Legal tools to strengthen local rights and voices in natural resource investments : Lessons from innovation
Lorenzo Cotula, Emily Polack, Philippine Sutz
Full abstract In lower-income countries, most rural people depend on land and natural resources for their livelihoods. Yet, access to land is changing fast. Demographic change, increased climatic variability and soil degradation are making land scarce where it was formerly plentiful. Local production systems are becoming more integrated in the global economy, large-scale commercial agriculture is gaining ground, and private investment is growing particularly in natural resource-based sectors (e.g. petroleum, mining, tourism and carbon credits). These processes exacerbate competition for more productive and hence valuable land. The effects are likely to be more intense in areas where climate change impacts will be felt first and worse. As land competition increases, disadvantaged groups are losing out, particularly where their land rights are insecure, their capacity to exercise them is limited, and major power imbalances shape relations with government and incoming investors. It is widely recognised that legal empowerment of local landholders is an important element of efforts to address these challenges. Legal empowerment means that people have more secure rights to their land and greater control over decisions affecting it. As legal rights alone are not enough, legal empowerment also means adequate capacity to exercise these rights in practice, and collective action can help give real leverage to legal rights.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015
Only personal, non-commercial use of this document is allowed.