What I learned about land rights from people who don't work in land rights

Desde una comunidad en el corazón de la crisis climática, la lideresa guaraní Mariela Melgar Ibáñez cree que las mujeres indígenas tienen la clave para resolver la crisis climática. “El mundo debe conocer nuestras formas de vida y el rol que tenemos dentro de el cuidado del medio ambiente; Las mujeres somos fundamentales, luchamos por el territorio.”

By Peter Sangeyon, Gender and Land Champion, WOLTS Project Tanzania

From 1995 to 2005 I was the village chairman, and I was a ward councillor for ten years after that. I was very pleased when the community selected me to be a WOLTS gender and land champion.

Chad is at the verge of an emerging land tenure crisis. As observed in many countries in Africa, formal and customary tenure systems overlap. Customary tenure systems, that generally prevail in rural areas, differ from region to region, with each its own needs and practices. Land conflicts are abundant, caused by degradation and transformation of land surfaces caused by climate change, as well as land investments by domestic investors with disputed legitimacy.

By Milya Samberu, Gender and Land Champion, WOLTS  Project Tanzania

By Tuya, Gender and  Land Champion, WOLTS Project Mongolia

Many rural communities in Tanzania share similar challenges from mining companies and investors. I have seen first-hand how men and women gender and land champions can help.

Our food systems are in urgent need of transformation, as humanity faces one of our biggest challenges yet; feeding a future population of 10 billion people with safe and nutritious food while keeping a healthy planet. Our food system has the power to tip the scales and transform the future of our planet and humankind.

There is an underlying tension in the land rights movement that is rarely addressed head on, which is the perception that securing women’s land rights threatens community land rights. Community land rights are typically held by indigenous people, small-scale and subsistence farmers, pastoralists, herders and many other groups who are directly dependent on land for their livelihoods but whose land tenure is often the most precarious.

Knowledge management and learning are at the heart of the LAND-at-scale program. On June 29^th at a pre-event of the LANDac conference, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), LANDac and the International Land Coalition (ILC) officially announced their collaboration to implement the knowledge management (KM) component of the program.

This session zoomed in on the local situation and challenges faced by grassroots communities and women in some low-Income countries. It provided an overview of support provided by Civil Society organizations (and governments) facilitating communities, women in particular, to step up the efforts to strengthen their land rights and to generate resilience in face of the climate and COVID-19 challenges they are facing.

More secure land tenure provides much better opportunities to face climate and COVID-19 challenges by investing in high biodiversity local food & income systems.