commons related Blog post | Land Portal
There are 159 content items of different types and languages related to commons on the Land Portal.

commons

The term commons is most frequently used to refer to those natural resources that are held in common by a community.

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Liberia's Land Rights Law and the Worsening Dynamics of Land Grabs
27 July 2021
Authors: 
Ali Kaba
Liberia

The Land Rights Law (LRL), enacted on the 23rd of August 2018, was an impressive feat. It recognizes the land rights of all Liberians, especially rural communities who have historically been subject to mere user rights on their ancestral lands. The LRL protects the rights of communities to their claimed customary areas as their lawful property – “with or without deed”. This provision places an estimated 70% or more of the country under customary ownership.

Community land governance
2 July 2021
Authors: 
Dr. Annie McKee
Global
Scotland

This session sought to explore examples of international community land ownership and to collate the experiences of community land governance during the pandemic.

 

The session aimed to respond to the following questions:

5 Lessons for Securing Women’s Collective Land Rights
11 February 2021
Authors: 
Celine Salcedo-La Viña
Cameroon
Mexico
Nepal
Jordan
Global

The ability to own land and access natural resources allows women to secure food for their families, increase their agricultural productivity and livelihoods, and help drive local economies. Land rights empower women to have a say in matters that affect their lives, families and communities — everything from deciding what crops to plant to investing in children’s education and health.

How Anna Letaiko got her land
30 April 2020
Authors: 
Ezekiel Kereri
Tanzania

Anna Letaiko is a middle-aged woman with a soft voice that carries wisdom and strength. Her husband is an older man, and together they live in small mud house in Mundarara – a remote village in Longido district in Tanzania, accessible only by a rough dirt road. It is a Maasai community similar to the one in which I grew up, except that the community’s livelihood is based on mining and pastoralism while my community still depends on farming and pastoralism.

I met Anna through my work with WOLTS – a five-year action research project on women’s land rights in pastoral communities that are affected by mining. As a speaker of the Maasai language, my job is to facilitate and translate in training sessions and help develop training materials.

In Maasai culture, it is very rare for women to own land. Men see themselves as owning land on behalf of the whole family. If women do apply for land, they usually apply in the name of their husband or son. 

However, the law in Tanzania (Land Act, 1999, and Village Land Act, 1999) grants women and men the same rights to land access, ownership and control. The law also says that women have the same rights in decision-making over land. What Maasai customs mean in practice is that women are denied the right to apply for land and own it themselves. 

During our research we heard that, when women in Mundarara applied for land in their own names, their applications were ignored, not taken seriously, and even thrown away. Some women were even asked for sex in exchange for land documents.

Our aim through the WOLTS project is to support the community to find their own solutions to land rights problems. To help them achieve this, we asked them to select community ‘champions’ who would be trained in land rights, mining laws, investment laws, mineral valuation and legal procedures for licence applications, as well as gender-based violence. 

Anna was one of the first champions to be trained in Mundarara. When we first started working in the community, Anna did not even know that she had the right to own land.  After the WOLTS training sessions, she put in an application, and it was taken seriously. 

A few months later, Anna received a small plot near the village centre where she wants to build a modern house. As a trained champion for gender equity, she has promised to help other women by raising awareness and assisting them to become land owners like herself.

The growth of artisanal mining in Mundarara has brought many changes to the community, including giving families new sources of income. Women are finding that they have more opportunities to earn money and participate in community and family decision-making, including through land ownership. 

Documenting and sharing Anna Letaiko’s story reminded me how quickly life is changing in pastoral districts due to factors like mining. I hope it will inspire readers, raise the voices of less fortunate groups, and improve everyday life in communities similar to my own.

 

EGM to develop essential survey questions for monitoring indicator 1.4.2 organized by UN-Habitat, World Bank and GLII- May 2017. Photo credit - GLTN/UN-Habitat.
20 February 2019
Authors: 
Robert Ndugwa
Everlyne Nairesiae
Global

The inclusion of Sustainable Development Goal 1.4.2 and other land related indicators in the 2030 agenda remain a key achievement for global monitoring of land rights. However, such an achievement will only remain fruitful if we, as a global community, invest appropriately in the capacities and systems that are needed to activate the global reporting on these indicators at scale and in all countries. 

Photo by: Antonio Fiorente
17 April 2018
Authors: 
Dr. Solomon Bekure Woldegiorgis
Ethiopia

For hundreds of years, pastoralists in Ethiopia’s lowlands have relied on strong customary land tenure systems to survive. Historically, legislation has failed to clearly define communal rights to rangelands, and the specific roles and responsibilities for both communities and local government to administer and manage these resources. This legislative deficiency prevented pastoral communities from fully exercising their constitutional rights to land (Ethiopia’s Constitution broadly recognizes pastoral communities’ right to access land and prevents their involuntary displacement).

Photo: yaruman5 / Flickr
19 January 2018
Authors: 
Andy White
Africa
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Western Africa
Global

2018 could be transformative for the indigenous and community land rights movement, with unprecedented opportunities for scaling up rights recognition around the world.

Global

October 2017: In 2012, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) endorsed Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure, forests, and fisheries (VGGT, or the Voluntary Guidelines) to, inter alia, promote food security and sustainable development by improving secure access to land, fisheries, and forests.

•	Women in Burlobo community, Northern Uganda, use a satellite map to draw sketch maps of their land, with the help of  the Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU).
Global
Kenya
Uganda
Sierra Leone
Myanmar
Nepal

By Rachael Knight, Senior Advisor, Community Land Protection, Namati

Sheep Grazing Commons Above Private Valley Farms, Adrigole, Ireland (Photo: Liz Alden Wily)
Global
Europe

By Liz Alden Wily and Fabrice Dubertret, Members of the LandMark Operations Team.

Do community-held lands thrive today in Europe? If so, what can communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America learn from their long experiences? This was the topic of a Practitioner Lab hosted by LandMark : the Global Platform of Indigenous and Community Lands at the XVI biennial conference of the International Association for Study of the Commons held in Utrecht on the 10th of July. A panel of four experts from Europe (Monica Vasile, Romania; Evelyn Dietsche, Germany; Rita Serra, Portugal; and Pedro Medrano, Spain) helped participants understand the realities of commons in their countries today. Pedro Medrano represented the Soria Forest Association of Spain, winner of the Elinor Ostrom Practitioner Award 2017.

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Haki Madini

HakiMadini is rights based not for profit organization with a mission to advance the rights of marginalized Tanzanians through research, education and development projects

HakiMadini essentially started as a reaction to the human rights abuses that were occurring during late 1990s in mining communities.

Our Core Values
  • Integrity
  • Team work & Volunteerism
  • Transparency & Accountability
  • Networking & Collaboration
International Association for the Study of the Commons

The IASC is the leading professional association dedicated to the commons. The association, founded in 1989, is devoted to bringing together multi-disciplinary researchers, practitioners, and policymakers for the purpose of improving governance and management, advancing understanding, and creating sustainable solutions for commons, common-pool resources, or any other form of shared resource.

The IASC aims to:

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