less access to formal land sales and lease markets compared to men, and therefore are limited in their ability to optimize their land holding. Findings from Ethiopia and Zambia underscore the importance of land allocations for women, as they may not be able to gain access to additional or better-quality land through rental or sales markets (albeit informal ones) in the same way that men can. Additional research would help us to understand why this is so, and what steps could be taken to address this gender gap.
4. Spatial analysis enables estimations of land quality, key to understanding and addressing gender inequities in land allocation. Geospatial data can contribute to the development of effective land quality indices that can assist in the evaluation of gender inequities. This study linked georeferenced household survey data to spatial data on agro-ecological conditions and proximity to roads (as a proxy for market access). This enabled the research team to construct more accurate land quality indices that incorporated both geospatial variables and other factors related to land productivity, providing a critical new lens for land sector gender equality outcomes.

Our findings provide empirical evidence that customary land allocation systems can introduce gender bias in access to land. The appropriate policy response to such gender bias in any particular case will depend on a range of contextual factors. Options may include outreach and sensitization efforts with customary authorities and local communities to influence social norms related to gender, or implementation of programs to help women access land outside of the customary system. Our findings caution that formalization alone may be insufficient to empower women to use land markets to access land, and thus complementary interventions may be needed.

Read the full research paper here.

Authors: Jennifer Duncan, Senior Land Tenure Specialist, and Benjamin Linkow, Senior Research and Evaluation Advisor, on USAID’s Communications Evidence and Learning project

Good governance is a critical threshold condition for environmental stewardship. USAID’s land and resource governance programming incorporates environmental conservation from the bottom up.  In the context of climate change, growing land and resource scarcity and concerns over resource conflict, secure tenure rights and effective governance of these rights have become all the more important. A growing body of evidence shows the extent to which land and resource governance is connected  to environmental outcomes. (See the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land and IPBES Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration.) Human decisions over land and resource use can lead to land degradation, desertification and climate-induced disasters; conditions that in turn cause human suffering including food loss, malnutrition, and displacement.

Clear rights and good governance provide a starting point for change. Providing safe, long-term tenure rights encourages people living and depending on land to invest in sustainable practices, and can reduce incentives to exploit resources or encroach into new areas. Decentralizing land and resource governance to communities is a critical step toward improved environmental outcomes, and even more so when this transfer empowers traditional resource users.  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’s recent synthesis report, which reviewed over 300 studies completed over two decades, indicates that transferring land and resource rights to Indigenous and Tribal Peoples can cut deforestation rates in half. Transparent and inclusive land and resource governance also helps to reduce conflict and ensure broad-based benefits from the use of common resources.

USAID’s land and resource governance programming:

1)      Strengthens tenure rights to increase climate smart investments and reduce pressure on forests. By supporting secure land tenure through land rights formalization projects and improved governance, USAID encourages long-term investments in environmental stewardship, such as soil conservation and tree planting. When rights are recognized and recorded, it is also easier for governments and communities themselves to monitor uses and promote accountability. USAID is working on land rights formalization programs in several countries rich in environmental resources, such as Colombia, Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, and  Zambia. In Ghana, USAID will be evaluating impacts of land tenure efforts on carbon emissions.

2)      Promotes women’s land and resource rights and gender equal resource governance. Women are underrepresented in land and resource governance at almost every level in many countries, and often face additional gender bias at the local level under decentralized systems. Tackling the challenges of resource scarcity and changing climate conditions will require  vibrant participation of diverse voices in the community, including both women and men. Gender inclusive land and resource governance also provides the foundation for successful and equitable climate change adaptation programs, and mitigation programs entailing Payment for Environmental Services  (such as REDD+). USAID is working with the government of Zambia on a breakthrough program to bolster women’s participation in the governance of wildlife resources through Community Resource Boards, and training women as community wildlife scouts.

3)      Supports strong local resource governance bodies to ensure effective environmental stewardship.  The transfer of land and resource governance to local communities is taking place in many countries around the world. USAID’s 2020 Policy on Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples reinforces the central role that Indigenous Peoples play in the Agency’s programming for land and resource governance. USAID programs supporting formalization of land and resource rights for Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia and Peru, for example, demonstrate  that communities  who live in and depend on forest and other ecosystems  do the best job  taking care of these resources. For over 20 years, USAID has worked to support Indigenous land and resource rights in Bolivia; from 2000 to 2012, formal recognition of these lands resulted in an average deforestation decrease of 286 percent. The carbon emissions reduction associated with this result was equivalent to removing over 1.6 million cars from the roads for one year. In Peru, USAID supported more than 1,200 Indigenous communities to secure titles to their land and resources; when communities received titles, deforestation decreased by 97 percent.

4)      Builds stability in fragile and post-conflict states. By focusing on land tenure security in post-conflict states, USAID helps to ensure political stability that will, in turn, enable good stewardship of environmental resources over time, and help to reduce the chance of violent conflict and war that wreaks havoc on the natural environment. Insecure land rights can lead to displacement and grievance, which contribute to conflicts large and small. Secure and equitable land rights can be a pillar of political stability and broad-based economic development. USAID has a historically strong land and resource governance focus in fragile and post-conflict states, and currently has programs in Colombia, Liberia, and Mozambique.

5)      Reforms artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) to reduce conflict and improve environmental impact. By partnering with countries to formalize and regulate artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), USAID fosters ASM supply chains that are not only legal, but also environmentally and socially responsible. USAID is working closely with the U.S. Departments of State, Labor, and Commerce; the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); and the Environmental Protection Agency to tackle the complex array of ASM-related development challenges.

USAID is partnering with the Government of Colombia to strengthen the capacity to increase sustainable land use and decrease deforestation to protect an iconic UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Serranía del Chiribiquete was first declared a protected area in 1989 when it covered 1.3 million hectares. The government has since expanded the park to its current 4.2 million hectares, roughly the size of Denmark. As Colombia’s largest park, Chiribiquete National Park is regarded as a vital hotspot of biodiversity in the northern Amazon, sheltering jaguar, tapir, manatee, the brown woolly monkey, and giant anteater. The world’s largest protected tropical rainforest, this national park is home to hundreds of birds and butterflies species and plays a key role in global conservation. 

Chiribiquete’s natural wealth goes beyond its biodiversity.

The park also bears traces of ancient human populations, perhaps the oldest inhabitants of the Americas, who lived in this territory long before the arrival of Europeans. In Chiribiquete, more than 75,000 pictograms depicting animals and humans have been discovered; some of these paintings are believed to be 20,000 years old. Today, the forest is still home to a sparse population of Indigenous Peoples, some of whom remain uncontacted and live in voluntary isolation. 

This forgotten wilderness has been isolated for years due to an armed conflict that had kept tourists and Colombian settlers away from the park’s buffer zone. Getting there is not an easy endeavor, and only a small part of the park has been surveyed. In the wake of Colombia’s 2016 peace accord, biologists, botanists, and archeologists began visiting the rainforest mountain range with more frequency, and today, scientists believe the park could shelter even more biodiversity than is currently estimated.

Sadly, the buffer zones around and land inside Chiribiquete have been affected by rising rates of deforestation. In 2020, the region contained five of 12 deforestation hotspots in Colombia and was home to over 50% of the total national deforested area. In a six-month period between September 2000 and February 2021, 1,000 hectares of forest were felled and burned in the national park, according to a recent report from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project. 

Driving the depletion of the forest are several factors, including illicit crops, land grabbing and occupation, timber trafficking, cattle ranching inside protected areas, and the expansion of the agricultural frontier. A comprehensive solution requires the implementation of a range of policies related to security, land administration, and natural resource management.

“Chiribiquete’s large forests are critical for the water dynamics of the entire mountain range in eastern and central Colombia. Protecting the uncontacted Indigenous groups in this territory is also a challenge because of the risk of cultural loss after contact with land grabbers,” explains Carolina Jarro, Deputy Director of Management of Protected Areas at Colombia’s National Natural Parks authority. 

A Land Governance Approach to Conservation

USAID is actively supporting the government’s efforts to halt deforestation in this region by improving land and environment governance tools and supporting government entities involved in land, conservation, and security. In fact, USAID has strategically aligned its environment and rural economic development/land portfolios in order to address deforestation and approach the issues of illicit crops being cultivated in hard-to-reach environmentally protected areas. 

In places where the mechanism to reduce the presence of illicit crops are limited, USAID is demonstrating that land formalization can be a mechanism to strengthen conservation and natural resource management. The work includes working with mayors and municipal governments in buffer zones around the Chiribiquete National Park to strengthen land governance capacities and promote licit livelihoods for communities. 

First step in protecting the forest and everything within it is delimiting the national park and adding it to the national cadaster. After this, USAID is helping the government pilot a land-use contracting program for ranchers and farmers living in the buffer zone. Finally, USAID is facilitating public-private partnerships to mobilize government and private sector investments that foster licit economic opportunities.

“Updating the cadaster is critical for territorial planning and fiscal strengthening of the municipalities, but it is also key for preventing deforestation and the destruction of environmental assets. With an updated cadaster, the park’s boundary and the characteristics of the surrounding areas can be established.” – Alejandra Botero, Presidential Counsellor for Management and Compliance.

This integrated approach has the potential to consolidate policies that can help to curb the region’s unchecked deforestation and unsustainable use of land. By updating the nation’s rural cadaster for areas around Chiribiquete and issuing legal land deeds, communities will be dissuaded from growing illicit crops and increase buy-in for a community-approach to forest management and inclusive growth around the enormous and emblematic park. 

“The Government of Colombia, with the support of international cooperation, has conducted periodic flights to identify the deforestation and illegal occupation areas. These are public parcels that need to be identified to control and restore the area while reducing the possibility of affecting the natural and cultural heritage,” added Mrs. Jarro.

Learn more about the USAID Colombia Land for Prosperity activity here. 

By USAID Greening Prey Lang

Originally published March 22, 2021 on USAID Greening Prey Lang Exposure site

Kampong Thom province is one of Cambodia’s agriculture hubs. Across the province rivers originating in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary support vast irrigation systems. The irrigation systems are frequently managed by Farmer Water User Communities (FWUC). One community irrigation system, Tang Krasang, is led by Norng Theourn.

Spanning over 10,000 hectares, the Tang Krasang irrigation system supports small holder farmers and companies to grow rice, mangos, and many other fruits and vegetables. 

The irrigation directly benefits 13,555 people out of whom 6,799 are women. There are 38 committee members managing the Tang Krasang Farmer Water User Community association, and out of those 14 are female. The female committee members are in charge of collecting fees from members, managing the association’s finances and other responsibilities.

Thanks to the irrigation system farmers can grow two to three crops per year. For each crop cycle water users pay $10 per irrigated hectare. Since its establishment in 2017 over $15,000 in fees have been collected by the Tang Krasang Farmer Water User Community. Fees have been used for maintenance of the irrigation system and community development projects. 

Nong Theoun is eager to make the irrigation system more climate resilient. For him, climate resilience includes securing land titles for water users and paying upstream communities for conserving the forests that provide water to the irrigation system. 

To achieve this vision the Tang Krasang Farmer Water User Community has been working with USAID Greening Prey Lang and a provincial level river basin management committee. Efforts are underway to secure land titles for community members who want to access the irrigation system. Proof of land ownership is required to gain access to irrigated water.

Once titles have been secured annual fees collected by the FWUC will skyrocket. Money in the bank will allow Tang Krasang to achieve their climate resilience goals.

“When all farmers in our community have legal land title and can fully participate in the FWUC, contribution fees will increase to between US $60,000 to $120,000 per year, depending on whether they grow two or three crops per year. Before construction of the canal, we could grow only one rice crop each year, with yields less than 1 ton per hectare annually. Now we can grow at least two crops a year, increasing yields to 2 to 3 tons per hectare.

Increased fees will allow for climate resilient infrastructure upgrades. Climate change has made the cycles of droughts and flooding in Cambodia more frequent and more intense. These extremes must be factored into any infrastructure improvements so that the upgraded facilities can withstand climate extremes.

Additional fees will also enable Mr. Nong’s community to provide payments to upstream forest communities to patrol their forests and support law enforcement efforts. Through this nascent payment for ecosystems services scheme downstream water users will contribute to conserving the forests in and around Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary.

“Unseasonable droughts and unpredictable rainfall are no longer a worry. We are able to reliably grow rice and other crops because the canal provides sufficient water.”

A Colombian Mayor surprises her constituents with land titles and uses live video and social media to spread civic messages about formalizing land tenure.

Facebook Live

Ready for Parcel Sweeps

Hundreds of families in Bajo Cauca take on beekeeping to improve their living conditions and contribute to the licit economic development of the region.

The Bajo Cauca Priority

This story was originally published on USAID exposure.