Indigenous & Community Land Rights

Understanding and interpretation of the CFS/FAO Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (Tenure Guidelines or TGs) is a key factor in communities’ capabilities for collective action, especially through the organization of land pressure groups. TGs help people to engage critically with existing legal frameworks.

Undemocratic politics, policy making and law making interpretation and implementation, prove to be drivers of land grabbing in the four country studies presented here.

This report combines the conclusions of several scientific studies and the opinions of numerous researchers and specialized organizations that have focused these past few years on the link between climate and security.

This paper analyzes whether national laws acknowledge indigenous peoples and other rural communities in 100 countries as owners of waters that arise within their lands. Results derive from information collected by LandMark to score the legal status of community land tenure. Findings are positive; half of all countries recognize communities as lawful possessors of water on their lands.

This report provides information on due diligence and effective conflict management through consultation in the context of community land conflicts. It identifies some key steps to follow to integrate community land conflict into enhanced project risk assessments.

This publication is based on a range of past studies on ICCAs conducted in several regions of the world in the last two decades, and, most recently, on 19 country level case studies. The latter were commissioned as part of a project on ICCA Recognition and Support, undertaken by the ICCA Consortium, coordinated by Kalpavriksh.

The Ingonyama Trust headed by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu should be dissolved and the law that established it on the eve of South Africa’s liberation in 1994 should be repealed.

The pleas of thousands of rural people who made difficult journeys to attend public hearings across the country are largely ignored in the amended version of the Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Bill set to be adopted by the National Assembly this week.

This paper explores the concept of benefit sharing in natural resources exploitation in Kenya.

ActionAid International has been working over the last few years with women and rural communities to challenge commercialization of land, which leads to loss of their rights to land.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) are an international framework based on human rights obligations and standards for the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests.

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) initiatives are being launched over much of the global South. These initiatives seek to restore ecological functions and associated ecosystem goods and services while improving social outcomes (Mansourian and Vallauri 2014).