Our Land Thoughts – The ‘DOS’ and ‘DON’TS’ of the land acquisition processes: navigating a just path to sustainable investments

National development agendas usually commit to the building of new infrastructure at a significant scale – promising upgraded or new roads, ports, airports, rail and energy infrastructure, housing, or urban development. With these commitments inevitably comes a demand for land. Although the land requirements for such investments will usually be context-specific, we know certain types of investments have enormous land requirements regardless of location. Utility scale solar or wind farms, for example, necessitate large surface areas to produce energy, particularly vis-à-vis traditional energy sources such as coal. Given the finite character of land, and the growing competition for different land uses, public land that is readily available for such investments is in diminishing supply.

This Agreement signifies the importance of government’s endorsement towards responsible investments in Lao PDR. The TLI project team are providing significant technical support to pursue transformations in social inclusion, environmental stewardship, governance and societal principles for land-based investments. Transformations are necessary across all actors, through the enabling environment and particularly in the business practice space, and therefore, a multi-pronged approach is adopted. This will draw on regional and international standards, active investor partnerships, policy and legislative influencing and community-based capacity building.

Madison Durham, who spent 3 months with us as an intern, heads back to complete her final year of her Bachelor of Law (Honours)/Bachelor Arts at the Australian National University – you can see what she got up to here.

Whether encouraged by incentives, or made mandatory, joint titling has become a popular tool among development practitioners to avoid the default position that land is recorded only in the name of one owner, typically a man. In the context of land, joint titling (aka joint registration) refers to the practice of documenting the names of both members of a couple as the legal owners of marital property, or a home in which they cohabit. Co-ownership is the outcome, but this can take different forms. Let’s consider a husband and wife who co-own their family home:

Most recently I have been assisting one of my colleagues by conducting research on the links between development, land tenure and climate change. The intersection between the three is more pronounced than I would have thought and has made me realise just how central land tenure is to achieving development outcomes, climate change outcomes, and conversely, how climate change efforts can affect development and land tenure. For example, some of my research indicated that often climate change adaptation and mitigation practices – those being actions which either reduce the risk of climate impacts on the land, or help the landholder adapt to the effects of climate change – are often only available to those with formally recognised land ownership. This leaves those who have informal tenure – that which is not legally recognised in the jurisdiction’s land administration system – vulnerable. The vulnerability boils down to the fact that farmers or land dwellers are only likely to invest in climate smart agriculture (‘CSA’) or sustainable land management (‘SLM’) practices if they are sure that they will be the ones to reap the benefits from those investments, which may take many years to become fruitful. For those with insecure tenure, making a longer-term investment, in, for instance, agroforestry, is not logical as they may have their land stripped from them before the benefits of their investment are felt – due to an inability to defend their rights to land. They therefore have less incentive to protect themselves from the effects of climate change – both present and future. This is, however, not to say that those with informal tenure do not act as good stewards of the land they inhabit. It is just that in the absence of a perceived sense of tenure security, landholders not have the same incentives to invest in the long term climate resilience of their land where they cannot guarantee they will see out the benefits of such an investment.

One of my recent tasks has been to conduct research into the benefits and disadvantages of joint titling for gender equality. Joint titling refers to the practice of documenting the names of both members of a couple as the legal owners of property obtained in the course of their relationship, in the context of a land titling program. It has become a popular mechanism in the development space in avoiding the default position whereby only the male, or husband, as the household head is registered as the owner of the land. My research found that joint titling can be a really useful tool in securing women’s rights – for instance, in preventing a unilateral sale of the land by her husband, protecting widowed women from losing their house upon the death of their husband, allowing women greater access to credit, and empowering women in both formal and informal decision making processes related to the house, the land, and its uses. Despite these promising advantages, the research suggests that mere titling is insufficient. The ‘stickiness’ of patriarchal custom in some jurisdictions has prevented the benefits of joint titling from being realised. For instance, a case study in Cambodia on joint titling showed that some women felt that despite being formally titled, they did not have the power to assert their rights if a dispute were to arise. This highlights the important difference between the de facto and de jure existence of joint titling. Legal title is only effective if the processes and regulations that underpin it are followed. Therefore, special consideration must be borne in mind when implementing joint titling systems to ensure that women’s rights are actually realised.

Instead it means that women enjoy secure access to, control over and ownership of land on an equal footing with men. Research shows that there are positive multiplier effects when women’s land rights are secure – benefits accrue not just for women’s economic empowerment, but also for food security at the household level, child malnutrition and investments in natural resource management.

You can watch the recorded webinar via YouTube by following this link: Smarter Design of Land Administration Reform – YouTube

Large-scale land investments across Africa and Asia have often caused repercussions to food security and supply issues. They have often compromised the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, exacerbated land tenure conflicts and caused environmental degradation. Addressing investment practices – through inclusive business and sustainable agroecology – has the potential to achieve more sustainable food systems and is the core focus of the recently launched Transformative Land Investment (TLI) project.

It creates a financial value for forest carbon, incentivising forest protection rather than forest destruction. This is critical given the mitigation potential of REDD+ is in the realm of 5 gigatons of carbon per year, coming behind only the energy sector in terms of mitigation potential.