This week, more than 1,500 development professionals from around the world are gathering at the World Bank’s annual Land and Poverty Conference, discussing the latest research and innovations in policies and good practice on land governance.
Conservation, said Aldo Leopold, is harmony between (wo)men and land. Land should justifiably figure not only into the conservation, but also in development debates, policy and discourses. Missing land rights and land tenure security can be costly for states, communities as well as local and global development.
Peruvian indigenous communities have shown themselves to be exceptional environmental and conservation leaders. Their leaders have worked for a decade to ensure a government commitment to conserve 54 million hectares of forest, as a part of the REDD+ program.
There is a strong and compelling environment and development case to be made for securing indigenous and community lands. Securing collective land rights offers a low-cost, high-reward investment for developing country governments and their partners to meet national development objectives and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Securing community lands is also a cost-effective climate mitigation measure for countries when compared to other carbon capture and storage approaches.
Of late, land has increasingly been figuring into the development sector, for both positive and negative reasons.
The Sengwer are an indigenous hunter-gatherer people living along the slopes of the Cherangany Hills in the western highlands of Kenya. Their estimated population is 33,187.
We cannot restore tropical forests without restoring the rights of their traditional owners.
Implementing a coordinated global response to curb demand for energy and eliminate further deforestation would reduce the need to deploy artificial carbon dioxide removal technologies, according to a decisive report from the U.N. scientific panel on climate change.
WATER. The most basic necessity that most people take for granted because it is readily available by just a turn of the tap.
But for some groups in Malaysia, safe drinking water and sanitation is not accessible.
Fred Nelson is executive director of Maliasili and Michael Taylor is director of International Land Coalition
Land rights have finally been invited to the party - sitting at the intersection of some of the world’s most urgent development, environmental, and human rights priorities.
Commercial agriculture has driven land use changes and not only affected millions of hectares of forested land, but also farmers’ and local people’s land rights. Efforts to combat deforestation are at the forefront of the international aid agenda, and clarifying and securing land rights is important for its success.
African governments should recognise customary rights to water for millions of small farmers who have been sidelined or "criminalised" by permit systems created during the colonial era, said a report published on Monday.
Restrictive permit systems in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe have left more than 100 million people without access to enough water, according to the report by the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
Those countries should "decolonise statutory water law through a hybrid approach", according to the report.
