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Legal Empowerment in Practice. Using Legal Tools to Secure Land Rights in Africa

Highlights from the international workshop “Legal Empowerment for Securing Land Rights” Accra,Ghana, 13th-14th March 2008










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    The study on collective tenure rights and climate action in sub-Saharan Africa aims to consolidate and analyse the state of the evidence on how tenure arrangements – in particular collective ownership and management of forests operating in complex systems of contingent factors – impact forest condition outcomes, as well as livelihood outcomes of forest dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on this evidence, it also presents guidance on actions that can improve these environmental and livelihood outcomes in forest areas.In recent years, growing evidence has documented the contributions to climate change mitigation of lands and forests held under collective tenure by local communities and Indigenous Peoples, and more broadly their contributions to natural resource conservation and increased resilience. Africa is an important region for the recognition of collective rights to forests. Taking collective tenure fully into account is critical for climate action and livelihoods because forms of collective tenure and use rights are the predominant basis for the ownership, control and use of most forests in Africa.With the opportunity presented by increased international attention to the roles of community governance in combating climate change, it is urgent that the evidence base for tenure-forest relationships in sub-Saharan Africa be rapidly assessed and expanded. Assessments should include careful consideration of the roles of contingent factors, as well as agendas for strategic action in the short and medium term, based on this evidence. The costs of inaction are substantial: deforestation and land degradation are accelerating across the African continent, and many high-value forests that were stable in previous decades are now threatened. This trend highlights the need to focus support on the occupant communities who are the stewards of these globally important landscapes and can play a central role in on-the-ground forest conservation.
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    Given the recent trend of granting vast areas of African land to foreign investors, the urgency of placing real ownership in the hands of the people living and making their livelihood upon lands held according to custom cannot be overstated. This study provides guidance on how best to recognize and protect the land rights of the rural poor. Protecting and enforcing the land rights of rural Africans may be best done by passing laws that elevate existing customary land rights up into nations ' formal legal frameworks thereby making customary land rights equal to documented land claims. This publication investigates the various over-arching issues related to the statutory recognition of customary land rights. Three case studies of land laws in Botswana, Tanzania and Mozambique are analysed extensively in content and implementation, concluding with recommendations and practical considerations on how to write a land law that recognizes and formalizes customary land rights. It cautions lawmakers that even excellent laws may, in their implementation, fall prey to political manipulation and suggests various oversight and accountability mechanisms that may be established to ensure that the law is properly implemented, the land claims of rural communities are protected, and the legislative intent of the law is realized.

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