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Diverse Conference on Community Land Rights Culminates in Strategic Action Plans to Increase Rights Recognition
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On October 4-5, over 300 people from around 60 countries gathered in Stockholm, Sweden at the third international conference, Reducing Inequality in a Turbulent World: Scaling-up strategies to secure indigenous, community, and women’s land rights. Three strategy sessions—on rural and indigenous women’s rights and leadership in collective lands, strategies and mechanisms to scale up implementation from local to national level, and connecting and leveraging the existing international support structures to advance indigenous and community land rights—developed action plans to increase rights recognition. All sessions included participants from the private sector. Together, conference participants identified ways to connect and leverage global and grassroots efforts to drive progress on the recognition of indigenous and community land rights.
Watch the wrap-up video here, and read the full conference outcomes document here.
The conference brought together leaders from indigenous and community organizations, the private sector, civil society, and governments from across the world. It aimed to raise awareness of secure indigenous and community land rights as a priority strategy to decrease inequality and deliver on global goals, assess the status of promising instruments to secure community rights, and encourage greater action, support, and commitment from key stakeholders.
The conference was co-organized by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the Swedish International Agriculture Network Initiative (SIANI), and the International Foundation for Science (IFS). It was held in collaboration with the Land Rights Now alliance, the Interlaken Group, and LandMark. Devex was the media partner.
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Innovations to Advance Land Rights
For the first time, the conference featured an “Innovation Zone”—an open space designed to promote new technologies and other innovative strategies to scale up recognition of community, indigenous, and rural women’s land rights. Nine featured organizations showcased new tools and initiatives to secure rights, including efforts to advance the mapping and recognition of community-held lands, promote the territorial governance of indigenous and local communities, and hold investors accountable.
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Communities Advance Their Rights Over Almost 2 Million Hectares of Forest with Support from the Tenure Facility
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October 3 marked the official launch of the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, the world’s first and only funding institution dedicated solely to supporting Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ efforts to secure their rights to lands and forests. RRI began incubating the Tenure Facility in 2014, and now celebrates its launch in Sweden as an independent organization.
Over the past two years, the Facility supported six successful pilot projects in Mali, Indonesia, Peru, Cameroon, Panama, and Liberia to advance recognition over almost 2 million hectares of land. The Facility provides rapid financing and technical assistance directly to local and national change agents to address insecure community land rights, which drive conflict and undermine progress on global environmental and development goals. The launch took place at an October 3 Development Talks hosted by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Ford Foundation.
Watch a video on the Tenure Facility, read more on the new Tenure Facility website, and watch the morning and afternoon sessions of the Development Talks for more information.
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Regional Workshops Advance Indigenous and Rural Women’s Rights
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Leaders in women’s land rights developed new strategic alliances and plans over the last several months to accelerate the recognition of women’s rights within collective land tenure systems. Convened by the RRI Coalition, three regional workshops in Africa, Asia, and Latin America brought together a diverse group of actors to discuss how to develop linkages between existing regional initiatives, expand regional networks, and connect them to global processes.
Across all regions, concerns around women’s economic empowerment, the criminalization and protection of human rights defenders, women’s participation and leadership, and the impact of land-based investments and the private sector were prominent. In Africa, other major issues discussed were consistent with regional findings from Power and Potential—that discriminatory inheritance laws and the lack of community-level participation are key obstacles to securing women’s tenure rights. In Asia, conflict resolution and private sector engagement were identified as major factors. In Latin America, participants discussed the intersection of gender and ethnicity with regard to access to land and resources.
In 2018, RRI looks forward to using these inputs to support the development of a Gender Justice Advisory Group, which will guide strategies to advance women’s rights and leadership within community-held lands.
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New Guidance Advises Companies on Legacy Land Issues
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Historic land grabs and legalized abuse of customary rights are the most pressing causes of conflict in many countries, and often the most complicated to resolve. The Interlaken Group recently reached a unique and unprecedented agreement between leading investors, companies, NGOs, and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations regarding how these issues should be addressed. This new guidance on legacy land issues provides operational guidance for all parties, consistent with the VGGT, UNDRIP, and other relevant international standards.
The Group also launched a new Vision and Agenda that calls on all actors—including companies, conservation organizations, and investors—to scale up action on indigenous and community land rights. This Vision is unique in earning the endorsement of leading companies, governments, and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations.
To show how these guides and Vision can be implemented, the Group is compiling cases where companies have worked with communities and households to recognize their land rights. Like the legacy land issues guidance, the cases provide examples for other companies looking to implement their commitments on land rights. So far, two cases studies on Ilovo Sugar (Malawi) and New Forests (Malaysia) have been published.
Check out the Interlaken Group’s new website highlighting these new tools and resources.
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New Research and Resources on Community Land Rights
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Research launched on the eve of the Stockholm Conference found that 61 percent of land-based conflicts between companies and communities since 2001 are unresolved. Conflicts in Southeast Asia are more intractable than in any other region—only 6 out of 51 cases have been resolved. Unresolved conflicts are a significant financial and reputational risk for companies, and can devastate local communities and livelihoods.
Securing community and indigenous land rights is vital to mitigating and preventing these conflicts, achieving the SDGs and the commitments of the Paris Agreement, promoting sustainable development, and ensuring peace and justice. A new brief from RRI outlines how secure community land rights are vital to all these global goals.
Stay tuned for more information from MegaFlorestais, the Tenure Conference in Indonesia, and the COP. Subscribe to the RRI Blog to get updates delivered straight to your inbox!
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RRI Fellow Spotlight: Sally Collins
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 Sally Collins is an RRI Fellow who has spent more than 25 years in natural resource and forest management, and who currently serves as co-chair of MegaFlorestais—an informal network of public forest agency leaders. Read a blog post from Sally on lessons learned during the most recent MegaFlorestais meeting held in Canada this past October.
Read more about RRI Fellows.
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Protect indigenous people to help fight climate change, says UN rapporteur
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World leaders must do more to defend custodians of the natural world whose lives are at risk from big business, says UN rapporteur Victoria Tauli-Corpuz. Read more.
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First global pact backing indigenous land rights launched
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Native peoples struggling to retain or regain stewardship of forests that sustained them for countless generations may finally have backing from an organisation with both swag and sway. Read more.
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In fight for secure land rights, corporations and communities find common ground
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By convening a diverse group of stakeholders, including members of local communities living on land where resource exploitation takes place, the Interlaken Group aims to catalyze change not only within companies, but across entire sectors and countries. Read more.
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