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Can sustainable management of land commons offer a nature-positive solution? Initial insights from land use-based above-ground carbon stock modeling in the Thoria Watershed, India

December, 2023
India

A wealth of publicly available satellite data and open-source models allowed researchers to measure carbon stocks in a watershed in India, despite a paucity of on-the-ground data. They found that despite rapid urbanization over the last 20 years, carbon stocks remained relatively stable – possibly due to successful reforestation activities. The research points to how nature-positive solutions can be designed and measured at scale. The research also lays the foundation for global studies to promote a deeper understanding of ecosystem services and sustainable land management.

Living-lab for people in the Colombian Amazon: a pact for a sustainable territory

December, 2022
Global

A living-lab for people (LL4P) has been conceptualized as an inclusive and diverse space to design, test, demonstrate and advance sociotechnical innovations and associated modes of governance. While initially proposed within the innovation and communication technologies (ICT), living-labs (LL) have broadened their scope to sectors such as health, cities, public sector, education, and rural development, and now are seen as methodologies or arenas for innovation in which users or citizens play a central and active role.

Safe and just Earth system boundaries

December, 2022
Global

The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1-3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales.

Sahel social cohesion research in Burkina Faso and Niger: Working Paper

December, 2022
Burkina Faso

Intervention Context: WFP’s activities in Burkina Faso and Niger focus on fragile agrarian communities in the Sahel, where cyclical floods and droughts combine with decreasing soil fertility and increasing desertification, among other challenges, to aggravate food and livelihood insecurity. Increased competition for land for food crops and pastures as well as water for domestic, productive, and livestock use, intensify conflicts over ownership and usage rights for land and the commons such as forests. in particular, this competition has heightened conflicts between farmers and herders.

The CGIAR Initiative on Aquatic Foods: Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Strategy

December, 2022
Malaysia

This CGIAR Initiative on Aquatic Foods: Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Strategy provides guidance on how to undertake AqFS research for development through a gender lens. The strategy’s main objectives are: (i) to ensure that there is gender inclusiveness and responsiveness in technological, social, financial and institutional innovations; (ii) to provide avenues for wealth generation and improving livelihoods of people relying on small-scale fisheries (SSFs) and sustainable aquaculture; (iii) to pave the

Games for experiential learning: Triggering collective changes in commons management

December, 2022
Venezuela

As resource users interact and impose externalities onto each other, institutions are needed to coordinate resource use, create trust, and provide incentives for sustainable management. Coordinated collective action can play a key role in enabling communities to manage natural resource commons more sustainably. But when such collective action is not present, what can be done to foster it? We contribute to the understanding of how experiential learning through games can affect behavioral change, potentially leading to more sustainable commons management.

Living customary water tenure in rights-based water management in Sub-Saharan Africa

December, 2021
Global

Living customary water tenure is the most accepted socio-legal system among the large majority of rural people in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on literature, this report seeks to develop a grounded understanding of the ways in which rural people meet their domestic and productive water needs on homesteads, distant fields or other sites of use, largely outside the ambits of the state. Taking the rural farming or pastoralist community as the unit of analysis, three components are distinguished.

Can formalisation of pastoral land tenure overcome its paradoxes? Reflections from East Africa

December, 2021
Global

Legal frameworks for communal land rights in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania are now gaining momentum. Questions can be raised as to whether, how, and to what extent these frameworks take into account the disadvantages of formalising tenure and the complexities of pastoral resources. In this paper, we consider the impact of these challenges on the formalisation of communal ownership, beginning with an overview of how commons theory has influenced land governance policies and how it is applied to pastoral systems.

A New Life for Forest Resources: The Commons as a Driver for Economic Sustainable Development—A Case Study from Galicia

Peer-reviewed publication
February, 2021
Australia
Belgium
Canada
United States of America

Communal forests are a unique land tenure system and comprise a singular legal category in Galicia. Their persistence over time demonstrates that this community-owned resource has overcome the “tragedy of the commons”, showing their capability to successfully develop self-governing institutions. However, communal forests have rarely been studied through the lens of economics. This minimizes the opportunity to explore to what extent communities of communal forests might be a driving force of general well-being, citizen empowerment, equity, employment, and local development.

On Equal Ground: Promising Practices for Realizing Women’s Rights in Collectively Held Lands

Reports & Research
January, 2021
Africa
Mexico
Indonesia

Sustainable land governance requires that all members of a community, both women and men, have equal rights and say in decisions that affect their collectively-held lands. Unfortunately, women around the world have less land ownership and weaker land rights than men – but this can change, and this report shows ways how that can be done.

EN IGUALDAD DE CONDICIONES. Prácticas prometedoras para la materialización de los derechos de las mujeres a las tierras de posesión colectiva

Reports & Research
January, 2021
África
México
Indonesia

La gobernanza sostenible de la tierra requiere que todos los miembros de una comunidad, tanto mujeres como hombres, tengan los mismos derechos y voz en las decisiones que afectan a sus tierras de propiedad colectiva. Lamentablemente, las mujeres de todo el mundo tienen menos  tierra en propiedad y derechos más débiles que los hombres, pero esto puede cambiar, y este informe muestra cómo hacerlo.