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Originally appeared on Medium.

On December 16, the United States published its first National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct, following a thorough two-year process that included consultations with stakeholders from around the country, as well as significant coordination among federal agencies, including USAID. The National Action Plan promotes responsible business conduct for U.S. companies operating abroad.

Responsible business conduct is the idea that businesses can perform well while doing good and that governments should set and facilitate the conditions for this to take place. Central to this concept is emphasizing positive contributions businesses make to economic, environmental, and social progress, while recognizing and avoiding adverse impacts of business conduct and addressing them when they occur.

The National Action Plan outlines how the U.S. government, business, labor, civil society, foreign governments, and other stakeholders will strengthen efforts to work together to promote high standards of open and accountable business practices, respect for human rights, and a commitment to transparency.

Land Rights and Responsible Investment

USAID has long been a leader in promoting responsible investment in agriculture in the developing world. Through initiatives like the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, we are partnering with the private sector to accelerate investment in food production while reducing hunger and extreme poverty.

These initiatives sometimes involve land-based investments in countries where the systems that govern land and property rights are weak. Acquiring rights to use or own land in these environments can carry substantial risks. Unclear, undocumented or overlapping claims to land, lack of transparency, and the potential for land-based conflict can undermine investment projects and threaten the rights and livelihoods of local communities.

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Originally appeared on Medium.

As global climate change continues to threaten coastal communities in the tropics, governments have increasingly focused on the promotion and conservation of mangrove forests for their protective qualities. Mangroves — trees and shrubs that grow in tropical estuaries — are among the world’s most productive ecosystems and, compared to other forest systems, have an impressive capacity to sequester and store carbon at high rates. They also serve as an important physical buffer, protecting coastal areas from storm surges and acting as “bioshields.” Despite these clear benefits, since 1980 the world has lost approximately 20 percent of its mangrove forests. With this in mind, there is a growing need to understand the factors, both biophysical and societal, that contribute to sustainable mangrove management.

To date, discussions around mangrove forest conservation and rehabilitation have been highly technical, and focused primarily on ecological conditions under which mangroves can be planted and promoted. Lacking from this conversation is a more robust analysis about the ways land governance, resource rights arrangements, and land use planning — the social aspects of the conservation challenge — affect mangrove conservation and rehabilitation.

Compared to terrestrial forests, mangroves’ unique placement straddling land and sea has led to great ambiguity as to the specific jurisdictional agency overseeing their management (i.e. Forest, Aquaculture, and Marine) in many countries. Regardless, local land and resource governance systems often determine the ultimate success or failure of resource conservation efforts.

Read the full photo essay on Medium.

Originally appeared on Medium.

When I arrived in Liberia six years ago, I was tasked with facilitating the development of the country’s first national land policy. Of the many reasons why such a policy was needed — improving the enabling environment for economic growth; advancing better land and resource management in a country rich in natural resources — none was more striking than the prevalence of land disputes. Virtually every single Liberian has been touched in some way by a land dispute. Although disputes over land and natural resources played an important role in the 14-year civil war that ended in 2003, today the majority of land disputes do not grab headlines. But they are nevertheless a source of real anxiety and insecurity. No one can be sure that their land is free of disputes without clear laws governing who can own what land and under what conditions. And clear laws and policies need to be complemented by an accurate and up-to-date land information system that can tell you with a reasonable degree of certainty who owns what pieces of land and where the boundaries are.

According to a 2008 survey, 59 percent of Liberians said that violent land conflicts arise ‘often’ or ‘always.’ And 62 percent said that land was the most important cause of violent conflict between communities. This is confirmed by 2013–2014 baseline data from USAID’s impact evaluation of a program to strengthen community land governance. That data showed that almost every community surveyed described an ongoing, protracted land dispute.

Read the full photo essay on Medium.