Resource information
Executive Summary
Tenure security is a critical foundation for human development, for prosperity, and the health and sustainability of our planet. Tenure security and good land governance protects the rights of land users and facilitates a long-term relationship with land that enables sustainable land use and sustained investment in land. It promotes peace, stability and inclusive growth; it protects the poor and empowers women and marginalized groups such as indigenous peoples and local communities; it helps protect nature and allows for a healthy planet.
But, tenure security is a distant dream for almost a billion people who do not feel their rights to land or home are secure. Worldwide, weak land governance drives unsustainable land use and deforestation, and fuels conflict and human rights abuses; it marginalizes the poor and disadvantaged; it prevents responsible investment in land needed to create jobs and sustain livelihoods. Time is running out.
Global crises in 2021, including global infectious zoonoses, habitat and biodiversity loss, climate change, growing inequalities, underscore the fundamental reality that how land is managed and used affects everyone, now, not just those who depend on it directly or at some unknown time in the future. It is not surprising, then, that tenure security and sustainable land use underpin numerous Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and are foundational for a green, resilient and inclusive recovery from the global pandemic.
Despite some progress, action at country-level is often slow or insufficient or/and has faltered. This Framework for Action highlights four critical global
priorities for which concerted action on tenure security is essential to enable inclusive, resilient and sustainable development. These are:
- Empowering people and promoting gender and social equality and resilience, in particular for women, the elderly, youth, indigenous
peoples and local communities. - Climate adaptation and mitigation, while protecting nature and promoting sustainable food systems.
- Sustainable rural and urban land investment for inclusive and equal prosperity.
- Promoting peace, stability and security.