{"id":69635,"date":"2016-05-11T10:47:56","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T08:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/next-steps-to-strengthen-global-land-governance-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2016-05-11T10:47:56","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T08:47:56","slug":"next-steps-to-strengthen-global-land-governance-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/next-steps-to-strengthen-global-land-governance-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Next steps to strengthen global land governance | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"
Participatory community mapping and community land protection can yield tangible results for poor and vulnerable populations.<\/span> Reuters\/Siphiwe Sibeko<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four years ago voluntary guidelines on the governance of land and land tenure were agreed at the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome. This was a response to growing concerns about the impacts of \u201cland grabbing\u201d driven by the global rush for investment in the wake of the food, fuel and financial crises of the late 2000s. Getting the guidelines agreed was a long slog, involving many people. In a new report we examine what has happened since \u2013 and what challenges lie ahead.<\/p>\n

The voluntary guidelines represent a unique example of collaborative \u201csoft law\u201d. The UN Committee on World Food Security offered the opportunity for direct involvement of all stakeholders \u2013 including governments, industry and civil society. This was a first for this sort of international law-making process. There was both disagreement and compromise, and not a little fudging, but the final document emerged as a globally-agreed platform for action. Given the controversial topic, and the vested interests involved, this was an amazing feat.<\/p>\n

In the past four years there has been an extraordinary amount of activity globally. There have been pilot projects and capacity building training, as well as manuals, guidelines and toolkits galore. There has been widespread buy-in. This has come from national governments, ranging from Sierra Leone to Myanmar, to private companies, including the sugar giant Illovo, to large international NGOs, such as Oxfam. It also included a range of civil society movements, such as the peasants\u2019 movement, La Via Campesina. But, not surprisingly among such a diverse group, there are disagreements and controversies.<\/p>\n

Making land governance work in practice is easier said than done. High-sounding principles do not translate easily in contexts where corruption is rife. Land deals are opaque and the capacity for regulation and oversight is minimal. What can you do when there is only one person in the land registry office, with inadequate records and no legal back-up? Not surprisingly, investors can ride rough-shod over any procedure in such settings.<\/p>\n

Beyond the status quo<\/h2>\n

Many see the guidelines as an important opportunity to address wider issues of land inequality, historical dispossession and agrarian change, rather than simply as a route to \u201cresponsible investment\u201d. Just as the process of agreeing the guidelines was intensely political, the implementation is too. Ensuring that the debate between regularising the status quo and pushing for more progressive change remains alive is essential. For this reason, there is a need to balance the technocratic impulse to translate guidelines into multiple toolkits and methods against the importance of sustaining the debate about what the guidelines ultimately are for, and for whom.<\/p>\n

Holding investors to account<\/h2>\n

Holding investors to account is an essential aim. With growing global awareness of land investment issues, accountability campaigns, such as \u201cBehind the Brands\u201d, are gathering strength. The guidelines are not intended to restrict business, but ensure it is responsible, transparent and effectively regulated. This requires capacity in governments that need well-equipped and expert land administration and legal systems. Facilitating private-sector investment needs to be balanced against building state and civil society capacity for holding businesses to account.<\/p>\n

Political contexts matter<\/h2>\n

Agreements forged at the global level, and signed with great fanfare at a UN event, do not necessarily cascade downwards. Regional and national political contexts really do matter. In some contexts, there are adversarial relationships, while elsewhere there is more coherence and consensus. Where particular governments, such as Brazil, take a lead in a region, then things move; and where constitutions reflect broad human rights principles there are more opportunities for linking struggles. Building regional capacity \u2013 such as in Africa through the Land Policy Initiative \u2013 is an important next step.<\/p>\n

Learning from success<\/h2>\n

There are all sorts of successes in land governance across the world. For example, there have been efforts to document and secure customary and informal land rights through participatory community mapping and community land protection and registration initiatives that can yield tangible results for poor and vulnerable populations. A key focus must be on legal empowerment and accountability, building the capacity of local groups.<\/p>\n

The guidelines provide an important, internationally-agreed framework for action. Learning from successes in land governance is a vital next step, combined with increased support for civil society and social movements to build bottom-up pressure for state and corporate accountability.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Ruth Hall is affiliated with the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She receives funding from Department for International Development (UK) through the Land: Enhancing Governance for Economic Development programme. The content and opinions in this piece are however the authors' own.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Ian Scoones directs the ESRC STEPS Centre, and has received funding from the LEGEND programme on land governance, supported by the UK Department for International Development. The content and opinions in this piece are however the authors' own.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Participatory community mapping and community land protection can yield tangible results for poor and vulnerable populations. Reuters\/Siphiwe Sibeko Four years ago voluntary guidelines on the governance of land and land tenure were agreed at the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome. This was a response to growing concerns about the impacts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[8890,377,612,4570,4332,10678,11492],"class_list":{"0":"post-69635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-conversation","8":"tag-global","9":"tag-governance","10":"tag-land","11":"tag-next","12":"tag-steps","13":"tag-strengthen","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}