This discussion paper on the “VGGT and National Policies on the Governance of Tenure”3

 has

been commissioned by the Asian NGO Coalition (ANGOC) as a member of the Philippine

Development Forum – Working Group on Sustainable Rural Development (PDF-SRD).4 This

paper examines national policies as embodied in the 1987 Philippine Constitution and the

major land and natural resource laws passed by the Philippine legislature. This research is

Land-based sectors in the Philippines are affected by institutional

weaknesses in various ways, including overlapping and conflicting

policies, laws and programmes, a lack of reform in public land

management and inadequate funding for urban development, disaster

mitigation and climate change. Land governance has thus been given

paramount importance in recent years. However, security of tenure

for all remains a challenge as the existing institutional set-up fails

New research by CCSI and the Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED) on transparency of land-based investment in Cameroon. 

In the report, CCSI and CED find that:

• Communities continue to be excluded from decision-making around investments.
• The government pursues a top-down approach to concession allocation and remains reluctant to recognize all legitimate tenure rights.

The last two years have been a period of rebound and cautious optimism in Nepal. After having been hit by two large earthquakes in 2015 that killed over 9,000 people and rendered many more homeless, and having suffered through a long, tortuous constituent assembly process that finally resulted in a new constitution, the country has seen progress on political and economic fronts in the recent past. Governance, however, remains an issue.

For more than five years, the Women’s Land Tenure Security (WOLTS) Project has been investigating the intersection of gender and land relations in mining-affected pastoralist communities in Mongolia and Tanzania. The aim has been to develop a methodology for long-term community engagement and capacity building to protect and support the land rights of all vulnerable people – thus to fully mainstream attention to gender equity in land tenure governance within a framework that would facilitate improvements in community land rights across the board.

Bhutan’s democracy consolidated further following the third elections to National Council and National Assembly in 2018. In the primary round of National Assembly elections, voters favored a newly established third party, Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT), followed by the opposition in the last parliament, Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT). The incumbent People’s Democratic Party (PDP) failed to advance to the general round.

Land adjudication constitute a series of sequential steps that if followed carefully and correctly, can lead to a sufficient determination of the varied interests in land including whether, and where they overlap, complement, conflict or compete with each other. This is a preliminary study aiming to find out how the adjudication process as it is conducted in the context of a fit-for-purpose land administration (FFPLA). A framework of components for adjudication in the FFPLA context is first developed.

The guide will serve as documentation of the lessons learnt from the experiences of making use of the VGGT and in Senegal. As stakeholders from countries, such as Guinea, Mali and Mauritania seek inspiration from Senegal to improve governance of tenure in their own country context, this document will be an important source of inspiration. The document will also be a reference for different Donors and Partners interested in tenure governance in Senegal.

In May 2012, the Committee on World Food Security approved the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (the “Guidelines”). The Guidelines have been described as a catalysing instrument that improves the conditions of land and natural resources, in the agricultural, fishery and forestry sectors. They address problems related to poor governance of land tenure and the growing pressure exerted on natural resources, thereby helping countries to achieve food security for all.

This publication will demonstrate how the project was a catalyst leading to improvements in conditions in the Senegal River Basin, under which land is held or occupied in agriculture sectors. The VGGT addresses problems of weak governance of tenure and the growing pressure on natural resources, assisting countries to achieve food security for all. The project focused on four separate Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs) located in Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.