By TMG Research gGmbH

A Contribution by Jes Weigelt, Moritz Hauer & Frederike Klümper (TMG Research)

Land Rights and Gender Responsive Climate Action Seminar

Climate-change induced disasters and communities’ responses to protect themselves and design solutions have become a top priority on the climate agenda. This webinar aimed to draw attention to the underexplored nexus of climate change, natural disasters, and tenure (in)security through presentations from participants from across regions. 

Suggested questions that the webinar addressed were: 

Under the umbrella of the Land Dialogues series, the third webinar of this year’s series “Climate Funding and COP28 : Turning Pledges into Action” took place on November 28th, 2023. The webinar drew in a little under 200 participants and featured panelists from Indigenous leaders to donors. The series is organized by a consortium of organizations, including the Land Portal Foundation, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Tenure Facility.  

On the opening day of #COP28, we hosted a webinar, “Building Climate Resilience through Inclusive Land Governance,” that delved into the crucial role which inclusive land governance plays in building climate resilience. 

Nature-based emission-reduction projects are considered as key for development of a carbon market, which will be worth an estimated $50 billion USD by 2030. Yet, these carbon offsetting projects continue to be the target of criticism for their lack of certainty, transparency, accessibility, equitability, and quality.

In the leadup to upcoming international climate talks, farmers in the coastal regions of Bangladesh are emphasizing the importance of robust and well-documented land rights in the face of the multiple climate change disasters that have adversely impacted their lives and livelihoods. Spearheaded by the Association for Land Reform (ALRD) in Bangladesh, and the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC), with the support of the Land Portal Foundation and the Global Forum on Agricultural Research and Innovation (GFAR), a social media and information campaign has been underway to amplify their voices on the issue. This time around, we have taken collective action to ensure that climate policy discourse will not neglect the crucial role land rights play in building climate resilience of one of the most vulnerable populations. You can learn more, and contribute, by using hashtags #IfOnlyTheEarthCouldSpeak #landmatters #land4climate #COP28 and by following us on Twitter. 

This blog post is part of the series What to Read. This issue has been developed in the frame of a project in collaboration with ANGOC, ALRD and funded by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR).

Rather than scaling up, I think we should be talking about scaling out and scaling over time when it comes to inclusive, community-led land governance. I tried these ideas out with some success two weeks ago at the annual LANDac Conference in the Netherlands, specifically during a Round Table which asked “(how) can we scale bottom-up or community-based initiatives towards fair and inclusive land governance”?

This session addressed the fact that the rights implications and the social and economic consequences of current climate change and biodiversity strategies in the context of the Rio Conventions for millions of people are not sufficiently acknowledged, researched, and addressed. The presenters and participants discussed the urgent need to have public, academic and policy debates about the impact of land-based climate and biodiversity strategies on poor communities and the development trajectories of rural economies.

This session brought together insights on land governance and climate resilience, with a specific gender focus. Women suffer from lack of access to, decision making over, and use of land. At the same time, climate change disproportionally affects women. Research indicates that ‘gender just land governance’ forms the key to use land in a sustainable, climate-proof way. There are many entry points to make land governance just and inclusive of women.

Communities in developing countries are increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change. Although they contribute little to greenhouse gas emissions, many communities are at the forefront of climate change and the associated extreme events. They are faced with events that undermine their food security, such as droughts and floods, but also increased pressure on land due to climate-induced migration. In this session, we delved into the nexus of climate change and land governance.