Update on Land Administration and Policies in Asia/Pacific

In Kenya’s Ol Pusimoru community, twenty-two women were elected as community elders in 2013, up from 14 in 2012, and zero three years ago.

By Dr. Matt Sommerville, Chief of Party, Tenure and Global Climate Change Project.
At the recently concluded 2013 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference in Warsaw, Poland, negotiators agreed to a landmark set of decisions. After seven years of negotiations, United Nations (UN) member states reached a consensus on a framework to reward countries for REDD+ actions (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).
[Read more on the background of REDD+ negotiations and the links to land tenure and natural resource rights.]

On June 14, the United States announced a Partnership with Burkina Faso, in coordination with the G8, to improve land governance and strengthen transparency. The Partnership will build on progress achieved under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact and the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition Country Cooperation Framework with Burkina Faso, which support a number of the principles of the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of the Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

This newly-revised research paper from USAID discusses the key issues, opportunities, and recommendations for strengthening the land and resource rights of Indigenous Peoples (IP). Despite occupying 20 percent of the world’s territory, IP often have weak claims on land and resource rights – which are frequently challenged by rising demand for land, increasing population pressure, and global climate change - and are among the most vulnerable groups in the world. IP comprise one-third of the world’s poor and live an average of 20 years less than the nonindigenous population.

In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake, land and property issues emerged as an area of significant concern in Haiti. Analyses in the weeks following the disaster warned that destruction of property records, massive population displacement and loss of life could contribute to opportunism, land grabbing, conflict and delayed resettlement—particularly in urban areas severely affected by the earthquake.

USAID is assisting the Kenya Government (GoK) to restore the forest and watersheds in the Mau Forest Complex (MFC) through a $7 million, two-year project called ProMara (for the Mara). On March 25th 2011, USAID/Kenya’s Deputy Mission Director James Hope officially launched ProMara at the project’s new Mau Outreach Center (MOC), on the outskirts of the forest. The Mau Forest Complex has a history of illegal and irregular land allocations. In 2009, GoK acted on Mau Task Force recommendations to revoke questionable titles, ordering the eviction of "illegal" settlers from the MFC.

By Frank Pichel, Land Tenure and Property Rights Specialist, USAID.
I was pleased to attend the June 2014 intersessional meeting of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) in Shanghai, China and want to share several noteworthy achievements for USAID’s ongoing efforts to strengthen land tenure and property rights and prevent conflict.

Since the ousting of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya in 2011, the country has been on a shaky path to peace and security. Libyans have been dealing with the consequences of Qadhafi’s rule and the short, destructive civil war that followed his ouster. Due to a long history of property expropriation by the Qadhafi regime and disregard for long-standing customary claims to land in rural areas, issues relating to housing, land, and property (HLP) rights are often the cause of grievances and conflicts.

Strengthening women’s rights to own and inherit property provides them with greater opportunities to generate income and exercise control over family resources, which can improve women’s ability to feed and educate their children. This simple but powerful message is highlighted by Deborah Espinosa’s recent Huffington Post blog In Kenya, Land Rights Bring New Hope for Women and Girls. Espinosa is a senior attorney and land tenure specialist at Landesa, which implements USAID’s Kenya Justice project.

This article focuses on recent policy changes implemented by the Government of Tanzania. The Government has been criticized in local and international media for supporting harmful large-scale land acquisitions. In response, policy makers have placed a cap on transfer size: investors can acquire no more than 10,000 hectares for sugar production and no more than 5,000 hectares for rice production (two key agricultural commodities in the country). But will a cap stop harmful transfers? Maybe, but caps are not necessarily the “major step” that the article suggests.

On June 20th, the One Campaign posted this blog about USAID’s Kenya Justice Project. The TrustLaw blog of Thompson Reuters also picked up the story.