Abstract
An evolving land governance context compounds the case for practitioners to closely track developments as they unfold. While much research sheds light on key trends, questions remain about approaches for collective bottom-up analysis led by land governance practitioners themselves. This study presents findings from an initiative to test such an approach. Drawing on written submissions made in response to an open call for contributions, the study discusses global trends in land governance over the period 2015–2018. While not a comprehensive review nor a replacement for empirically grounded research, the study highlights some of the developments practitioners grapple with in their work. The findings point to the contrasting local-to-global trends that affect land governance in diverse agro-ecological and socio-economic settings: Growing commercial pressures on land, and shrinking spaces for dissent in many contexts, coexist with new avenues for public participation in land governance processes; while diverse approaches to securing land rights, whether individual or collective, possibly underpinned by new deployments of digital technology, can coexist or compete for policy traction within the same polity. This bottom-up trends analysis broadly correlates with available accounts based on empirical research, while also providing distinctive emphases that reflect the ways practitioners perceive the changing realities they are engaged with.
Highlights
Over recent decades, mega-trends reshaping global demography, climate, consumption and economic integration have been intensifying pressures on land
This study presents the findings of an initiative led by the International Land Coalition (ILC) to track global trends in land governance over the period 2015–2018.1 The ILC is a global alliance of civil society and intergovernmental organizations working together to put people at the center of land governance
Ten main trends emerged from the contributions and are presented in the following two sections: Five detailing various improvements made with regard to different dimensions of land governance, and five representing new or deepening challenges affecting land governance
Summary
Mega-trends reshaping global demography, climate, consumption and economic integration have been intensifying pressures on land (see e.g., [1,2,3,4]). In response to these trends, recent years have seen the development and implementation of legal, regulatory, and guiding frameworks to strengthen land governance at both national and international levels. Act of 2016 [5]) and Mali (Agricultural Land Act of 2017 [6])—to actions to adopt and operationalize international soft law instruments such as the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT [7]) and, in Africa, the African Union’s Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy (V&G [8]) This evolving context—from pressing challenges to new land governance instruments—compounds the case for practitioners to closely track and discuss developments as they unfold.
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