Local communities manage a significant portion of the world’s remaining forests, pastures, and fisheries as common property resources, but they are rarely recognized as formal owners. Important progress has occurred during the last twenty years, as growing evidence suggests that devolving rights to communities can provide incentives for new forms of investment that facilitate sustainable outcomes as well as greater equity in the distribution of benefits.

At CFS 46, the Land Portal had the opportunity to be the co-organizer of the side event How the VGGT have changed rural women’s lives:  Key strategies and innovations towards gender equality together with GLTN Unit UN-Habitat, the Cadasta Foundation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This side event brought together a range of experts who illustrated efforts aimed at ensuring women’s land rights through both formal institutions and customary systems.

Secure land rights play a key role in addressing the climate crisis.  Yet billions of peoples’ rights to the lands and resources they live

The daughters of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, face a vexing decision: Marriage or inheritance?

In 2006, when the state first recognized the rights of unmarried daughters to inherit family land, it simultaneously left millions of women with a dilemma. While ostensibly a step toward gender equality, the new law excluded married daughters, meaning that women who married would face the prospect of weakening or losing their rights to inherit land in their birth family. Daughters of the state were effectively left to choose between marriage and land ownership.

On the 2019 International Day of Rural Women, Landesa’s Shipra Deo explores how land rights are an essential element for overturning misperceptions about the role of women in society and on the farm.

In a workshop with a group of agronomists who work in agriculture extension in India, I ask the participants to draw the picture of a farmer with whom they work. All but one of them draw male figures.

In rural areas around the world, the face of a farmer is increasingly a woman’s.

From the paddy terraces of Asia to the maize fields of sub-Saharan Africa, she will till, plant, water, and harvest crops that feed her household and whole communities.

Land distribution is an issue innately tied to inequality throughout the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is considered the most unequal region in the world. This inequality ranges from wealth disparity and political corruption to gender discrimination in labor practices and the exploitation of natural resources.

On 24 and 25 September 2019, Heads of State and Governments will gather at the United Nations Headquarters in New York for the summit Accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is a crucial event for evaluating progress towards the 17 goals and 169 ambitious targets countries have set to eradicate poverty, achieve food security, empower women, secure the planet and foster peace and stability.

For the first time, women from informal settlements in the Municipality of Bonito, State of Pernambuco, Brazil will be granted with land titles in which they have lived in for decades

For the past six months, Resource Equity has been working with our partner Associates Research Trust to implement our Starting With Women approach with subsistence mining associations in Karamoja, Uganda. 

Sexual extortion is a pervasive but often hidden form of corruption. Instead of money as a bribe, sexual favors are extorted in exchange for the provision of services or goods. This degrading abuse of power also touches the land sector, but remains largely hidden and unaddressed.

Indigenous and local community women play crucial roles as household and forest managers, food providers, and leaders of rural enterprises—and make invaluable contributions toward global sustainable development and climate goals. The evidence is clear that securing their rights to community lands offers a promising path toward prosperity and sustainability in the forested and rural areas of the world. Yet these rights remain constrained by unjust laws and practices, and the voices of these women are consistently underrepresented in decision-making processes at all levels.