BarotseFloodplain, Western Province of Zambia
•Multiple demographic, socioeconomic and climatic challenges and vulnerabilities
•Variety of livelihood opportunities: flood –provide fish & aquatic plants; water subside –fertile ground to cultivate crops
•Cattle, forest products, fish trade, piecework

There is increasing awareness that integrating gender into development frameworks is critical for effective implementation of development strategies. In working to alleviate rural poverty, the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) recognizes that “business as usual” gender integration approaches will not deliver lasting and widespread improvements in agricultural productivity, poverty reduction and food security. In response, AAS operationalized a gender transformative approach (see Cole et al. 2014a, 2014b).

Most women in Zambia do not enjoy the same land rights as men. Zambia’s Lands Act provides support for women who hold statutory land, but the law does not apply to customary land. Most land is held under custom and most customary tenure systems do not provide women with significant land rights — even when they do, traditional institutions often do not effectively implement the rules.

This report was commissioned by UN-Habitat to review the laws and land tenure of a selected number of southern African countries. It involved the appointment of country specialists who researched and produced country chapters for their respective countries namely, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia. A regional expert was appointed to produce a regional overview to serve as a source document for the country reports, as well as provide overall coordination of the project. The project was carried out over a period of roughly one year, which began in March 2004.

The Rural Agricultural Livelihood Survey (RALS) is a new panel survey designed to obtain a comprehensive picture of Zambia’s small- and medium-scale farming sector using the 2010 census sampling frame. An earlier household panel survey for rural Zambia was the Supplemental Surveys (SS) of 2001, 2004 and 2008, which enabled the publication of a large set of important research outputs by IAPRI, Michigan State University and a range of Zambian and international partner organizations.

There is a direct relationship between women’s right to land, economic empowerment, food security and poverty reduction. A gender approach to land rights can enable shifts in gender power relations, and assure that all people, regardless of sex, benefit from, and are empowered by, development policies and practices to improve people’s rights to land. This brief gives an overview on how to consider gender aspects in projects and programmes addressing land rights.

Land and land-based natural resources are the foundation of livelihoods for millions of people and are related to social, cultural and spiritual identity. This is particularly the case for drylands people, who, due to low and variable rainfall and water availability, have developed adaptive strategies in response to seasonal, climatic and environmental change. Gender role norms play an important role in these dynamics, where men and women often undertake different livelihood activities to manage difficult ecological conditions. 

The gender-responsive implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development presents an enormous opportunity to achieve gender equality, end poverty and hunger, combat inequalities within and among countries, build peaceful, just and inclusive societies, protect and promote human rights, and ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources. The SDGs provide an important framework for collective action to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and the realization of their full enjoyment of all human rights.

This paper was presented at the “2017 WORLD BANK CONFERENCE ON LAND AND POVERTY”, The World Bank - Washington DC. This paper provides a comparative appreciation of all the datasets especially the metadata and methodology along with a SWOT vis-à-vis reporting requirement of SDG indicator.

This workshop was orgainized at Bhubaneswar, India by Center for Land Governance, NRMC, Bhubaneswar with support of The World Bank, New Delhi. In this workshop salient findings on processes and progress made around gender equitable land tenure arrangements, best practices and challenges along with ground-happenings and post –land rights situations captured through community and stakeholders opinions were shared.

This paper analyzes the state’s Land Governance in terms of the five themes for
administrators, technicians and professionals working in the land sector as per the gender-framework of FAO’s VGGT along with an additional theme on community perspectives on women land rights, and recommends strategies for moving towards it.

Land is an important asset for rural households, and having secure land rights is important for poverty reduction. Despite the large body of literature on the relationship between land tenure security, livelihoods, and poverty, most of this literature is based on household-level data and does not consider possible intrahousehold inequalities in land ownership.