Document Type: Briefs

Gender, youth, and Land Tenure: Lessons from Zambézia, Mozambique

March 29, 2021
Briefs

INTRODUCTION

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program improves land tenure security for women and youth as part of broad-based economic empowerment. In 2020, ILRG’s Mozambique team assessed gender and youth relationships and decision-making structures regarding land access and use in a matrilineal context in Zambézia Province. The lessons learned in the assessment help clarify how gender and age inequalities interact with the process of delimitation of land boundaries and confirmation of land rights, as well as women’s and men’s land use and tenure security. The findings presented in this brief can guide decision-makers to design appropriate gender and youth-responsive activities and materials.

The assessment involved qualitative field work in two communities in Ile District where delimitation of community and family land was supported by the Department for International Development-funded Land: Enhancing Governance for Economic Development (LEGEND) program in 2018 – 2019 and USAID’s ILRG program in 2019; both projects were implemented by Associação Rural para Ajuda Mútua (ORAM). The communities were also directly or indirectly affected by vast land concessions granted to Portucel, an international company investing in the production of timber for paper pulp and energy.

The projects supported the establishment and capacity building of community land associations, delimitation of communities, and subsequent delimitation of land parcels that had been previously acquired by families or individuals based on occupation. Together, LEGEND and ILRG helped form 25 community land associations and provided written declarations of land rights for over 13,000 family and individual parcels. Seventy percent of land titles were solely in the names of women and six percent were co-titled to a man and a woman.

 

 

Rooted in the ground: Reforming Ghana’s forest laws to incentivize cocoa-based agroforestry – Brief

March 24, 2021
Briefs

The government of Ghana claims state ownership of all “naturally occurring” trees, including on land privately held under customary title. The lack of tree tenure and inability to capture economic benefits from trees is a major driver of tree loss and disincentivizes cocoa agroforestry. This brief analyzes tree tenure law and policy in Ghana, including the proposed tree registration policy and justifications for state ownership of naturally occurring trees based in the 1992 Constitution. The authors propose an alternative interpretation of the 1992 Constitution based on customary law and usage that allows devolution of all tree rights to customary landowners without a constitutional amendment and removes the need for a tree registry. Evidence from devolution of tree tenure in the Sahel and China show that devolution can lead to increased tree cover. Based on this analysis a series of recommendations on tree tenure reform are posed for government, the cocoa sector, donors, and civil society.

COCOA AND FORESTS

Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer, and cocoa plays a critically important role in the economy with an estimated 30 percent of Ghana’s population dependent on cocoa for part or all their livelihoods. However, the cocoa sector is in trouble and smallholder cocoa production does not provide a reliable livelihood or ensure a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.

Traditional cocoa farms retained large shade trees which preserved many economically and environmentally important trees within the landscape. In the late 1950s the government inserted itself into the timber market and claimed rights to naturally occurring trees on cocoa farms. This led to increased timber harvesting from cocoa farms that was exacerbated in the 1980s when Ghana’s cocoa marketing board changed its policy and advocated removing shade trees and switching to more sun tolerant cocoa varieties to increase productivity. The new cocoa board policy produced short-term yield gains, but also increased susceptibility to diseases and shortened cocoa trees’ productive life. The combined pressures from forestry and cocoa led to deforestation and fragmentation of forest landscape in Ghana’s high forest zone and widespread removal of shade trees from farms. An average of 138,000 hectares of forest was lost per year from 2000 to 2015 and in 2007 it was estimated that 72 percent of cocoa farms across Ghana had “no to light” levels of shade.

The government of Ghana and cocoa industry actors acknowledge the vital role of improved cocoa production systems to mitigate and adapt to climate change, maintain biodiversity, conserve and enhance ecosystem services, and improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers and their families. They recognize that increasing the diversity of shade tree species in Ghana’s cocoa-growing landscape is critical to improve the health and sustainability of cocoa production and diversify income and resilience for cocoa households.

 

 

Tree and land tenure nexus in Côte d’Ivoire

March 22, 2021
Briefs

OVERVIEW OF TENURE ISSUES WITH FORESTS AND COCOA

Côte d’Ivoire’s forests have decreased from 16 million hectares in 1900 to 7.8 million hectares in 1990 and to 3.4 million hectares in 2015 (GoCI, 2018). Today 11 percent of the country’s surface area is forested. Of the remaining forests, 39 percent are located in protected areas, 25 percent in gazetted areas (forêts classées) and 36 percent in rural areas (GoCI, 2019b). From 1990 to 2000, rural areas lost the most forest at an annual rate of 7 percent, whereas between 2000 and 2015, gazetted forests were lost the fastest at 4 percent per year (GoCI, 2019b). Today there are 387 forest logging permits covering rural and gazetted lands, though historically logging has been concentrated in rural areas (GoCI, 2019b).

Agriculture – especially cocoa – has been the primary driver of deforestation in Côte d’Ivoire in recent decades (World Bank, 2019). There are an estimated 3.5 million hectares of cocoa plantations – more than remaining forests – of which 750,000 hectares are located in gazetted areas (GoCI, 2019b). Farms are all smallholder and produce on average 40 percent of the world’s cocoa supply, with annual exports exceeding two million tons in 2018 (World Bank, 2019). A fifth of the population depends on cocoa for a living. As land availability in rural areas has diminished, farmers have moved into gazetted forests and protected areas, which today account for a quarter of national production (RFI, 2019).

Two important features differentiate Côte d’Ivoire’s tenure arrangements for cocoa compared to Ghana. First, Côte d’Ivoire’s farms have a different settlement history, with the vast majority established during migrations to forest zones by outsider ethnic groups, mainly the baoulé ethnic group as well as foreigners, mainly from Burkina Faso (OFPRA, 2017). These migrations picked up in the 1940s as part of colonial policy and administrative strategies to attract labor (USAID, 2016) but they intensified after independence to a point where migrants outnumbered locals in many areas (Ruf, 2020).

Migration in the 1970s was driven by President Houphouët Boigny’s slogan “the land is owned by whoever puts it to use” (“la terre appartient à celui qui la met en valeur”). Clearing forest helped secure access to land (Bymolt et al., 2018), and along with a government policy favoring full-sun cocoa varieties (Schulte et al., 2020), migrants had a strong incentive to clear natural forests. Customary arrangements varied and evolved, with most initially governed by the tutorat system of integrating outsiders through sharing of production and gifts with a representative of the land-owning family (Chauveau, 2007).

These arrangements became more monetized as land pressure increased (Chauveau, 2007) and in some instances transitioned to outright land sales from the 1950s (Wily, 2015) but especially the 1970s and 1980s (Chauveau, 2007). In the 1990s and 2000s, new tenure arrangements called planter-partager (plant and share) took hold whereby outsiders would clear forests and build a farm and then half of the farm would revert to the landowner upon crop maturity. The new paradigm could be explained by land-owning groups becoming more aware of the value of holding onto land while “financing” the labor needed to establish a viable plantation (Colin & Ruf, 2011). Specific tenure agreements are diverse, with as many as 15 typologies (Wily, 2015). While some of these arrangements resemble those found in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire differs in the preponderance of migrant farmers and also the violence and politicization of cocoa belt land disputes in the 1990s and 2000s (Chauveau, 2000).

A second distinguishing feature of Côte d’Ivoire is the history of centralized state-driven approaches to land and forest management in disregard of customary practices. This has led to legal pluralism (Lamarche, 2019) and a schism between laws and what is done in practice (OFPRA, 2017). While Ghana has similar features, there is no equivalent of recognized “stool lands” in Côte d’Ivoire despite the existence of parallel customary systems. Instead the rural land law recognizes customary rights only as a temporary stepping stone towards a national titling system controlled by the central government (GoCI, 2017; OFPRA, 2017). This leads to considerable challenges in securing land tenure despite over US$100 million in donor support in recent years (Dagrou & Loroux, 2017; Wily, 2015).

Against this backdrop, the issue of tree tenure has gained increasing attention from several fronts. First, difficulties implementing tree cover and tree planting requirements under standards like the Rainforest Alliance’s Cocoa Certification Program drew attention to misaligned tenure incentives (Ruf & Varlet, 2017). Meanwhile the current government has embraced the concept of “zero-deforestation cocoa” as part of its broader commitment to increasing the country’s forest cover from 11 percent to 20 percent by 2030 (GoCI, 2018). The new forest code of 2019 explicitly addresses tree tenure for the first time and gives primacy to the underlying landowner (GoCI, 2019a). The logic underlying such reforms is as follows: just as secure land tenure is a key predictor of higher cocoa productivity (Schulte et al., 2020), secure tree tenure can incentivize agroforestry. However, as discussed in this brief, Côte d’Ivoire shows that this is not straightforward in practice.

 

 

Rooted in the ground – Reforming Ghana’s forest laws to incentivize cocoa-based agroforestry: Summary for policy makers

March 22, 2021
Briefs

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The government of Ghana claims state ownership of all “naturally occurring” trees, including on land privately held under customary title. The lack of tree tenure and inability to capture economic benefits from trees is a major driver of tree loss and disincentivizes cocoa agroforestry. This brief analyzes tree tenure law and policy in Ghana, including the proposed tree registration policy and justifications for state ownership of naturally occurring trees based in the 1992 Constitution. The authors propose an alternative interpretation of the 1992 Constitution based on customary law and usage that allows devolution of all tree rights to customary landowners without a constitutional amendment and removes the need for a tree registry. Evidence from devolution of tree tenure in the Sahel and China shows that devolution can lead to increased tree cover. Based on this analysis a series of recommendations on tree tenure reform are posed for government, the cocoa sector, donors, and civil society.

COCOA AND FORESTS

Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer, and cocoa plays a critically important role in the economy with an estimated 30 percent of Ghana’s population dependent on cocoa for part or all their livelihoods. However, the cocoa sector is in trouble and smallholder cocoa production does not provide a reliable livelihood or ensure a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.

Traditional cocoa farms retained large shade trees which preserved many economically and environmentally important trees within the landscape. In the late 1950s the government inserted itself into the timber market and claimed rights to naturally occurring trees on cocoa farms. This led to increased timber harvesting from cocoa farms that was exacerbated in the 1980s when Ghana’s cocoa marketing board changed its policy and advocated removing shade trees and switching to more sun tolerant cocoa varieties to increase productivity. The new cocoa board policy produced short-term yield gains, but also increased susceptibility to diseases and shortened cocoa trees’ productive life. The combined pressures from forestry and cocoa led to deforestation and fragmentation of forest landscape in Ghana’s high forest zone and widespread removal of shade trees from farms. An average of 138,000 hectares of forest was lost per year from 2000 to 2015 and in 2007 it was estimated that 72 percent of cocoa farms across Ghana had “no to light” levels of shade.

The government of Ghana and cocoa industry actors acknowledge the vital role of improved cocoa production systems to mitigate and adapt to climate change, maintain biodiversity, conserve and enhance ecosystem services, and improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers and their families. They recognize that increasing the diversity of shade tree species in Ghana’s cocoa-growing landscape is critical to improve the health and sustainability of cocoa production and diversify income and resilience for cocoa households.

 

 

Women’s Land Rights and Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Overview

March 4, 2021
Briefs

USAID is securing and strengthening women’s land rights across the developing world. Owning land is central to determining household income and opportunity and can provide a powerful pathway to improved wellbeing, livelihoods, and self-reliance. Although women play a critical role in food production, they are less likely than men to own and control land. Forty percent of the world’s economies limit women’s property rights, and 44 of 191 countries do not provide female and male surviving spouses with equal rights to inherit assets.

According to a 2020 global survey, one in five women feels insecure about her land and property rights, and in some regions like Sub-Saharan Africa nearly one in every two women fears losing her land in the event of divorce or death of spouse.

WHY WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS MATTER

Ownership and control over assets that support income lie at the very heart of women’s economic empowerment and their ability to contribute to local, national, and global economies. For most women, the most valuable of these assets are the land and natural resources from which they earn a living, provide for their families, and invest in their communities. Evidence suggests that increasing women’s access to land and natural resources, and participation in agricultural value chains can have a positive impact on women’s agency, household productivity and income, responsible spending, and food security1. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, if women had the same access to productive resources as men, farm output would increase by 20 to 30 percent.

USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) project and Land Evidence for Economic Rights, Gender and Empowerment (LEVERAGE) activity under the Communications, Evidence and Learning (CEL) project are strengthening women’s land rights and economic empowerment in countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. Improving women’s land rights is key to addressing barriers that restrict women’s ability to reach their full economic potential, while also contributing towards increasing women’s participation in the workforce and supporting to women’s entrepreneurship.

ACTIVITIES ON WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS AND WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

USAID’s goal is to improve women’s access to and control of land and natural resources for concrete economic, social, and political opportunities. Working with women, governments, traditional leaders, communities, and the private sector, USAID uses the following strategies:

SUPPORTING LAW AND POLICY REFORMS. Reforming legal frameworks to establish women’s rights to land and natural resources is one of the most effective ways to empower women at scale. USAID is working with governments and customary leaders at the national and local levels to adopt and implement laws and policies that promote women’s land rights. USAID is also raising awareness and providing legal literacy and access to justice for women, so they are able to access and benefit from existing rights.

GENDER INTEGRATION IN LAND DOCUMENTATION. USAID is promoting gender integration in systematic land documentation processes led by governments, civil society, or private sector actors, ensuring that women’s land rights are considered in all steps, from planning to final documentation of individual or community land. Awareness-raising and communications activities are encouraging women to register their rights. Gender integration tools and best practices will be shared with governments, international organizations, NGOs, and other donors for broader application in ongoing and future land documentation efforts.

GENDER AND SOCIAL NORMS CHANGE. USAID is providing training and promoting dialogues on harmful gender and social norms for customary leaders and communities to promote changes in gender bias that hinders women from gaining rights and control over land and natural resources. USAID is also promoting gender norms change within households to enhance women’s participation in decision-making, promote collaboration within families, and mitigate gender-based violence.

AGENCY-BASED EMPOWERMENT FOR WOMEN. USAID is providing women with the skills, knowledge, and resources to meaningfully participate in decision-making and governance related to land and natural resources and to engage in agricultural value chains. Increased agency enables women to leverage secure land rights to access financing, agricultural extension, and employment in the wildlife and forestry sectors.

PRIVATE SECTOR ENGAGEMENT. Partnerships with national and multinational companies are developing policies for gender-responsive land-based investment and business practices that reach, benefit, and empower women in different agricultural value chains. USAID is contributing to the growing evidence base on the business case for women’s economic empowerment. Including women in value chains has positive impacts not only for women, their families, and communities, but also on key business performance indicators like agricultural yield, productivity, and quality of production.

GATHERING AND DISSEMINATING EVIDENCE, BEST PRACTICES, AND LESSONS LEARNED. Extensive impact and performance evaluations of past and ongoing projects will produce a rich body of evidence to inform governments, donors, and other stakeholders in developing new policies and programs to effectively strengthen women’s rights and translate them into sustainable social and economic empowerment.

 

 

Women’s Land Rights and Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Activities

March 4, 2021
Briefs

USAID is securing and strengthening women’s land rights across the developing world. Owning land is central to determining household income and opportunity and can provide a powerful pathway to improved wellbeing, livelihoods, and self-reliance. Although women play a critical role in food production, they are less likely than men to own and control land. Forty percent of the world’s economies limit women’s property rights, and 44 of 191 countries do not provide female and male surviving spouses with equal rights to inherit assets.

According to a 2020 global survey, one in five women feels insecure about her land and property rights, and in some regions like Sub-Saharan Africa nearly one in every two women fears losing her land in the event of divorce or death of spouse.

WHY WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS MATTER

Ownership and control over assets that support income lie at the very heart of women’s economic empowerment and their ability to contribute to local, national, and global economies. For most women, the most valuable of these assets are the land and natural resources from which they earn a living, provide for their families, and invest in their communities. Evidence suggests that increasing women’s access to land and natural resources, and participation in agricultural value chains can have a positive impact on women’s agency, household productivity and income, responsible spending, and food security1. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, if women had the same access to productive resources as men, farm output would increase by 20 to 30 percent.

USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) project and Land Evidence for Economic Rights, Gender and Empowerment (LEVERAGE) activity under the Communications, Evidence and Learning (CEL) project are strengthening women’s land rights and economic empowerment in countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. Improving women’s land rights is key to addressing barriers that restrict women’s ability to reach their full economic potential, while also contributing towards increasing women’s participation in the workforce and supporting to women’s entrepreneurship.

ACTIVITIES ON WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS AND WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

USAID’s goal is to improve women’s access to and control of land and natural resources for concrete economic, social, and political opportunities. Working with women, governments, traditional leaders, communities, and the private sector, USAID uses the following strategies:

SUPPORTING LAW AND POLICY REFORMS. Reforming legal frameworks to establish women’s rights to land and natural resources is one of the most effective ways to empower women at scale. USAID is working with governments and customary leaders at the national and local levels to adopt and implement laws and policies that promote women’s land rights. USAID is also raising awareness and providing legal literacy and access to justice for women, so they are able to access and benefit from existing rights.

GENDER INTEGRATION IN LAND DOCUMENTATION. USAID is promoting gender integration in systematic land documentation processes led by governments, civil society, or private sector actors, ensuring that women’s land rights are considered in all steps, from planning to final documentation of individual or community land. Awareness-raising and communications activities are encouraging women to register their rights. Gender integration tools and best practices will be shared with governments, international organizations, NGOs, and other donors for broader application in ongoing and future land documentation efforts.

GENDER AND SOCIAL NORMS CHANGE. USAID is providing training and promoting dialogues on harmful gender and social norms for customary leaders and communities to promote changes in gender bias that hinders women from gaining rights and control over land and natural resources. USAID is also promoting gender norms change within households to enhance women’s participation in decision-making, promote collaboration within families, and mitigate gender-based violence.

AGENCY-BASED EMPOWERMENT FOR WOMEN. USAID is providing women with the skills, knowledge, and resources to meaningfully participate in decision-making and governance related to land and natural resources and to engage in agricultural value chains. Increased agency enables women to leverage secure land rights to access financing, agricultural extension, and employment in the wildlife and forestry sectors.

PRIVATE SECTOR ENGAGEMENT. Partnerships with national and multinational companies are developing policies for gender-responsive land-based investment and business practices that reach, benefit, and empower women in different agricultural value chains. USAID is contributing to the growing evidence base on the business case for women’s economic empowerment. Including women in value chains has positive impacts not only for women, their families, and communities, but also on key business performance indicators like agricultural yield, productivity, and quality of production.

GATHERING AND DISSEMINATING EVIDENCE, BEST PRACTICES, AND LESSONS LEARNED. Extensive impact and performance evaluations of past and ongoing projects will produce a rich body of evidence to inform governments, donors, and other stakeholders in developing new policies and programs to effectively strengthen women’s rights and translate them into sustainable social and economic empowerment.

SELECTED WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS ACTIVITIES

Ethiopia: USAID is utilizing key evaluation findings to inform policy reform and land programming in Ethiopia. An impact evaluation of the Ethiopia Land Tenure Administration Program (ELTAP) and Ethiopia Land Administration (ELAP) programs will provide critical data on the sustainability of land certification outcomes over the long term, particularly for women. The findings will inform the Government of Ethiopia’s ongoing approach to land certification, identify land-related constraints and opportunities to women’s economic empowerment, and suggest complementary interventions that could be undertaken by the government or donors to harness longer-term, positive economic benefits for women.

Ghana: Women in cocoa farming often have less access to land and other productive resources, less decision-making power within households and communities, and are less able to enjoy social and economic benefits related to cocoa production. USAID is partnering with ECOM Agro- industrial Corp., a leading global commodity trading company, and chocolate brands to empower women farmers in the cocoa value chain. Building upon USAID’s previous work Ghana, activities will strengthen companies’ policies and practices to engage with women and increase their access to and control of productive resources. This will lead to increased improved livelihoods, diversified incomes, and greater resilience for women in cocoa communities, as well as a more productive and inclusive cocoa sector in Ghana.

India: USAID is partnering with PepsiCo in West Bengal to reach, benefit, and empower women in the potato value chain. By strengthening women farmers’ land rights, access to technical agronomic training and direct engagement with PepsiCo, women farmers, women will access improved employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in the potato supply chain, increasing their income and economic resilience. The partnership is demonstrating how women’s empowerment can lead to the adoption of sustainable farming practices, resulting in improved potato yields and net profitability for rural women and positively impacting PepsiCo’s bottom line.

Liberia: USAID is supporting community lands protection (CLP) processes across 35 communities in Liberia. USAID’s socially inclusive Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure (MAST) approach will be used for boundary harmonization, so that communities can address any land conflicts and formally register customary land. Through an impact evaluation of the Community Land Protection Program, USAID is also providing evidence on how inclusive community land governance affects gender norms and women’s decision-making power. Evaluation findings will be used to inform current and future land reform processes in the country and the implementation of the 2018 Liberia Land Rights Act. USAID is partnering with Landesa Liberia to provide community-level education on women’s land rights to ensure that women are included and meaningfully participate in community self-identification, adoption of by-laws, and inclusive community land governance.

Malawi: Malawi’s government adopted a slate of land reform laws in 2016 and is now on track to begin large-scale national land registration efforts, paving the way for increased farm investment and supply chain opportunities. USAID will work with the government and other donors to develop an approach for gender integration in systematic land documentation, ensuring that women have their land rights documented and participate in land governance. This approach will allow millions of women to enjoy secure rights to land as a building block for entrepreneurial, farm-based investment and successful small businesses.

Mozambique: USAID is working with three major national and international companies in Mozambique to develop and implement gender-responsive practices for land-based investment, return of land to local communities, and engagement with smallholder farmers through ingrower and outgrower schemes. The activity will promote gender-informed community land delimitation and registration, as well as corporate policies to reach, benefit, and empower women farmers. USAID is working with partnering with Centro Terra Viva, to strengthen the capacity of their community paralegal network that educates rural communities on their land rights and will solicit their input on the draft national land policy.

Tanzania: USAID is producing evidence to fill critical knowledge gaps related to how customary land documentation affects women’s economic empowerment in Tanzania, focused on the role of women’s groups and financial institutions. A targeted study of USAID’s Land Tenure Assistance Activity will examine the outcomes of efforts to strengthen credit opportunities and to develop new loan products for women. This will provide actionable findings for the government, donors, and implementing partners on how to best support women in leveraging their land rights for tangible economic opportunities. USAID is partnering with Landesa Tanzania to launch a community radio program that will educate rural communities on women’s land rights and effectively using Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy.

Zambia: USAID’s WEE activities in Zambia support a multi-layered approach to strengthening the enabling environment for women’s land rights within customary systems. Using low-cost and accessible approaches, USAID will document land rights for 20,000 women in Zambia for the first time and tens of thousands of youth will have their names registered as persons of interest on land certificates to promote non-discriminatory inheritance practices. USAID is partnering with customary leaders at the national and local levels to champion women’s land rights and participation in land governance. Women are being supported to leverage secure land rights to access financing, showing that land rights are a viable path to long-term economic opportunities. USAID is also supporting women to have greater decision-making power and economic opportunities in the wildlife and forestry sectors, so they can access positions that have been historically biased against women, such as wildlife scouts and honorary forest officers. An impact evaluation of the Tenure and Global Climate Change program will contribute to the evidence on how land certification translates into tangible economic opportunities for women.

 

 

Increasing Women’s Participation in Community Natural Resource Governance in Zambia

March 4, 2021
Briefs

Wildlife conservation and natural resource management are critical areas for economic development in Zambia, yet women still have limited opportunities for participation in community-level governance. In October 2020, the United States Agency for International Development-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program led a pilot initiative to empower women during the elections for community resources board (CRB) positions in four chiefdoms (Mukungule, Nabwalya, Chikwa, and Chifunda) around North Luangwa National Park, in partnership with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), and the Zambia Community Resources Board Association (ZCRBA). The objective was to increase the number of women participating in CRB elections, with the ultimate goal of drawing lessons learned and best practices to promote greater gender equality in policies and programs related to community natural resource governance in Zambia. This brief summarizes the strategies used to empower women, the results, and the challenges and opportunities for scaling up gender-responsive approaches to community resource governance.

Background

Barriers and Opportunities for Women’s Participation

Research shows that women and men have distinct social roles and responsibilities both at community and household levels regarding their access to and control of natural resources. Men and women have unique knowledge about natural resources and they use resources differently. Women frequently do not equally share in the economic benefits derived from natural resources, and resource depletion often impacts them disproportionately. Women face several barriers to participation in natural resource governance. Rules that govern community resource groups often explicitly or implicitly exclude women’s meaningful participation. Social and cultural norms that associate public engagement with men also discourage women’s participation. Women have competing priorities due to their disproportionate responsibilities for unpaid care work, such as child care, household tasks, and elder care. Finally, lack of support from spouses and extended family, as well as women’s lack of information and confidence, are also deterrent factors.

Evidence from several countries shows that inclusion of women in natural resource governance has significant positive effects on conservation and development outcomes. A comparative study in East Africa and Latin America found the presence of women in community forest governance structures to enhance responsible behavior and forest sustainability (Mwangi et al., 2011). In Asia, increasing women’s representation in community forest governance institutions improved resource conservation and forest regeneration (Agarwal, 2009). The benefits of women’s participation were linked to their indigenous knowledge of the forest, preference for collaborative relationships, and greater compliance and adoption of sustainable practices. Increased participation in natural resource governance can be a pathway for wider empowerment of women in the household and in the public sphere, also leading to opportunities for growth in families’ income from economic activities related to natural resources. In addition, private companies in value chains related to natural resources are more likely to certify products and practices if women have active participation in resource governance (Beaujon Marin & Kuriakose, 2017).

Women’s Participation in Community Resource Governance in Zambia

An aspiring candidate practices campaigning during the skills training in Mwansabamba VAG in Mukungule BUPE BANDA/ZCRBA

Women’s participation in community resource governance in Zambia remains significantly low. The legal and policy framework, including the 2015 Wildlife Act No. 14 and the 2018 National Parks and Wildlife Policy, promotes devolution approaches and community involvement in the management and conservation of natural resources. It also supports gender equality and social inclusion in wildlife conservation, so that women, men, and youth have equal opportunities and benefit equally, with the goal of reducing inequities in conservation. However, progress in policies have not been reflected in community governance in the sector. Programs and strategies have failed to adopt gender-responsive approaches and consider the unique concerns, needs, and knowledge of women and men.

CRBs are an important structure for devolved power to communities in the management of wildlife with Zambia’s chiefdoms and are an important entry point for participation in wildlife and natural resource management. Gender equality remains extremely low and the 77 CRBs across the country have less than 10 percent women representation; only 3 percent of CRBs have ever had a woman in a leadership position. The few women that participate in CRBs experienced challenges in asserting themselves within these male-dominated structures. Although the legal and policy framework calls for gender equality in community governance structures, the actual lack of women’s representation and decision-making power is often ignored, undermining the ideals of community participation and the effectiveness of conservation efforts.

 

 

Lessons from the Field: Operational Lessons from Delimiting Community and Family Lands

December 17, 2020
Briefs

Introduction

This learning brief captures some lessons learned from practical implementation of the Mobile Approaches to Secure Tenure (MAST) approach, known as Community Value Land Chain (CaVaTeCo) in Mozambique. These lessons were provided by staff of field teams and the back office technical support team, based on experience in the Integrated Land and Resources Governance (ILRG)1 program financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Land: Enhancing Governance for Economic Development (LEGEND) program funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). This brief has sections on issues related to: management and support for implementing organizations; working with communities and associations; using the technology; and back office technical support. Other documents will reflect lessons on issues such as the size and distribution of land holdings, gender and land rights, and implications for policy.

 

 

Gender-Based Violence and Land Documentation & Administration in Zambia: Emerging Lessons from Implementation

November 19, 2020
Briefs

This brief draws from USAID’s experience supporting systematic land documentation in Zambia to further advance awareness and knowledge about the relationship between gender-based violence (GBV) and the access, use, and control of land and property. It aims to inform current and future design and implementation of programs that promote land-based investment and land rights (particularly women’s land rights) by civil society organizations, other donors, and the private sector.

Background 

Gender-based violence (GBV) is any harm or potential of harm perpetrated against a person or group on the basis of gender. It encompasses many expressions of violence – whether in public or private spaces – including physical, psychological, and sexual abuse; threats; coercion; arbitrary deprivation of liberty; and economic deprivation of land, property, and other resources. USAID is committed to preventing and responding to GBV, as it is a major barrier to development outcomes and to women’s social and economic empowerment.

The relationship between GBV and access, use, and control of land and property is highly context specific, depending on specific land systems that exist in each country, the legal framework on land and gender, and wider levels of gender inequality. Most of the literature and evidence available on the connection between GBV and land focuses on intimate partner violence (IPV) as a subset of GBV, with some studies finding that secure land rights increase women’s agency and socioeconomic status within families, which in turn decrease their vulnerability to IPV and enhance their ability to leave violent relationships. On the other hand, some studies found that strengthening women’s land rights can instead increase conflict within households and result in IPV (see Boudreaux, 2018 and Castañeda Camey et al., 2020).

Although IPV is extremely relevant and pervasive, GBV during documentation, registration, and administration of land is broader, following the complexity of local land tenure systems, societal gender norms, and family relationships. Denying or limiting access to land is in itself a form of socioeconomic GBV and a World Bank study found that 40 percent of 189 countries have at least one legal barrier to women’s rights to property (World Bank Group, 2018). Even in contexts where women and men enjoy equal legal rights to land, social practices and harmful gender norms may prevent women from enjoying such rights. However, limiting women’s access to land is rarely recognized as a form of violence, with a 2015 survey by the Overseas Development Institute and Frontiers Group finding that only 1 percent and 1.7 percent of respondents identified denial of right to own land and denial of inheritance as forms of GBV, respectively (Samuels et al., 2015).

GBV is widespread in Zambia and affects women and girls disproportionately, with the 2018 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey reporting that 36 percent of Zambian women have experienced physical violence at least once since the age of 15 and 32 percent of ever-married women have experienced controlling behaviors by their husbands. More than half (52 percent) of women never sought help or told anyone about the violence they had experienced (Zambia Statistics Agency, Ministry of Health, & ICF, 2019). Despite the adoption of the Anti-Gender-Based Violence Law in 2011, GBV remains pervasive, deeply rooted in wider gender inequality and highly tolerated, especially in rural areas. In fact, Zambian women in rural areas (54 percent) are more likely than those in urban areas (37 percent) to agree that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife for reasons such as burning food, going out without telling him, or refusing to have sexual intercourse. Almost half (47 percent) of widowed women were dispossessed of their husband’s property, with this figure reaching 59 percent in rural areas (Zambia Statistics Agency et al., 2019).

Zambia has a dual land tenure system with statutory and customary land, which is the majority of land in the country. Access to and inheritance of customary land is governed by the customary system. Chiefs are the “custodians” of customary land on behalf of communities, and they are responsible for its allocation and administration. Local advisors to the chiefs (indunas) and village headpersons are responsible for day-to-day land administration and conflict resolution. These leaders have a high degree of influence on community norms, as they are responsible for adjudicating most social and cultural conflicts within customary land, including inheritance and community and household-level conflict.

Key Themes and Lessons from USAID’s Experience

USAID has supported customary land documentation in Zambia since 2014 and has supported partners to document the land rights of over 50,000 people so far, out of which 47 percent are women. USAID uses a socially inclusive technology known as Mobile Approaches to Secure Tenure (MAST) and promotes gender integration throughout the land documentation process to ensure that women’s land rights are registered and interests and priorities are addressed.

Over 2019 and 2020, USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance program (ILRG) local partners Chipata District Land Alliance (CDLA) and Petauke District Land Alliance (PDLA) have collected qualitative data and stories while documenting customary land. This brief draws on this information to identify and analyze key themes and emerging lessons from USAID’s experience in systematic land documentation in Zambia. Although the stories evidence the themes identified, they are not necessarily a comprehensive representation of GBV related to land documentation in Zambia. Individuals mentioned in the brief have given consent to have their stories shared and their names and other potentially identifying information have been changed for their privacy and safety. The photographs used do not depict any of the women or specific events described in the document.

 

 

Small-Scale & Artisanal Mining Impacts on Biodiversity in Latin America

October 22, 2019
Briefs

Executive Summary 

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a global phenomenon that supports tens to hundreds of thousands of workers in many Latin American countries. Although much of the work is difficult, dangerous, and often at the subsistence level, the pay is usually better than the alternatives in many of the rural areas where it occurs and can help support impoverished communities.

The extent of impacts on biodiversity from artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) depend on the type of mining, the area in which it is occurring, and the location. Some communities have practiced local small-scale hard-rock mining for generations with minor local impacts. Other regions, such as the Madre de Dios in Peru, have experienced widespread devastation of primary tropical forests, with illegal alluvial gold mining serving as the leading cause of deforestation in the region. Although the Madre de Dios region receives the most media attention due to the graphic nature of the destruction, illegal and/or Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (ASGM) occurs in every department in Peru.

ASGM is also a leading cause of deforestation in highly biodiverse regions of Colombia, where most mining is also informal or illegal. Brazil has the largest ASGM mining area in the world in the Tapajos River basin, which is a tributary to the Amazon (Section 2.3.3). Less of the mining in Brazil is illegal, although conflict with indigenous community lands is increasing and regulatory oversight is often conflicting among agencies. ASM is less well documented and seems to be less pervasive in Central American countries, but still occurs in areas of high biodiversity. Although ASM may be a leading cause of deforestation in the areas where there are significant mining communities in Central and South America, it is dwarfed by forest loss due to agricultural conversion to ranching and farming land. (Section 4, Figure 13).

Impacts on biodiversity from ASM range from local destruction or degradation of habitat to watershed-scale impacts from pollution to global lethal and sublethal effects of mercury bioaccumulation (Section 3). Multiple studies and projects have documented the extent of deforestation in the target countries using remote sensing, primarily in South America. Multiple studies in South America document severe water quality impacts from mercury, sedimentation, and acid mine drainage. Massive amounts of sediment are released into waterways from alluvial mining, causing downstream sedimentation, increases in turbidity, and changes in aquatic biota. Several studies showed changes in freshwater fish populations due to sedimentation from mining. Sediment plumes can impact rivers for many miles downstream and may also affect estuaries and coral reefs.

Many global studies and a few studies in Latin America have described impacts of mercury contamination on wildlife (Section 3.5.3). ASGM (artisanal small-scale gold mining) is the leading contributor of mercury to the environment globally, and the effects and extent of mercury contamination have been documented at the local, regional, and global scale. Mercury contamination is widespread in the Amazon basin both from natural sources and from widespread mercury use in ASGM. Methyl mercury, the more biohazardous form, bioaccumulates in the food chain and has been documented at high levels in people and wildlife near mines, in indigenous peoples far from active mining areas in the Amazon basin, and in fish and wildlife as far away as the Arctic, where breeding bird populations may be declining due to elevated mercury deposition. In addition to global transport of mercury, contamination can impact large areas downwind and downstream from mines and processing centers.

Acid mine drainage is typically associated with hard rock mining, where sulfide-bearing rocks are exposed to oxygen and produce sulfuric acid. Heavy metals can also be released when cyanide is used to process gold-bearing ore since it also effectively leaches other metals. Studies along the Puyango-Tumbes river in Ecuador and northern Peru have documented extensive cyanide, mercury, and heavy metal contamination and associated impacts on biodiversity (Section 3.5.2).

The drivers of ASM depend on local conditions and are a complex mix of poverty, corruption, weak or conflicting regulatory oversight, economic pressures, organized crime, tradition, and lack of access to opportunity and education (Section 1.3.2). Attempts to reduce the impacts from ASM on the environment and on human communities have met with mixed results. Efforts to date have focused on education, formalization, enforcement, remediation, and reduction of mercury use in the case of ASGM. As with the wide array of biodiversity in the target countries, there is a wide diversity of conditions under which ASM is occurring and there appears to be no single approach that is proving most effective to reduce its negative impacts (Section 5).

Many organizations are working on aspects of the Minamata Convention, that, while focused on reducing mercury use and consumption, also includes reducing worst-practices, providing education, and formalizing ASGM. It is a global treaty with significant resources for implementation and most Latin American target countries have ratified the agreement, excepting Colombia and Guatemala, who have signed, but not ratified the treaty. A summary of existing treaties, policies, and programs addressing ASM is included in Section 5.