Legal Empowerment for Equitable Land Governance

General

The insecurity of community rights to land and natural resources is perhaps the greatest rule of law challenge of our times. Around the world, farmers, fisher people, and pastoralists are denied the power to manage what are often their greatest assets: their farmland, forests, pastures, rivers, lakes, and coasts. Meanwhile, there is an ever-increasing investment interest in exactly those resources. When the rights of those who live and depend on the land are insecure, what results is conflict and inequitable, shortsighted decisions about our most precious resources. There are three key opportunities for supporting land-based communities in the arc of interaction between those communities and industrial development: 1) securing tenure and strengthening local land governance, 2) negotiating equitable terms under which investment can take place, and 3) ensuring compliance with legal and contractual requirements once investment has begun. With funding from DFID, we support more sustainable, more equitable development in all three of these moments by investing in the legal empowerment of land-based communities.