Land Governance for Climate Resilience

This report is a contribution of the knowledge management component of the LAND-at-scale programme (LAS) which is funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and implemented by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland - RVO). LAND-at-scale is a seven-year programme (2019-2026), that aims to contribute to fair and just tenure security, access to land and natural resources for all. In so doing, it is expected to lead to more sustainable and efficient use of land and natural resources for food, housing and production and reduce conflicts and competing claims over land. By contrast with many other development related projects, LAND-at-scale has an explicit focus on supporting the upscaling of successful pilots, providing support to innovative interventions with upscaling potential, integrating tested and new initiatives, and investing in increased knowledge and learning. Together with the land governance issues of tenure security, gender, conflict and scaling, climate change is a special theme for mainstreaming within the LAND-at-scale programme. Climate change is now generally accepted as one of the world’s most pressing global challenges, and it has very strong links to land and land use and therefore to land governance (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022). The importance of this link is also clear from the inclusion of “the degree in which the potential intervention contributes to improved adaptation to climate change” as one of the criteria for selecting projects for funding under the programme. This report should be read as a scoping study into the nexus between land governance interventions and climate resilience, as found and expressed in the LAND-at-scale programme.

The term scoping study refers to the nature of the work that has largely involved conceptual review and development by the main author, Richard Sliuzas from the University of Twente, with some interaction with collaborators from the implementation teams of four LAND-at scale projects and the LAND-at-scale Knowledge Management Coordinator, Dr Wytske Chamberlain-van der Werf, Utrecht University, over the period March-September 2023. Therefore, this study provides insights into the land–climate nexus but should not be considered as a comprehensive and exhaustive investigation of the relations. Specifically, this study paid particular attention to land governance project interventions aimed at enhancing tenure security and improving land use planning and, if and how these pay off in terms of strengthening the climate resilience of the targeted communities and their living environments.