Deepening Reform through Power Analysis, Legal Empowerment, and Local Agency
As climate change intensifies the fragility of governance systems and access to resources, a new imperative is emerging in the land sector: look beyond technical solutions and confront the underlying political economy. That was the focus of “Navigating Political Economies to Strengthen Land Governance for Climate Action,” a powerful session organized by the Land Facility, a global programme funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Held on May 6 at the World Bank Land Conference 2025, the session brought together practitioners, reformers, and thinkers who are reshaping how land governance is approached in an era of urgent climate action.
Moderated by Tony Burns, Executive Director of Land Equity International, the panel explored how Political Economy Analysis (PEA) is not simply an academic exercise but a practical tool for navigating the invisible forces—interests, incentives, ideologies, and power asymmetries—that shape the success or failure of land reform.
“Land tenure policy is the foundation of a society’s ability to meet the competing needs of population growth, food security, biodiversity, and climate action,” Burns said. “But there is no one-size-fits-all model. Each country faces its own political interfaces and historical burdens.”
Claudia D’Andrea: Mapping the Hidden Terrain of Reform
Claudia D’Andrea, Political Economy Analysis (PEA) Lead at Tetra Tech, opened the session with a grounding in the concepts and tools of political economy. Representing the Land Facility, D’Andrea argued that PEA helps development actors look “below the surface” of technical land challenges to reveal why some reforms stagnate while others succeed.
“Climate change is a risk multiplier. It exacerbates fragility, deepens social fissures, and adds urgency to already complex land governance problems,” D’Andrea explained. “Yet most reform failures are not due to bad policies—they’re due to power, resistance, and conflicting incentives.”
She described PEA as a set of methods to analyze stakeholders, institutional barriers, informal rules of the game, and power asymmetries—particularly along gender and customary lines. “We must ask: who benefits from the current system? Who loses from change? And where are the ‘loose bricks’ in the wall of resistance that can become entry points for reform?”
Importantly, D’Andrea emphasized that PEA is not about publishing reports. “It’s about actionable insight. It’s about identifying politically feasible pathways for inclusive tenure reform that supports climate goals,” she said.
Erin Kitchell: Legal Empowerment and Bottom-Up Change in Sierra Leone
Erin Kitchell, Managing Director of Land, Environment, and Climate at Namati, followed with a compelling case study from Sierra Leone. Namati’s “legal empowerment” approach equips local communities with legal knowledge to assert their land rights and creates pathways to translate local struggles to solve lived problems into broader structural reforms.
Kitchell traced a decade-long journey from the passage of Sierra Leone’s National Land Policy in 2015 to the landmark Customary Land Rights Act (2022), one of the most progressive land laws in Africa.
“The law recognizes full collective and customary land rights, gives communities the power to reject or accept investments through free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), and mandates protection of ecologically sensitive zones,” she said. “But it didn’t happen by accident—it was a strategic campaign.”
Kitchell explained how community paralegals not only documented rights violations but built public leadership among community members, fueling a national campaign. During the 2018 elections, Namati mobilized every presidential candidate to sign the Our Land, Our Future pledge. The resulting political pressure set the stage for the law’s to be adopted.
“We anticipated opposition from both the private sector and traditional leaders,” Kitchell noted. “So we built coalitions of unusual allies—from progressive Paramount Chiefs to businesses who saw benefit in clarifying tenure rights.”
Today, Namati is working to ensure implementation: “It’s not enough to pass a law. It must be activated in practice. That’s the power of the legal empowerment cycle—moving from knowing and using the law to shaping it, and then back again.”
Christopher Tanner: Changing Norms, Not Just Policies
Christopher Tanner, Principal Consultant at Mokoro Limited, shifted the focus to customary law and gender, arguing that land governance is inherently a matter of political economy.
“When you work in land, you are automatically working in political economy. It’s about power over a key resource, and customary systems are very much part of that,” he said.
Tanner cautioned against the trend of discarding customary institutions in favor of formal systems. “To erase customary law is to erase legitimacy and proximity. Reform must work with—not against—existing norms,” he said.
Drawing on Mokoro’s work in Tanzania, Mongolia, Mozambique, and Timor Leste, Tanner described how community-led dialogues can shift entrenched gender norms and promote inclusive tenure.
“It’s not about ticking boxes—how many women attended a meeting. It’s about recognizing women as agents of change, as decision-makers with voice and power,” Tanner emphasized.
He praised participatory landscape planning in Mongolia and peer-to-peer engagement in Tanzanian villages, where trained champions catalyze behavior change by engaging their neighbors. In Mozambique, where implementation of a progressive land law has been obstructed by political elites, communities created a “People’s Cadastre” to assert their rights from below.
“Customary practices are not immutable. They can evolve—but that evolution must be driven by communities themselves,” Tanner concluded.
John Meadows: Embedding PEA in National Reform in the Mekong Region
John Meadows, Land Governance Adviser for the Land Facility, closed the panel with lessons from the Mekong Region Land Governance Program (MRLG), covering Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar.
Meadows described how PEA was used not just as a research tool, but as a strategy to build reform coalitions. A key finding in Laos, for example, was that over 3,000 villages were living within state forest zones without any legal tenure security.
“Phase one of the MRLG generated rich academic analysis. But the risk was that reports would gather dust,” said Meadows. “So in phase two, we turned the PEA findings into action.”
Through stakeholder workshops, power mapping, and targeted engagement, Meadows’ team identified key blockers and champions. They worked closely with Laos’ Ministry of Lands and Forestry, presented findings to the 164-member National Assembly, and built donor consensus.
“We found that practical, country-specific PEA—shared through safe, non-public channels—can bridge the gap between civil society and state, and ultimately change laws,” Meadows said. The result: new legal provisions recognizing community tenure in forests, and a shift in national discourse around land and climate.
Panel Reflections: PEA as Process, Not Just Product
The session concluded with rich reflections and audience questions, ranging from transitional justice in the Philippines to carbon markets in Latin America.
Claudia D’Andrea emphasized that PEA is not one thing—it can be national, sectoral, or problem-based. It is not a dataset, but a “map of incentives, alliances, and entry points for change.”
Christopher Tanner added that PEA must disrupt silos. “In Mozambique, the land administration tried to monopolize reform. We had to open the tent—to bring in tourism, defense, finance, and women's ministries.”
Erin Kitchell stressed that political savviness must be distributed—not just at the top. “We involve communities in political analysis. We ask them: who has influence? Who listens? And what messages resonate?”
John Meadows offered a final word of caution and hope: “PEA is inherently sensitive. But when done with care, and applied iteratively, it can turn fragile openings into durable change.”
Conclusion: Power, Politics, and the Path to Just Climate Action
This session was a clarion call for politically intelligent land reform. Climate goals—whether tied to REDD+, carbon markets, or forest restoration—will falter without secure land tenure. And tenure security, in turn, will remain out of reach unless we confront the deeper drivers of exclusion, informality, and resistance.
Political Economy Analysis is not a luxury—it is a necessity. It helps us ask better questions, avoid blind spots, and design reforms that stick. It shows us that power can be shifted not only through policy, but through paralegals, champions, and coalitions.
The Land Facility and its partners have shown what is possible. Now the challenge is to replicate, scale, and institutionalize this political intelligence in every land project that claims to serve the climate, equity, and justice.
“In the end, political economy isn’t just about understanding how power works,” said D’Andrea. “It’s about figuring out how to make power work differently.”
This blog post was produced with the assistance of AI. The content has been reviewed by panelists as well as members of the Land Portal team who attended the session. In some cases, summaries are based on event recordings, and transcripts are created and carefully reviewed to ensure each speaker's interventions are accurately represented.
