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In Zambia, the wildlife and conservation sector is male dominated. A number of factors account for this, including structural barriers in recruitment and training and gender norms that see the public sphere as a male domain. Yet evidence suggests that women’s involvement in natural resource management leads to better conservation outcomes, as well as increased wellbeing and economic opportunities for women, their families, and communities. 

To help address this gap, USAID facilitated a Women’s Leadership and Empowerment course, a training-of-trainers approach to strengthen the capacity of conservation leaders to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment within their own organizations and the communities they serve. USAID facilitated four cohorts of 100 non-governmental organization professionals from 25 conservation and land organizations, as well as one session for staff from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife. Post-training, these cohorts remain connected via an active WhatsApp group, serving as a community of practice for gender champions in the conservation space in Zambia. 

In a follow up survey, participants reported that they are using the skills gained to: reach out to over 22,000 community members (8,000 women, 14,000 men) to increase their awareness on women’s land and resource rights and their role in natural resource governance; hold sensitization meetings with 300+ traditional leaders to promote greater gender inclusion in the chiefdoms; and train government employees from Department of National Parks and Wildlife and Forestry Department, as well as wildlife police officers and community scouts, on the importance of women’s empowerment in the wildlife space.  

Below, learn how four champions are advancing women’s empowerment within their organizations! 

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“At an individual level, I am more confident and certain about the things I want to do with the women’s mentorship project I implement. The training helped me believe in myself and realize that I have the skills to work on women’s empowerment and I can and am learning more every day!”

Maina Malaya, is a Communication Officer for Wildlife Crime Prevention, where she manages a mentoring program for young women joining the conservation world. Maina had no gender training before the USAID course, but now has become the gender equality resource person for her organization, working to refine the gender strategy and expand gender-responsive programming. “The [gender] intervention is growing and causing us to invest more. Four more Wildlife Crime Prevention staff are undergoing the Women’s Leadership and Empowerment training soon,” said Maina. She notes the organization has started up a new partnership with Department of National Parks and Wildlife and Chunga Training Centre to help train wildlife police officers and community scouts on gender equality and gender-based violence (GBV) mitigation.

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“The Women’s Leadership and Empowerment training deepened my understanding of factors that keep women out of natural resource management and how to address these challenges and increase impacts of our programs. I am now able to adapt my work and reach out to the vulnerable groups, which is allowing our program to have a broader reach.”

Sara Banda, is a Lead Community Officer for We Forest, responsible for promoting inclusive community forest management in the Muchinga landscape. After Sara attended the USAID training in 2022 with three other colleagues from We Forest, the organization has worked to reform its programming approach to make it more inclusive. “The training made me realize there were missing dots in the way we delivered our work, which is why less women were involved. Unless attention is paid to gender equality, the participation of women in community forest decisions is missed.” We Forest has also made changes to their reporting system to better capture gender and age disaggregation. What’s more, all projects are now required to complete a GBV assessment to help the organization better understand local dynamics and tailor programming to address these needs.

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 “Through the training, I gained insights into the specific risks and challenges that women face in relation to land ownership and access. This knowledge enabled the National Land Titling Program to design and implement targeted strategies to mitigate these risks, such as information packages on GBV for radio and community meetings, GBV sensitization to community leaders and referral support.”

Miyoba Masinja, is the Field Director for Medici Land Governance, a private company partnering with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to implement the National Land Titling Program. Miyoba leads a team of 12 USAID-trained women’s land rights champions working in different departments to ensure the land titling process is inclusive. “The training equipped us with an understanding of Zambia’s legal and policy framework on women’s land rights that empowered our team to implement gender integration activities in the program. The advocacy techniques we learned have helped us to increase the buy-in [for gender] internally and with our stakeholders.” Her team meets monthly to discuss progress on gender integration and so far, has seen an increase in joint titling compared to previous efforts. 

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“Before I came on the training, my challenge was how to deal with negative social norms. We saw men in uniform abuse power, which in some cases negatively affected our work, but it was difficult to find the entry points. The training was timely. It gave me the skills to engage law enforcement officers and navigate the social norms to bring in more women in our work.” 

Frackson Sakala, a Senior Human Wildlife Co- Existence Officer for Conservation South Luangwa, works with communities to increase awareness on wildlife safety and promote effective engagement in conservation activities in areas surrounding South Luangwa National Park. Since joining the Women’s Leadership and Empowerment course in 2022 with two other staff from his organization, GBV mitigation has been a large focus of his work. “As a man I challenge my fellow men on issues of masculinity and norms, they open up and are able to listen to me. I present myself as a role model.” Frackson notes that addressing social norms and creating GBV awareness among the men in law enforcement helps to create an environment that is more friendly towards women. He notes that he has seen family relations among law enforcement officers improve post-training.

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These champions are leading the charge to make Zambia’s conservation sector more inclusive, participatory, and sustainable, reducing risks for those involved.

Q&A with Gustavo Marulanda, Director of IGAC, Colombia’s cadaster and mapping agency

USAID’s Land for Prosperity Activity is updating the cadaster of 11 municipalities in eight regions of Colombia and the Chiribiquete National Park, the largest protected area in Colombia, to support formal land markets and protect biodiversity. In this interview, Gustavo Marulanda, IGAC’s Director, talks about the cadaster as an essential component of property formalization and regional land administration.

How up-to-date is Colombia’s rural cadaster?

Approximately 905 of the country’s 1,101 municipalities have an outdated cadaster, and some were updated 30 years ago. This means that there are people that are only paying a small percent of what they should be paying in property taxes. The average property tax payment is just COP $28,000 (USD $7). This is what everyone pays, not just smallholder farmers but also the large landowners. So, updating the cadaster allows us to make significant progress with the process of promoting equality and improving tax redistribution.

How does updating the cadaster help with the implementation of the Peace Accords?

Point 1 of the Peace Accords is comprehensive rural reform, and an updated cadaster is fundamental here. The Peace Accords aim to formalize seven million hectares and redistribute three million hectares, but the first thing we need to achieve this is detailed property information, to know who are owners and who are occupants. By updating the cadaster, we can achieve more equity in the distribution of land. For example, many of the large landowners in the country, who often have unproductive and unused land, are not paying property tax.

How does the IGAC support land formalization?

At IGAC we have a legal responsibility to know the current and allowed land uses, we have to know what each piece of land is good for and how we need to protect it. The cadaster is the map of landowners who have secure tenure rights to their property. The cadaster generates knowledge and detailed information about our rural territories and provides us with inputs that are fundamental to administer land and property in a way that is socially responsible and promotes sustainable land use and production.

How do the communities benefit from the cadastral update?

Citizens benefit from the cadaster when they ask themselves things like “Where is my farm located? What are its boundaries? Who are my neighbors?”. It is similar to opening your smartphone and using mapping and navigation apps to know your location. An updated cadaster allows the municipality to make better decisions and to know where its population lives and what their needs are. The municipality knows if there are schools, health centers, or where to build infrastructure such as roads in a more efficient way. Additionally, by collecting property taxes, the municipality will increase its budget. The cadaster ensures that taxes are fair, so the ones who have more, pay more. Today no one is paying, neither the ones who have the most nor the ones who have the least.

How have you involved citizens more in these topics?

Before, the community was not actively involved and that was a problem. That is why our logic is that the cadaster is made for the people and with the people. This is advantageous, because we can explain to the public why the cadaster is useful. People say “they update the cadaster and then my taxes increase, so I will have to pay more”, but they forget that they are also supporting land formalization and will receive a property title. And without a title they cannot access loans or subsidies.

What are the Intercultural Cadaster Schools that USAID is supporting in Chiribiquete about, and how are they connected to the communities?

When we talk about the cadaster with the communities, we have to work with people, empower them, engage them with all these messages so they can make significant contributions to the information collection process and its sustainability. This is what the Intercultural Schools are doing, under the Geography for Life motto. They learn mapping exercises in an effective way, they understand why it is useful and how the community fits into their territory. Through mapping, communities can get to know their surroundings better and strengthen their spatial relationships. Sustainability is only achieved when people are empowered.

How does the cadaster contribute to conservation and environmental protection?

The information collected through the multipurpose cadaster contributes to the defense of strategic ecosystems in our country and continent, because we are connected to the Amazon and to the rivers that flow through it. This is why we have to know about them, their location, and have detailed information that allows us to make better decisions to defend and protect the environment. We have to monitor the levels of deforestation and illegal mining to defend our regions effectively.

How does the IGAC work with other government entities for land formalization?

In Colombia, the land administration trio of agencies includes IGAC, the National Land Agency (ANT) and the Superintendence of Notaries and Registers (SNR). IGAC is responsible for collecting and managing detailed information, and in areas that have been prioritized by the government, we receive support from the ANT as a cadastral operator. The ANT then administers the land that has been formalized or that will be redistributed and continues with the formalization and title delivery processes. The cycle then finishes with the SNR, which registers and issues the land titles.

USAID coordinates inter-institutional cooperation among Colombia’s land administration entities.

Why is the support of international donors important?

Donors, such as USAID, play a vital role, not just because they provide financing, but they also transfer knowledge, best practices, and technical capacities, which make us more efficient. We can also learn from international experiences, of how it has been done in other places or how we can improve information processing. The Intercultural Schools come from international experiences and from what donors have done elsewhere. The Land for Prosperity Activity has carried out property surveys and through trial and error helped to create a lot of the new methodologies we have today. Donors also have an added value because they coordinate institutions, because sometimes we are so busy with our day-to-day tasks that we have no time left to sit down and coordinate actions together.

Cross-posted from USAID Exposure

Q&A with the Mayor of Santander de Quilichao, Cauca

In the last four years, the Municipal Land Office (MLO) of Santander de Quilichao has facilitated the titling of more than 700 parcels. Several of these are public parcels like parks or health centers, or have to do with improving the municipality’s roads. The land office has become a key tool for land use planning and property formalization, and with it, the administration has mobilized more than COP $50,000 million (USD $13.5 million) in public investments.

In this interview, the current mayor of Santander de Quilichao, Eduardo Grijalba, who was recently re-elected, talks about the role of the MLO and the goals of his government.

Twelve years ago, you held the first discussions with USAID about creating a Municipal Land Office. What impressions has the work of the MLO given you since then?

Yes, 12 years ago we created the MLO in our municipality. Today, the land office is a point of reference for the entire country, and influences land use and urban planning. Without land and property administration we could not mobilize public resources to invest in the municipality. In the beginning, that was the main objective, but now I see that the work of the MLO is much broader, and it works with every secretary within the municipal administration. Additionally, it provides information to the community about land formalization.

How has the MLO changed operations?

The MLO has resulted in big changes in the way we operate in the municipality. Before, projects were submitted to public entities to request financing, but when we came upon the question of ownership, the parcel either had no title or it did not belong to the municipality. Many projects could not come to fruition because of that. Now, we start all investment projects at the MLO, and before we submit them, we make sure the parcel is surveyed and titled in the name of the municipality. We also look at the land use issues for each parcel, whether a large tract of land needs to be divided, and if they are connected to public services. Having the MLO under the Secretary of Planning is a big advantage when it comes to mobilizing resources.

What are some examples of how the MLO has unlocked public investments?

According to the latest reports, we can say that thanks to the MLO the municipality has mobilized more than COP $50,000 million (USD $13.5 million). We are talking about impactful projects such as building roads, like the Niza road, and communal spaces such as the Plaza de Toros and the Corona Real park. We also bought the parcels for the Santander de Quilichao Hospital, which has mobilized more than COP $35 million (USD $8,750), and the regional campus for the SENA, which resulted in COP $49 million (USD $12,250). The Villa Maria housing project has mobilized COP $10,000 million (USD $2.5 million) and will provide housing for 400 vulnerable families. For Villa Maria, the MLO helped us with the purchase and division of the parcel. In December we already delivered the first 100 property titles.

Apart from education and infrastructure, the MLO is creating safer space for public entities that provide legal services in the region.

Yes, through the MLO we divided a parcel and titled it to benefit two key government entities: the District Attorney’s Office and the Medical Examiner and Coroner’s Office. The new parcels are on the outskirts of the city, close to the hospital, and having the entities together makes their jobs easier. The current Coroner’s Office receives bodies from eight municipalities, and it is just too small and has to send bodies to Cali. We want to ensure the coroner is well equipped and capable of handling autopsies to provide grieving families better services. The current District Attorney’s Office is paying rent for a privately owned bunker located in a residential area, which increases the risk of violence for the community around it.

What are the objectives and goals of the land office for your administration in the next four years?

We are going to try to obtain as many titles as possible and meet our goal of 500 property titles. In addition, we have goals with two main roads: La Cañera and Calle Séptima. There are properties in the middle that now belong to private owners, and we are in the process of obtaining them and creating two-laned roads to join two large sectors of the municipality. We also have projects like the hospital and the marketplace. The land office also plays a role in the implementation of our municipal Land Management Plan.

Today, a Rural Property and Land Administration Plan (POSPR) is being implemented in Santander de Quilichao to formalize thousands of rural properties. What challenges have you identified?

Yes, the parcel sweep in our municipality is being supported by USAID in coordination with the National Land Agency. We hope to be able to deliver more than 3,000 property titles for rural families that are currently living informally. With all its years of experience, the MLO is playing an important role in understanding the territory and reaching rural communities. The challenges are huge and some of them have to do with the security conditions and others with convincing the communities to be part of the process. Because of what the parcel sweep represents to our community: Afro-Colombians, indigenous communities and farmers; it should be considered the most important land project in the country.

How have these actions to improve land administration changed the people’s behavior in your municipality?

Now, with the parcel sweep, land issues are being promoted. The land office has been a source of information for everybody, in terms of providing advice. The MLO is like our guide, and little by little, people understand better the culture of formal land ownership that we are promoting. People are not frustrated anymore with having to contact Bogotá or a lawyer to ask for information on land or property formalization. We have a population with more opportunities and knowledge, and the MLO has given our residents many solutions.

“For our Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities the parcel sweep represents the most important land project in the country.”
– Eduardo Grijalba, Mayor of Santander de Quilichao (Cauca) 2024-2027

Cross-posted from USAID Exposure

Cauca’s Regional Land Office is supporting eight municipalities with land formalization and ensuring continuity with the incoming administration.

Nobody in Caldono’s Planning Department was surprised to learn that half of City Hall was sitting on a property with no land title. In the municipality of Caldono, six out of 10 parcels are informally owned, and this also applies to schools, health clinics, and municipal assets.

“We don´t have a land title for the Municipal Council Meeting Hall. We have a whole list of municipal properties that are informal: schools, community centers, recreation complexes, basically all the properties that are most important to the community’s wellbeing,” explains Ivan Melo, public administrator in Caldono.

Caldono is a small municipality in the mountains of Northern Cauca and does not have the resources to finance a full-fledged land office that can attend to its everyday property needs. The creation of Cauca’s Regional Land Office (RLO) has given Caldono a valuable opportunity to review its assets, create a plan to legalize its properties, and reach the public with information about land formalization and property rights.

Cauca’s RLO is based in Popayán, the departmental capital, and supports eight municipalities in Northern Cauca. The office regularly sends a small group of topographers and land experts to isolated municipalities to work with local leaders and focus on land formalization, public outreach, and institutional coordination.

So far, the Regional Land Office has helped Caldono title 100 private parcels in urban areas and 13 public properties, including the municipal government building, schools, and recreation facilities.

Through its support, the municipality has already leveraged 410 million pesos (USD $100,000) in investments for schools and parks. One project includes the improvement of Caldono’s Reconciliation Park, a public space that allows residents to reflect on building peace following generations of conflict and violence.

“For years, the Reconciliation Park wasn’t suitable for children to run and play. Thanks to the formalization of the land, not only will we have the deed in the name of the municipality, but it will become a place for all of the community to come and enjoy,” says Melo.

Ensuring a Future

 

Envision a world in which climate action is equitable and propels us towards a resilient, low-carbon future. Enter climate finance, a promising emerging pathway to help achieve a just transition for all people. However, a critical piece of the puzzle for achieving this future is missing–existing climate finance efforts have overlooked the essential roles and unique needs of women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals.

Research shows these populations are more vulnerable to climate impacts and face an additional risk of discrimination in their communities. But they also have unique knowledge and skills that are key to unlocking effective climate solutions.

Climate change impacts differ across genders; so should approaches to climate finance.

How to Improve Gender-Responsive Climate Finance

International development practitioners working in climate finance, including private sector actors, can adopt direct financing mechanisms and strengthen the enabling environment to enhance equitable access to finance.

Convene for Direct Financing

USAID activities currently support several methods of direct financing that have proven to be effective at reaching women and girls, offering lessons learned for future efforts:

Use small grants and local-level financing to provide accessible solutions for community organizations, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and gender equality groups. For example, take the Climate Gender Equity Fund (CGEF), a public-private partnership launched by USAID and Amazon with initial conceptualization support from the USAID Integrated Natural Resource Management Activity. The CGEF aims to increase access to climate finance for gender-responsive, women-led, and women-benefiting organizations that address climate change. The fund harnesses USAID’s convening power to bridge the gender-climate finance gap. Amazon, Reckitt, Visa Foundation, and UPS Foundation are founding members, and 2X Global manages the grantmaking process.

Link local NGOs and community organizations to special funding opportunities provided by global climate finance institutions. USAID is expanding partnerships with local organizations to better support climate actions that consider the needs and roles of women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals. The growing list of global leaders in gender-responsive climate finance now includes: U.S. International Development Finance Corporation’s 2X Women’s Initiative, Global Affairs Canada’s Gender-Responsive Climate Finance Design Funding Window, UN Women, and UN Capital Development Fund’s Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL).

Develop innovative financial products, like climate insurance. These products can be designed in ways that support inclusive access and address gender issues and systemic barriers in finance. Investing in intermediaries that have direct ties to local women’s groups is one effective strategy for tailoring financial products to the needs of women. For example, the InsuResilience Investment Fund, a blended finance fund that provides climate insurance, has worked with the Kashf Foundation in Pakistan to provide climate-linked cattle insurance loans to women farmers whose livestock were affected by extreme climate shocks.

Strengthen the Enabling Environment

Strengthening the enabling environment means supporting the governance, policy, and institutional conditions to help make gender-responsive climate finance more feasible and accessible to women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals. Specific actions to strengthen the enabling environment for inclusive climate finance include:

Create stronger networks among local gender-focused organizations and accredited entities to bolster accredited entities’ ability to directly finance gender-focused organizations that meet the needs of local individuals. Explore USAID’s list of local gender-focused partners and a list of Green Climate Fund Accredited Entities.

Engage local women and gender-diverse individuals as decision makers and key consultants. Aligning climate finance activities with local needs and priorities can make them more inclusive and effective.

At a higher level, advocate for equal gender representation and leadership within global financial institutions, which can lead to better addressing the needs of more diverse populations and drive meaningful, lasting change. Resources to support women and gender-diverse individuals as leaders, such as leadership training and development programs, will help achieve this goal.

Finally, eliminate gender biases in government budget decisions and in the allocation of funds. This action will require promoting gender equality within governing bodies involved in climate financing, and making sure finance decisions consider the needs and interests of women and gender-diverse individuals.

Some of the practical steps and examples shared above can also be found in USAID’s Gender Equality and Climate Finance Technical Brief.

USAID Gender Equality and Climate Finance in Action

USAID’s global reach, national- and local-level partnerships, and leading climate and gender expertise help create and sustain equitable climate action, like gender-responsive climate finance.

The Resilient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Environments (RISE) grants challenge is a groundbreaking initiative aimed at addressing gender-based violence in the environment and climate sectors. Through a call for proposals, USAID and the International Union for Conservation of Nature select RISE grantees, promote their work at this intersection, and provide technical assistance to support the proposed activity in achieving measurable results. RISE builds capacities, cross-sector cooperation, and learnings on promising strategies to contribute to global learning and advocacy through its peer-learning community.

Meanwhile, the CGEF, mentioned above, is part of USAID’s Climate Finance for Development Accelerator (CFDA), which mobilizes investments for climate change mitigation and adaptation activities. The fund is also a flagship program under the new U.S. Government-led Women in the Sustainable Economy (WISE) Initiative, launched by Vice President Harris in November 2023. The WISE Initiative aims to increase women’s access to employment, training, leadership roles, and financial resources in the industries critical to our future and the future of our planet. In August 2022, USAID announced the selection of the CGEF Grant Manager, 2X Global. 2X Global is globally recognized as a thought leader at the nexus of gender and climate and will manage CGEF’s portfolio of grants focused on increasing access to finance for women and girls on the front lines of climate mitigation and adaptation.

Another notable USAID-supported program in gender-responsive climate finance is INVEST, which mobilizes private capital to drive inclusive development and focuses on women’s economic empowerment.

Connect with USAID Gender and Environment Experts

Get in touch with the following USAID experts to continue the discussion:

Corinne Hart 📧

Corinne Hart is a Senior Gender Advisor for Energy, Environment, and Climate with USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub

 

Read Corinne’s article on investing in women-led climate solutions.

 

Madison Allen 📧

Madison Allen is a Gender and Climate Program Analyst with USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub.

 

 

 

Georgia Hartman 📧

Georgia is a Senior Gender Advisor for Environment and Climate and former AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow with USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub.

Read Georgia’s blog on harnessing data to empower women and girls as change agents in climate change.

 

 

Sashi Jayatileke 📧

Sashi is a Senior Climate Finance Advisor with USAID’s Center for Environment, Energy, and Infrastructure. Read Sashi’s blog on USAID’s efforts to close the climate funding gap.

 

 

This blog was originally published by Climatelinks.

With the support of USAID and the government, the National Federation of Coffee Growers is supporting the titling of 300 coffee farms in Cauca.

The end of the year brought good news for coffee growers in Northern Cauca. Seven families from Caldono received property titles to their coffee farms. Some of the families had initiated proceedings 10 years ago and had given up hope of ever obtaining a registered land title.

USAID’s Land for Prosperity Activity launched the initiative with support from the National Land Agency and in partnership with the National Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC). The partnership marks a milestone in Northern Cauca as the first time that a private sector stakeholder invests in the formalization of rural property. The strategy is expected to reach 300 families in Caldono who lack a land title to their coffee farms.

The FNC has committed more than $30,000 USD in investment and is providing workspace, logistical support, and valuable knowledge of the municipality.

Coffee growers who own farms with legal certainty are more likely to invest their own resources in improving coffee production and processing. Above all, secure land tenure reduces tension around land in Cauca, a region where for years, land conflicts have delayed rural development and the delivery of state services.

“The most important thing that we can do for our coffee growers is protect their property. My recommendation is to move forward with companies and the government, seeking policies that facilitate land formalization through taxes. Coffee growers pay taxes, with this strategy, we can find several actors that can help.”

-Gerardo Montenegro, Technical Manager of the National Federation of Coffee Growers.

In addition to strengthening the farmer’s connection to their land, a registered land title reduces the chances of forced displacement and influences the decision to continue to grow coffee as the main economic activity and contribute to Cauca’s economic development.

The facilitation of private sector investments in clarifying and documenting rural property is an innovative strategy to strengthen land rights and rural value chains like coffee. The strategy is aimed at companies and organizations with corporate social responsibility objectives or specific interests in key value chains. The strategy requires stakeholders to co-invest a minimum of 15 percent of the project cost and raises awareness about the role of land tenure in rural development.

Coffee in Cauca

In Cauca, over 380,000 people representing 94,000 families depend on the coffee sector for their livelihood. In Caldono, an estimated 5,000 families cultivate coffee on 4,700 hectares and produce 8,000 tons of coffee per year. For these coffee growers, which include Misak and Nasa indigenous communities, coffee is more than an economic activity, it is a livelihood.

In Caldono, 66 percent of parcels are informally owned, indicating that some 1,900 coffee-growing families do not have a property title. Alba Ituyán and Ameiro Mosquera are coffee growers who started the land titling process almost ten years ago. Thanks to USAID and the National Coffee Federation, in 2023, they received a joint land title to their coffee farm.

“In 2014, we started a titling process. Thanks to USAID’s Land for Prosperity Activity, we obtained the land title in two months and this farm is officially ours.” said Ameiro Mosquera, a coffee grower from Caldono.

At the title delivery event, Colombia’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Jhenifer Mojica, reminded the audience of the government’s responsibility to boost sustainable agricultural development.

“With the Agrarian Reform we will apply instruments of land administration and put productive land to work,” she said.

Cross-posted from USAID Exposure

 

USAID is developing capacity in land administration to strengthen land rights in underfunded municipalities across Colombia.

Piece by Piece

Q&A with the Subdirector of the National Land Agency in Colombia, Andrea Silva

Since signing the 2016 Peace Accords, the government of Colombia has transformed rural land administration by adopting a model that puts the onus of formalizing rural property on government land agencies like the National Land Agency (ANT). With the support of USAID’s Land for Prosperity Activity, the ANT is streamlining processes and simplifying the steps needed to deliver land titles. In this interview, the Technical Subdirector of the ANT, Andrea Silva, talks about how the Agency has taken advantage of USAID’s experience and is embracing an evolving approach to securing land rights.

What are the biggest challenges that the ANT faces during the formalization processes?

The main situation that affects our progress is that we need people to move land processes forward, and there are not a lot of skilled people with experience in land. It is not easy to find cadastral engineers or topographers with experience in rural land surveying. Therefore, we have to find new methodologies that allow us to collect physical and legal information, which is why we are making a big effort to move from direct to indirect methods. This paradigm change sometimes generates resistance, but it is necessary to make progress, because with parcel-to-parcel visits, we are not going to achieve comprehensive rural reform.

Has this changed how the government faces land informality?

Everything we do is useful for the cadastral authority, but that does not necessarily mean that we have to survey the entire municipality. So a big change in order to optimize time and resources is completing municipal parcel sweeps by intervention units. In this regard, an intervention unit is surveyed and the information is delivered to the ANT for validation. While the first unit is going through the ANT’s internal process, in the field, the second unit is already being surveyed. Through analysis, we know which units are the most informal, and so when we arrive, we already have a more accurate and clearer objective.

Is this new adaptation going to be used in the Santander de Quilichao parcel sweep?

We have already used it, for example in the units that LFP delivered in Fuentedeoro and Puerto Lleras, we have already delivered land titles. In Santander de Quilichao we are going to identify the people and parcels that need to be formalized, that need land administration or legal tenure. We are going to make the processes quicker, more consistent, and especially produce results faster. What we aspire to is to avoid what happened to us in previous parcel sweeps, which were very long processes, too long for a single municipality, so we can gradually make progress.

What role do new technologies play in simplifying processes?

Strengthening information systems and data collection systems is very important to the ANT. We are increasingly moving towards the improved use of technology, even though in rural environments this is difficult. In the countryside, people do not feel comfortable signing digital documents, on a tablet, for example. They like using pen and paper, having a hard copy of the document to take home with them. It is necessary to move towards technology in a gradual way, so that the communities continue to trust us.

Have the recommendations made by LFP increased the efficiency of the ANT and other public entities like IGAC?

Yes, we have implemented many changes, not only in the processes but also in simplifying forms, consolidating information collection tools, and issuing guidelines that are clear, not just for ANT employees but also for the parcel sweep operators. For example, before the ANT had 32 attention routes for land formalization, and we simplified the processes to 24 routes. Everything LFP has done to support the ANT with Rural Property and Land Use Planning translates to the possibility for a dignified life for rural Colombians.

Are these changes strengthening how the ANT achieves comprehensive rural reform?

The comprehensive rural reform goes beyond delivering land titles. Of course, the title is the first step for people to access institutional services, for them to have a guarantee when requesting a low-interest loan from a bank, or to access a subsidy. The ANT looks for the people and parcels that are subject to formalization in a way that permits them to access all institutional services. Delivering a property title is delivering hope, delivering possibilities, it means that the life projects of these rural communities can be given certainty.

Cross-posted from USAID Exposure