Climate Change and Land Tenure

This document analyzes the implications for land tenure and land policy of climate change. It assesses the implications of ongoing anthropogenic climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions for land tenure and the role that land policy can play in climate change adaptation planning in the developing world; it also sets out a simple framework for tracing the linkages between climate change, impacts on land use systems, and the land tenure implications, including those which result from adaptation and mitigation responses to global warming. Although the linkages between climate change and land tenure are complex and indirect, the effects of climate change and variability are felt through changes in natural ecosystems, land capability and land use systems. Increasingly, these changes will place diminishing supplies of land under greater pressure, for both productive use and human settlement. As a result land issues and policies should be key considerations for adaptation planning, so as to strengthen land tenure and management arrangements in at risk environments, and secure supplies and access arrangements for land for resettlement and changing livelihood demands.