This panel session reflected on the definition of ‘scaling-up’ with experts from the field bridging experiences from the ground to the theoretical concept of scaling. The focus lied on scaling for increased tenure security – geographically and/or institutionally. Reflections were given on what was scaled, why, how scaling unfolds and what has been learned – in the field of land governance. The session was organized by LAND-at-scale. Scaling is at the heart of both the name as well as the strategy of the LAND-at-scale program (LAS).

Community forestry has the potential to contribute to sustainable livelihoods in poor and marginalized communities in and near forests. In practice, however, the benefits of collectively managed forests may end up in the hand of local elites. Based on presentations from Bolivia, the Philippines and Nepal, participants in this session discussed, among others: (i) What is the role and importance of individual benefits in a model that is based on collective forest rights?

The debate about compensation of former white farmers in Zimbabwe continues to rage. The compensation agreement signed in July agreed a total amount of US$3.5 billion to pay for ‘improvements’ to the land that was expropriated. After 20 years of discussion, this was a major step forward. However, there seem to be multiple positions on the agreement and little consensus, along with much misunderstanding. However, some things are happening, and a joint resource mobilisation committee has been established with technical support from the World Bank and others.

I am Dolene Miller, an Afro-descendant from the Caribbean (Atlantic) Coast of Nicaragua and for me it is important and very necessary to support any initiative to protect my community from COVID19. As ethnic minorities, we are facing a health crisis in precarious conditions because the national government itself has not wanted to assume its responsibility to protect the population from infection, has not issued a quarantine and, on the contrary, is promoting massive activities according to its thesis of contagion of the herd.

We meet Rosalía in a roadside café in a dusty town in the Quiché department, in Guatemala’s Western Highlands. She lowers her voice whenever people come in – you never know who might be listening. Land is sensitive stuff, especially in Quiché, a region that still bears, perhaps more than any other part of Guatemala, the scars of the civil war (1960-1996) – as we will see. In 2018 alone, 15 defenders of land rights in Guatemala have been killed with total impunity, several of them in Quiché.

OUR CITY: WHY WE WORK WHERE WE WORK

‘Chicoco’ means mud, the black, fibrous mud that people living in Port Harcourt’s waterfront communities cut from the mangroves and throw down on the river’s edge to reclaim land from the creeks. They build their homes on this mud.

The failure to secure the property rights of rural communities shows a clear policy gap between citizens and rights to land as per the Constitution and the attitude and practices of the state, traditional leaders, white farmers and mining companies in relation to such rights. 

Absent from the discourse spurred by the motion passed in the National Assembly on 27 February is what could be achieved in the interim for land reform programme using existing legislation while the country awaits a verdict on the constitutional amendment to determine whether is possible to expropriate land w

The back has been broken on legal denial of community property. This is the conclusion of a study of land laws in 100 countries.

Factually, most administrations now acknowledge community lands as a viable unit of property and provide mechanisms through which this essentially social form may be formally mapped and registered. And I mean community property, with comparable legal protections as granted private and corporate property.

Autora: Tatiana Mendonça

At the end of September, the global land community met in Bern, Switzerland for the 2nd International Conference on Community Land Rights, to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing those who rely on access to community lands for their livelihoods. Discussions at the conference focused on the perpetual divide between indigenous peoples and governments with regard to land ownership.