Local communities manage a significant portion of the world’s remaining forests, pastures, and fisheries as common property resources, but they are rarely recognized as formal owners. Important progress has occurred during the last twenty years, as growing evidence suggests that devolving rights to communities can provide incentives for new forms of investment that facilitate sustainable outcomes as well as greater equity in the distribution of benefits.
Using data collected from over seven million land records, this study examines the extent to which a systematic registration and certification program has contributed to women’s land tenure security. The Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) program is a six-year DFID-funded program that aims to improve incomes of the rural poor and enhance economic growth in Ethiopia.
Considering that land tenure security is crucial to better outcomes for women it is a surprise that there is not more evidence out there on what works to achieve it.
On the 2019 International Day of Rural Women, Landesa’s Shipra Deo explores how land rights are an essential element for overturning misperceptions about the role of women in society and on the farm.
In a workshop with a group of agronomists who work in agriculture extension in India, I ask the participants to draw the picture of a farmer with whom they work. All but one of them draw male figures.
In rural areas around the world, the face of a farmer is increasingly a woman’s.
From the paddy terraces of Asia to the maize fields of sub-Saharan Africa, she will till, plant, water, and harvest crops that feed her household and whole communities.
The daughters of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, face a vexing decision: Marriage or inheritance?
In 2006, when the state first recognized the rights of unmarried daughters to inherit family land, it simultaneously left millions of women with a dilemma. While ostensibly a step toward gender equality, the new law excluded married daughters, meaning that women who married would face the prospect of weakening or losing their rights to inherit land in their birth family. Daughters of the state were effectively left to choose between marriage and land ownership.
Land distribution is an issue innately tied to inequality throughout the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is considered the most unequal region in the world. This inequality ranges from wealth disparity and political corruption to gender discrimination in labor practices and the exploitation of natural resources.
Over the past year, during my work in western Uganda, I have had the opportunity to get to know Paolyel Onencan. Paolyel is the Executive Director of Buliisa Initiative for Rural Development Organisation (BIRUDO). Paolyel and his BIRUDO colleagues are doing good work around Uganda’s oil and gas development in the Albertine Graben, by helping families get better deals on compensation from the oil companies (Total and China National Offshore Oil Company) working in the region.
For the past six months, Resource Equity has been working with our partner Associates Research Trust to implement our Starting With Women approach with subsistence mining associations in Karamoja, Uganda.
Indigenous and local community women play crucial roles as household and forest managers, food providers, and leaders of rural enterprises—and make invaluable contributions toward global sustainable development and climate goals. The evidence is clear that securing their rights to community lands offers a promising path toward prosperity and sustainability in the forested and rural areas of the world. Yet these rights remain constrained by unjust laws and practices, and the voices of these women are consistently underrepresented in decision-making processes at all levels.
