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About Us
We envision a world in which land governance systems, both formal and informal, are effective, accessible, and responsive for all. This is possible when land tenure and property rights are recognized as critical development issues and when the United States Government and its development partners demonstrate consistent attention and a firm commitment to supporting coordinated policies and programs that clarify and strengthen the land tenure and property rights of all members of society, enabling broad-based economic growth, gender equality, reduced incidence of conflicts, enhanced food security, improved resilience to climate change, and effective natural resource management.
Mission Statement
The USAID Land Tenure and Resource Management (LTRM) Office will lead the United States Government to realize international efforts—in accordance with the U.S. Government’s Land Governance Policy—to clarify and strengthen the land tenure and property rights of all members of society—individuals, groups and legal entities, including those individuals and groups that are often marginalized, and the LTRM Office will help ensure that land governance systems are effective, accessible, and responsive. We will achieve this by testing innovative models for securing land tenure and property rights and disseminating best practice as it relates to securing land rights and improving resource governance within the USG and our development partners.
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Resources
Displaying 241 - 245 of 440Debating South Africa's Land Policies
Writing at the Council on Foreign Relations’ “Africa in Transition” blog, John Campbell notes that South Africa’s land “issue” is not so simple. How true. Back in 1994 the ANC pledged to transfer ownership and control of 30% of white-owned farmlands to black South Africans by 2014. The process, based on a “willing buyer/willing seller” model has been halting at best and too often communities and farmers that did benefit from a redistribution of land lacked the background or capital to develop sustainable commercial entities.
Successful Implementation of REDD+ Payments Hinges on Tenure Rights for Communities
CIFOR’s Forests News blog talks about the importance of recognizing community right to forests in order to promote accountability and clarify who should receive any benefits from REDD+ payments. The challenge of recognizing and enforcing community resource rights, which typically include overlapping property rights within forests, is discussed in this new CIFOR book (see chapter 9 “Tenure Matters in REDD+”) – the basis for a presentation by chapter author Anne Larson at the recent Rio +20 meetings.
New Study Analyzes Tenure For Communities Through National Laws
The NGO Namati, along with partner IDLO, has just issued a new report entitled “Protecting Community Lands and Resources.” Over the past decade there has been a strong shift in land tenure work away from projects that provide for individualized titling of lands and towards the recognition of customary tenure systems and the formalization of rights held by communities. Countries adopt various approaches to formalization but often pass laws that are, on their face, designed to help protect communities against illegal or coercive dispossession and loss of rights by documenting rights.
USAID Work in Central African Republic profiled by State Department
The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Information Programs, recently published an article that highlights the PRADD project. PRADD has operated in the Central African Republic since 2007 and assists the national government comply with the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. The project goal is to increase the amount of alluvial diamonds entering the formal chain of custody while improving the benefits accruing to diamond miners and diamond mining communities. PRADD is managed by USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights Division in Washington.
Study Places Tenure as High Policy Recommendation
The Rights and Resources Initiative has a new study out that explores the issue of community and indigenous people’s rights to forests and discusses how expanding the bundle of rights that communities hold over forest – by creating and enforcing communal rights to access, use, and manage forests and forest products – can lead to various positive outcomes. The study is a comparative analysis of the legal framework of the 27 most forested countries around the world.
Top on their list of policy recommendations: “Place tenure rights high on the global development agenda.”