Speaking truth to power is an art, but increasingly a lost art. This goes as much for academia as for the rest of the world. Indeed and unfortunately, much of academia reflects the world in which it functions and often makes the challenge of deepening social justice harder rather than smaller. To put it bluntly, much of academia has resorted to instrumental and naïve beliefs in innovation, technology and efficiency (which dominate the natural sciences) or (as in much of the social-economic sciences) increasingly arcane niche debates that too often revolve around virtue-signalling, methodological-theoretical wizardry or apolitical pragmatism. What we seem to have lost to a good degree – though to be sure: it was never a dominant endeavour and at the same time it has never been absent either – is the art of speaking truth to power.

I would like to make an argument that in aiming to deepen social justice in green transformations, we should pay renewed attention to the institutions of collective action at a very local level. I'm talking about peasant associations, irrigation groups, women's groups, indigenous people’s groups, producer associations, the local committees that manage land, water, forests.

Rapid response mechanisms (RRMs) are a new, proactive legal approach designed to provide legal and technical support to communities facing nascent conflicts related to land-based investments. RRMs provide preventative rather than reactive legal help the moment a conflict arises or community members’ rights are threatened, rather than trying to reverse rights violations once they have already occurred. 

In Cambodia, a recent Human Rights Watch report documents how Indigenous Chong people have faced eviction and criminal charges following the establishment of a carbon offsetting project on their lands. In Kenya, “the world’s largest soil carbon removal project”, whose credits have been used to offset the emissions of global corporations including Meta and Netflix, has been accused of dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of economically and culturally significant land, and reducing the climate resilience of thousands of people. 

Traditional authorities in Zambia complain that the government does not consult them when land is allocated for investment projects, while communities say chiefs are neglecting their interests. Jesinta Kunda of Zambia Land Alliance says more clarity is needed on the role of traditional authorities, in law and practice, to ensure large-scale investments in agriculture, mining and other sectors are governed better – particularly in light of the rising demand for critical minerals found in Zambia. She urges the government, traditional leaders and citizens to seize the opportunities presented by current legal reforms in Zambia to create change.

In Mali, a civil society coalition worked with communities to achieve greater transparency on gold mining contracts and to hold authorities and companies to account. Their aim: to turn Mali’s mining sector into a lever for socio-econmic development and improve living conditions around mining sites. 

Nouhoum Diakite charts a success story, with limitations…

As part of a scoping study titled Land Governance for Climate Resilience: A review and case studies from LAND-at-scale projects headed by Richard Sliuzas, Emeritus Professor, University of Twente, GLTN dove into the links between climate and land governance in the ‘’Scaling up community-based land registration and land use planning on customary land in Uganda’’ project. This case study highlights experiences from the community-based wetland management planning approach in Butaleja, Uganda, focusing on how the approach is addressing land governance issues and contributing to community climate resilience.

This webinar, the fourth of the Advancing Land-based Investment Governance (ALIGN) series, took place on February 9th, 2024, under the title “When carbon markets go wrong: How to ensure access to remedy for land tenure violations”. The webinar drew in 562 participants and featured panelists from policy experts to community leaders. The webinar was jointly organized by the Land Portal Foundation, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Namati and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Development (CCSI).   

By Peter Sangeyon, Gender and Land Champion, WOLTS Project Tanzania

From 1995 to 2005 I was the village chairman, and I was a ward councillor for ten years after that. I was very pleased when the community selected me to be a WOLTS gender and land champion.

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. 

OVERVIEW

Under the umbrella of the Land Dialogues series, the third webinar of this year’s series “Carbon markets and Indigenous lands : The importance of free, prior and informed consent” took place on September 14th, 2023. The webinar drew in a little under 500 participants and featured panelists from Indigenous leaders to academics. 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.