Category: Uncategorized

The artisanal mining sector in West and Central Africa is a rapidly expanding economic force employing millions of young people, often those who are the most vulnerable. Numerous ancillary informal economies are associated with the export of what are commonly known as “conflict minerals” such as diamonds, gold and coltan. Women grow crops and process food for the labor force of young men digging deep into the ground to pull out the ore and precious metals and stones. Shopkeepers and other merchants sell tools and supplies to the communities built up around the rich yet dispersed mineral resources of the regions. Complex flows of capital and credit reach the most remote parts of the continent to pre-finance the extraction and sale of conflict minerals. Few recognize the importance of property rights in these flourishing economies.

Two USAID activities – the Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development Project II (PRADD II) project, which works in Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic, and the Capacity Building for Responsible Minerals Trade (CBRMT) project, which works in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – know that securing rights and access to subsurface minerals is critical to sustainable resource management and transparency. Based on years of experience, PRADD II and CBRMT developed and refined approaches and techniques to help governments formalize land ownership to two asset classes – the bundle of surface rights (land, trees, water, etc.) and the sub-surface rights often viewed by the state as its exclusive domain. The formalization process is complex because there is often a disconnect between national law and the reality on the ground. Even though land policy and laws may transfer ownership of land to the state itself, and then to mining companies through concessions, rural populations often contend that customary tenure arrangements still prevail and that both surface and sub-surface resources belong to them.

There’s no easy way out of this conundrum, but the PRADD II and CBRMT experiences show that both the state and customary authorities must be brought into the process of resource tenure formalization. This is particularly true for post-conflict countries, where the authority and legitimacy of customary authorities over these resources often supersedes the power of the state. In post-conflict environments the state is commonly weak and is unable and/or unwilling to clarify and formalize the institutions and rules governing access to mineral resources, in part because these resources are often illegitimately funding the purchase of weapons and ammunition (by special interests that hold considerable power and authority over government itself).

Imagine the case faced by many villagers in West and Central Africa. Farm families have invested significant labor in clearing the land, planting crops and harvesting. Most of the work is done by women. One day, a wife notices that a stranger is digging a deep and narrow pit along the shores of a stream passing through her rice fields. When she asks, “Why are you digging this deep hole,” the stranger replies, “I am exploring for diamonds and gold. I have received the authorization of the chief to prospect and this seems to be a good site.” Several weeks later, to her surprise, a large team of young men is digging a deep pit into her fields. “Why are you here?” she asks. “Your husband has given us authorization to dig for diamonds in this place because the prospector found signs of diamonds.” When the wife confronts her husband about the trampling of her fields by the diamond digger, he replies, “Don’t worry, I have negotiated with the chief and the head of the work team that we will receive one third of all diamonds found in this place. We’ll be rich, your trampled fields are no loss.”

As is often the case, once diamonds are found in an area, hundreds of people invade the area to try their luck. If the site is indeed productive, it becomes well known throughout the country. Outside investors are sometimes attracted to the area to try their luck as well. At this point, the diamond diggers might be surprised when an agent of a foreign owned company arrives one day to say, “I have a government issued permit in my hand. I own the concession under this land, and this site is now mine. You are to leave immediately.” The diamond diggers refuse, and go to the local authorities to complain. The regional representative of the Ministry of Mines might throw up his hands, “Well, you know, the law states that all sub-surface mining rights belong to the state, so you really are illegally mining the land and you have no rights. The concession permit is valid so you must depart immediately or we will bring in the police to evict you.” Deeply disappointed, the villagers return home to plan how to respond to the threat of expropriation. And so, the tensions grow. The outcome is uncertain.

Formalizing supply chains for artisanal minerals, including through the formalization of rights and access to subsurface resources, is an important step to establishing responsible supply chains. USAID, through PRADD II and CBRMT, is a pioneer in assisting governments and the private sector in this complex endeavor. However, these USAID projects reveal that this approach can lead to the exclusion of some actors (including the state), particularly those who have long benefited from an opaque tenurial status and the associated lack of clearly recognized and secured rights. When customary authorities are inadvertently excluded, they mount surprisingly effective forms of protest and resistance. Angry villagers have sabotaged diamond mining companies in the Central African Republic because operators failed to respect areas set aside for artisanal mining. Similarly, village diamond miners in Côte d’Ivoire brought a diamond mining company to its knees by threatening to destroy buildings and equipment unless the concessionaire’s permits were opened up to artisanal mining. This type of proactive resistance is an increasingly common sign of the growing power of organized West and Central African rural populations to defend their perceived rights to customarily-owned lands.

A valuable lesson from PRADD II and CBRMT is the understanding that more attention should be focused on how to manage conflicts over who controls and manages rights of access to both surface and sub-surface natural resources. Training in conflict management cannot be directed solely to government officials; such capacity building initiatives must also include powerful traditional authorities, artisanal miners, civil society and actors within the private sector.

Tajikistan is on the cusp of achieving its vision of a fully-functional market that allows land-use rights to be bought and sold. The transition from a post-Soviet system of regulation and control to market-based principles represents the culmination of over a decade of donor-supported commitment and effort to unlock significant economic growth potential in Tajikistan and support the country’s transition away from donor assistance.

Tajikistan’s arable land is limited, covering just seven percent of its territory. Without a land market, land cannot easily be transferred from less to more efficient types of use, hindering efforts to alleviate the country’s significant rural poverty and food security challenges. Tajikistan’s robust agricultural sector accounts for 57 percent of employment and nearly a quarter of the national GDP. The emergence of a land market is critical to spurring equitable economic growth, and empowering entrepreneurial farmers to either expand their land holdings or lease them.

These new opportunities are particularly relevant to Tajik women, who make up around two thirds of Tajikistan’s agricultural workforce. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Tajik men left the country in droves in search of better economic opportunities abroad, leaving behind female family members to care for the farms. Donor support, led by USAID, has consistently prioritized the establishment of a legal framework for protecting land holdings, and helping women to overcome adversity as they exercise their land use rights.

Informing to Empower

Land in Tajikistan is owned by the government, with individuals holding rights to use the land. Following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country’s agriculture sector was dominated by large-scale collective farms, which were gradually reorganized into dehkan farms — smaller farms held by an individual family or group of shareholders who willingly joined their land together. With the support of the USAID-funded Land Reform and Farm Restructuring Project (LRFRP), the 2016 Law on Dehkan Farms clearly defines dehkan farms as legal entities and provides better protection of legal rights of farmers that will support the emergence of a market in land use rights.

While donor efforts have helped make new legislation gender-equitable, Tajik women face barriers in taking advantage of their new rights. In some cases, it’s because they lack access to information about the new rights they have, or how to exercise them. In other cases, it is the result of cultural norms which lead local authorities to block attempts by women to register their farms.

To overcome these barriers, USAID-supported projects borrowed from the land reform experience of Tajikistan’s neighbor, the Kyrgyz Republic, by establishing a network of local volunteer experts: tashabbuskors. Modeled on the Kyrgyz demilgechi network, tashabbuskors serve as local land reform experts with whom farmers can consult on a variety of issues, such as disputes with neighbors and settling alleged tax debt. When an issue requires legal support, tashabbuskors can guide the farmer to a local Legal Aid Center to receive professional legal support. Through the Legal Aid Centers and tashabbuskor network, both LRFRP and the ongoing Feed the Future Tajikistan Land Market Development Activity (LMDA) help women and men understand and defend their land rights as land users under the emerging land use market.

Documenting Property Rights

In Tajikistan, ownership of land use rights is documented through certificates issued by the State Unitary Enterprise for the Registration of Immovable Property (SUERIP). However, complicated documentation requirements and unclear procedures have historically frustrated efforts by Tajik women to register property rights. In addition, as SUERIP offices are predominantly staffed by men, cultural norms will cause some women to send a male relative to register land they own. Without their name on the certificate, women are unable to exercise their rights as a landholder.

The tashabbuskor network helps women register their land by providing information and building confidence in how to file their paperwork. Moreover, the Feed the Future Tajikistan Land Market Development Activity is working with SUERIP to hire and train more female registrars, helping create an environment more suited for the agency’s clientele, as well as supporting efforts to improve registration office procedures to save time and cost.

The Emerging Market

By the end of 2016, following the passage of the new Law on Dehkan Farms, large-scale collective farms made up less than one percent of arable land in Tajikistan, and registered small-holder dehkan farms made up 81 percent. In addition to ensuring the rights of dehkan farms as legally-recognized entities, the law advanced the ability for landholders to leverage land use rights in civil transactions, such as leasing and mortgage. Once final legal instruments are in place, farmers in Tajikistan will be able to transact land use rights. This could include a farmer mortgaging land to provide a mechanism for financing investment, or a farmer having the opportunity to lease or sell the rights to his or her property upon retirement.

The success of the land market depends on a supportive enabling environment and the sustainability of the underlying institutions. The modernization of SUERIP offices and dissemination of information through the tashabbuskor network is only the beginning. The National Association of Independent Appraisers has been established to develop the professional capacity of Tajikistan’s nascent land valuation service providers. The taxation of dehkan farms is under review to ensure fair and equitable taxation of farm activities. A sustainable model of free or low-cost legal aid to farmers whose land use rights are challenged is being developed and implemented. As these initiatives progress and come together, a viable market for land use rights is within reach, advancing Tajikistan further along the path toward greater economic self-reliance and resiliency.

The history of land rights in Colombia is a centuries-old tale of colonialism, highly concentrated land ownership and unsuccessful agrarian reforms. Fifty years of civil strife have left vast sections of the country’s land undocumented, vulnerable to land record manipulation and outright lawlessness. Under the landmark peace agreement, the Government of Colombia has committed to addressing the land issues that have so often been at the heart of the nation’s conflicts – by formalizing property rights across the country, organizing the national registry and recovering lands that belong to the state.

In a warehouse on the outskirts of the capital, the nation’s property registry authority—the Superintendence of Notary and Registry (SNR)—stores over 80,000 paper-based property ledgers, some dating as far back as the 18th century. In 2015, the Constitutional Court ordered the government to restore, transcribe, digitize and conserve the records, seeking to modernize the disorganized and unreliable land administration system that had persisted for generations.

In addition to organizing the historical documents, the court ordered the SNR to determine how much land had been acquired irregularly (without formal documentation) and continued to be held unofficially. A year-long investigation showed that at least 30 percent of the nation’s territory—some 5 million hectares of land—was acquired irregularly.

“The state had no idea,” explains Clara María Sanín, a land expert working with the SNR. “Colombia’s history has been characterized by a government incapable of protecting its territory, a centralized administration that allowed faraway, rural regions to do what they want with land ownership.”

Now, in the post-conflict era, the national government has pushed rural land reform to the forefront of national dialogue by creating a new land administration authority, the National Land Agency. The agency is mandated to begin an ambitious land formalization campaign—in response to the fact that six out of every ten parcels in Colombia are informally owned—and coordinate rural development strategies with its sister agencies: the National Development Agency and the Agency for Territorial Renovation.

As the three agencies maneuver in unprecedented ways to ensure that sustainable investments reflect an integrated development approach, USAID, through its Land and Rural Development Program, plays a key role as facilitator. On its surface, USAID’s program acts as a conduit between national, regional and municipal administrations, improving intergovernmental coordination and making it easier for sub-national government agencies to mobilize domestic resources to address land issues and rural development. At a deeper level, the program is fostering critical public policy and governance changes that are improving Colombia’s land regulatory framework.

Piloting Massive Formalization

In partnership with the National Land Agency and the National Planning Department, USAID is spearheading a high-profile land formalization pilot in the municipality of Ovejas, a priority municipality in the nation’s post-conflict environment that was devastated by two decades of guerrilla and paramilitary violence. The pilot—which will soon title 3,000 parcels—is streamlining the collection and processing of property and cadastral information in order to reduce costs and provide government land agencies with integrated and reliable land data. The government is monitoring the Ovejas pilot carefully as it looks to learn about the most promising technologies and approaches as it prepares to undertake its own national land titling campaign.

“In the past, the government formalized property in an absolutely isolated manner. This pilot changes the way we do things in rural land administration. In Ovejas, we are focused on resolving all types of land conflicts, from parcel to parcel. The strategy is new, it is massive and it requires a higher degree of institutional coordination than we have ever seen,” explains Juliana Cortés, director of land tenure at the National Land Agency.

The Ovejas pilot is part of the government strategy to move away from a demand-driven land administration policy to one in which the government assumes the cost of first-time formalization. By doing so, it will alleviate major time and cost burdens that prevent most low-income rural landholders from seeking a valid title. Once a property is registered, future title transfers will be much less time and cost intensive.

State Presence

To get to this point, the USAID program has worked for nearly five years on creating an environment where government entities are more willing to share information and coordinate efforts to strengthen land tenure, improve land use and catalyze rural development.

“By framing land tenure with institutional strengthening, USAID is testing a new approach that no longer patches holes along the way. We believe the Colombian government to be capable of land administration—we merely support them in certain activities and put effective tools in their hands in order to ease the process,” explains Marcela Chaves, USAID/Colombia’s land tenure expert.

At the core of strengthening Colombia’s land institutions is access to information and the use of IT systems to manage and ultimately protect the country’s land and property data. The information gathered through the pilot is stored in a central database that merges former data collection systems, and is shared with the property registry authority. At the same time, USAID is assisting in the digitization of over four million land documents, which represent one-fifth of the country’s area.

“One of our biggest challenges in formalizing land is the ability to count on and trust the information that we have. What we have now is basic data that is not specific enough to make clear decisions in the public policy forum,” says Cortés.

Better land tenure policies and systems are already catalyzing rural development. In the new, land-conscious Colombia, municipalities are prioritizing titling public properties, such as schools, to stimulate rural investments with national funding. Beyond land tenure, this innovative USAID program is using its rapport with government entities to broker public-private partnerships, in which more than half of the funds are from the domestic government.

Making domestic public entities—rather than USAID—the face of development continues to increases the public’s confidence in their leaders and institutions. In a country long wracked by corruption and war, a little bit of confidence goes a long way.

Much of the world’s rural landscapes are technically managed by national governments with limited recognition of, or support for, the rights and management responsibilities of the rural poor who live in these areas. In an era of large-scale land acquisitions for global commodity production, this has led, in some cases, to governments allocating vast tracts of land and resources to companies with limited or no consultation of the people affected. These cases pose risks to all stakeholders, including: potential eviction or loss of livelihoods to the communities; reputational risk and operational challenges to companies (including responsible businesses); and the undermining of public confidence in government. Participatory documentation of land and resource rights, using state of the art technology and robust, inclusive processes, is creating an enabling environment to address existing land and resource conflicts, avoid future disputes and create improved land use plans for the future.

Since 2014, USAID’s Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) program has piloted bottom-up participatory approaches to document and, in some cases, achieve government recognition of community land rights in five countries. Working in the diverse locations of Paraguay, Ghana, Zambia, Vietnam and Burma, USAID identified and tested a range of approaches to document land rights to inform conflict resolution and improve planning.

USAID found that, when it comes to addressing land rights challenges, sometimes the best information can’t be collected from satellites, or often even from government offices in capital cities. The information has to come from the ground-up, often through participatory dialogues with the land users themselves. Effective approaches ranged from documenting parcel-level rights for individual farms to clarifying boundaries between communities or documenting broader indigenous group claims.

For example, in Zambia, TGCC carried out household-level land certification of customary land rights, documenting the rights of over 50,000 individuals across more than 15,000 parcels of land. In Burma, by comparison, the allocation of vacant, fallow and virgin land to domestic and foreign investors has been so dramatic in recent years that TGCC found that rapid documentation of village tract boundaries and community land uses was effective in providing a degree of security to both land holders and investors. In Paraguay, TGCC worked through a Federation of Indigenous Peoples groups to consolidate and digitize over six hundred existing land claims into an open platform that commodity financers can use to asses deforestation and land conflicts risks in their investment decisions.

In many cases, rights documentation may not seek to identify one owner, but rather identify many overlapping users of a landscape to help improve management. For example, in Vietnam, TGCC used participatory coastal resource assessments to map overlapping resource rights of different stakeholders including line, net and boat fishermen, as well as aquaculture farmers and shell gleaners within the same coastal mangrove forests. The results ultimately improved mangrove co-management regimes through the development of coastal spatial plans. In other cases, rights documentation sought to clarify tenant rights to make improvements on the land. In Ghana, TGCC recognized that a huge portion of cocoa farmers (in some cases, over 70 percent) were effectively prohibited from participating in industry-funded cocoa intensification / rehabilitation efforts by their existing long-term tenancy arrangements. In response, USAID provided support to document tenant-landlord agreements in a way that promotes farm rehabilitation and reduced deforestation through partnerships with global chocolate and commodity companies: The Hershey Company and ECOM Agroindustrial.

With an increasing recognition of the value of bottom-up land documentation, there has been a wave of technology-based solutions that allow communities to map their own rights. This democratization of technology has allowed communities to move from paper-based participatory mapping to smartphones that can collect boundary points or even draw parcel boundaries directly on a screen over satellite imagery. Tools and platforms, such as the Social Tenure Domain Model, Open Tenure, Cadasta and USAID’s Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure (MAST), are offering low cost solutions to collect and in some cases administer land tenure information. TGCC deployed these tools and platforms, relying on a range of MAST solutions to push forward inclusive land documentation processes.

While mobile solutions undoubtedly reduced costs and increased data quality, they did not replace the most time consuming (and thus costly) elements of land tenure documentation: deep community engagement, trust building, participation and validation of results. In the end, these pieces were the centerpiece of developing transparent and legitimate products. This mix of attention to social processes and standardized tools increased quality and consistency of data collected, and have allowed for the products to be used by the communities themselves, private sector investors, other donors and government.

USAID’s E3/Land and Urban Office supported the design and implementation of a rigorous impact evaluation of the Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) project in Zambia (2014-2017). This project explored the relationship between secure customary land tenure and development goals related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Prior to the evaluation, there was little or no evidence on whether granting customary documentation to a farmer makes her or him more likely to adopt climate smart agricultural practices.

The overarching policy question and theory of change that motivated this evaluation is:

The USAID TGCC Zambia project was a 3.5-year intervention that supported agroforestry extension services and worked to increase customary tenure security at the village and household levels in the Chipata District of Zambia’s Eastern Province. The project supported USAID development objectives of reduced rural poverty through improved agricultural productivity of smallholders, improved natural resource management and improved resilience of vulnerable households. The TGCC project interventions included:

The evaluation was designed as a four-arm randomized control trial to assess the direct and joint impacts of the agroforestry extension services and land tenure interventions on various outcomes. Villages were randomly assigned to receive one of the following activities:

• Land tenure interventions
• Agroforestry extension services
• Both agroforestry extension services and land tenure interventions
• No intervention of either kind (control group)

All photos by Sandra Coburn / The Cloudburst Group, unless noted otherwise.