PIM Webinar recorded on December 7, 2021. For more information and the recording of the webinar, and to access the briefs, visit https://bit.ly/3xZDBs6

1. Tenure Security and
Landscape Governance of
Natural Resources
December 7, 2021
10:00 am – 11:30 am EST
W EB IN A R
Photo by Aulia Erlangga/CIFOR

2. Cluster 5.1: Enhancing Tenure Security
Cluster 5.2: Governing Shared Landscapes
Co-Leaders:
Steven Lawry (until 2019); Anne M. Larson (2020 to present)
Ruth Meinzen-Dick

3. Key research questions
1. What are the drivers and consequences of tenure insecurity?
2. What mechanisms and institutional arrangements can address threats to tenure
security and strengthen tenure over land, water, and other natural resources?
3. What tools and indicators can be used to assess tenure security and create
accountability for implementation of reforms?
4. How can the interests and knowledge of different actors sharing a common landscape be
identified and reconciled in ways that better secure the livelihoods of women, youth,
and other poor and vulnerable groups?
5. How can a better understanding of political economy processes contribute to more
equitable outcomes for the poorest users within shared landscapes?

4. 1. What are the drivers and consequences of tenure insecurity?
• Women’s land rights and
tenure insecurity
• Individual or household rights • Collective rights

5. 2. What mechanisms and institutional arrangements can address
threats and strengthen tenure?
Formalization of collective rights
▪ Forest rights recognition/devolution (Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Nepal, Peru,
Tanzania, Uganda)
▪ Participatory Rangeland Management (Ethiopia, Tanzania)
Individual or household land certification or titling programs
• Studies of impacts in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria
Land banking to provide landless residents with access to land (Nepal)
Hybrid tenure for water allocation in Eastern and southern Africa and Madagascar
Formation of user group associations and social alliances to enhance tenure security
• Collaboration with International Land Coalition National Engagement Strategies in 22 countries

6. 3. Tools and indicators for implementation
• Joint Land Use Planning in Tanzania and Ethiopia
• Bayesian Belief Network approach to enhance
rangeland governance in South Tunisia
• Games to strengthen water management
(e.g. for groundwater and surface water)
Photo credit: ILRI/ Fiona Flintan

7. 4. How can the interests and knowledge of different actors sharing a common
landscape be identified and reconciled to better secure livelihoods?
Participatory land use planning
• Joint Land Use Planning (Tanzania and Ethiopia)
• Rulal game for participatory land use planning (Laos and
Myanmar
Tools for strengthening inclusion in Multistakeholder
Processes applied in 9 countries, e.g.
CIFOR. Tools for managing landscapes, inclusively
• Getting it right, a guide to improve inclusion in multi-stakeholder
forums.
• How are we doing?
Worldfish From conflict to collaboration in natural resource management.
CoRe and FES. MAP Design Guide

8. 5. Better understanding of political economy processes contribute to more
equitable outcomes for the poorest users within shared landscapes
Much of PIM5-supported research emphasizes
• Role that political economy plays in shaping the
extent of tenure insecurity
• Political economy of governance processes
(inclusion, accountability)
• Distribution of costs and benefits of tenure reforms
Prominent examples:
• Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala
• Tunisia rangeland policy implementation
▪ Using Baysian Belief Networks

9. Some Outcomes
Tanzania: Joint village land use planning including
pastoralists secured shared grazing lands in villages
covering 150,000 ha, created a new form of
collective land certificate; being scaled up
Guatemala: Maya Biosphere Reserve study of socio-economic benefits from 12 community
forest concessions contributed to revision of norms for granting concessions and the
renewal of concession contracts
India: Promise of Commons initiative scaling work on securing land rights and governance
to 30 million acres of commons,
Including scaling water games to
2,500 communities

10. PIM → One CGIAR
What is the relevance of tenure and governance
for each of the One CGIAR impact areas
(and for other future research)?
One CGIAR Impact Areas

11. Briefs highlighting relevance of tenure and
governance research for the future
• Krister Andersson Landscape governance: What is it, and what is it good for?
• Brent Swallow Tenure security: Why it matters
• Edmond Barrow Environmental management needs the support of secure rights and appropriate
governance
• Nayna Jhaveri Gender, tenure security, and landscape governance
• Nancy McCarthyT enure security, landscape governance, and climate change: A research agenda
• Phil René Oyono Poverty, tenure security, and landscape governance: Exploring inextricable
interdependencies for science, policy, and action
• Nancy JohnsonNatural resource tenure and governance for human nutrition and health: Linkages
and priorities for agricultural research and development

12. Thank you

13. Tenure Security: Why it Matters
Brent Swallow
Tenure Security and Landscape Governance
PIM Webinar, December 7, 2021
* Thanks to Ruth, Anne, many CG collaborators and other brief authors.
13

14. Objective: Present a case for research on tenure
security in One CG
Outline:
1. What is tenure security?
2. Clarify links between tenure (in)security and development
objectives
3. Propose elements of an approach to research for One CG
14

15. What is tenure security?
Tenure: conditions under which land and land-based natural resources are occupied,
accessed, used, stewarded, and protected, by whom, for what length of time, for what
purpose, in what way, and with what responsibilities.
Land = Land-based natural resources: cultivated land, grassland, forests, water; landscapes,
watersheds and ecosystems where they interact; and the ecosystem and spiritual values that
people associate with the land.
Land right holders – individuals, defined groups (eg indigenous peoples), or household living
in defined geographical areas. The rights of an individual may be nested within rights of
groups, and rights of families within groups.
Tenure security: certain expectations that the rights of a person or group will be recognized
by others and protected in cases of specific challenges.
Tenure insecurity causes: contested claims by others; ambiguities and conflicts between
customary and statutory governance; deliberate government policies; failures of policy
implementation; changes causing new pressures
15

16. Links between tenure security and development
objectives -- theory
Individual and group outcomes of insecure tenure:
• overuse resources when the benefits accrue to individuals, but costs to group (tragedy of open access)
• uncertain future benefits leads to resource extraction
• under-investment in land improvements with long-term payoffs
• restrictions on use of land as collateral limiting credit and other financial services
Society-scale outcomes:
• people disadvantaged by tenure system (eg caste, migrants) pushed to lands of low quality and fragile,
eg. wetlands, steep hillsides, forest margins
• lack of land markets limits transition from lower to higher value land uses
• unresolved conflicts exacerbated by extreme events
Landscape-scale outcomes:
• overuse of erosion filters and sinks in watersheds
• weak property rights at the extensive frontier facilitates expansion in response to more productive
technology (rebound effect and Jevon’s paradox) 16

17. Tenure security and the SDGs: outcomes and processes
(distributive and procedural justice)
SDG 1 – no poverty
SDG 2 – zero hunger
SDG 5 – gender equality
SDG 10 – reduced equalities
SDG 16 – peace, justice and
strong institutions
Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure
tenure rights to land, a) with legally recognized documentation,
and b) who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and
type of tenure.
Indicator 5.a.1: a) Proportion of total agricultural population
with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex;
and (b) share of women among owners or rights-bearers of
agricultural land, by type of tenure.
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (articles 26, 27, 28, and 32) deals specifically with
land and related resources rights for Indigenous Peoples.
Hundreds of millions of $ invested in land tenure initiatives by development agencies.
AU protocol on the rights of women in Africa.
17

18. • 70% of world’s land is unregistered and administered outside statutory land systems
• 90% of land in Africa is governed under some type of customary tenure (Boone, 2017)
• Ample evidence that tenure insecurity reduces investment in land
• Little evidence that tenure insecurity limits credit
• Efforts to secure land tenure for investors may dispossess local actors whose rights are
secured by informal or customary institutions
• Efforts to harmonize customary and statutory systems may create lingering ambiguities
• Increased land transactions may lead to distress sale by resource-poor farmers and
consolidation of land ownership and influence
• Efforts to secure land tenure for women may increase costs and inequality
Links between tenure security and development
objectives – evidence
18

19. Links between tenure security and development
objectives – research generating evidence (PIM et al)
• Insecurity constraining technology adoption (issues of endogeneity, internal and external
validity)
• Security facilitating women’s empowerment (issues of endogeneity and inter-sectionality)
• Qualitative methods – historical, participatory
• Mixed quantitative / qualitative
• Systematic reviews
• Assessing tenure interventions through tenure pilots, panel data with treatments and
control (integrated into development planning) (RCTs)
19

20. Elements of One CGIAR research agenda?
1. Continue to consider tenure security within a landscape / watershed approach
2. Continue to take a nested social approach to tenure security.
3. Leverage ambitious partnerships for research and development of tenure
innovations.
4. Protect land rights of indigenous people and local communities.
5. Tap into the digital revolution, especially tenure security for marginalized groups,
respecting concerns for data sovereignty.
6. Consider multiple transformation pathways – food, sustainability gender equality,
poverty alleviation – of tenure innovations.
7. Consider opportunities to harness university expertise in statistical identification,
historical and anthropological studies.
20

22. Motivation
• Clarify the essence of governance, a widely used (and misused)
concept
• Contrast landscape governance with sector-based governance

23. Overview
1. Defining Landscape Governance
2. The problem it seeks to address
3. Landscape Governance process unpacked
4. Role of researchers
5. Future areas of research

24. What is Landscape Governance?
“the decision-making processes that seek
to create and enforce socially binding
agreements regarding people’s
interactions with one another and the
land-scape around them”
What are socially binding agreements?
- rules, norms, strategies, commitments, pledges,
- which participants agree to follow, monitor, and enforce,
- using a mix of rewards and punishments

25. What is the problem?
• Landscape governance addresses shortcomings of sectoral
approaches to governance, which tend to
• Pitch interests of different sectors (e.g. agriculture, environment) against one
another
• Favor few, big commercial interests over the interests of many citizens
• Cause many negative externalities (environmental and social)
→ Lead to ineffective piecemeal programs to improve inclusive
human wellbeing

26. The promise of Landscape Governance
• Deliver better results, especially
for the rural poor and their
• tenure security,
• economic opportunities,
• social dignity,
• and ecosystem services.
Photo credit: WageningenX's Sustainable & Inclusive Landscapes

27. Unpacking the
Landscape
Governance
Process

28. The Role of Researchers
• An active participant,
• Not necessarily just a passive
observer
• Shares and contributes to the
goals of the governance process
• Can provide evidence to inform
governance decisions
• Can facilitate social learning
about governance experience Photo credit: https://kidadl.com/

29. Examples of CGIAR Research Contributions
• ILRI researcher (Flintan et al) worked with
governmental authorities in Ethiopia and
Tanzania to promote increased land tenure
security for pastoralist communities
• CIFOR researchers (Sarmiento Barletti et al)
produced a self-assessment tool to support
learning about governance decisions in multi-
stakeholder contexts.
• IFPRI researchers (Meinzen-Dick et al)
partnered with the Foundation for Ecological
Security in India to use of decision-making
games as a tool for deliberation about
landscape governance reform.
Photo credit: Stockholm International Water Institute

30. Areas for Future Research
• The behavioral science behind the co-
production of usable science: e.g. Under
what conditions are researchers and
decision-makers more likely to engage in
productive working relationships?
• Private sector involvement in landscape
governance: How to harness
opportunities and avoiding pitfalls?
• Development and application of policy
simulations: Which intervention ideas are
likely to produce desired results?
Photo credit: CIFOR

31. Thank you
krister@colorado.edu

32. Tenure Security, Landscape Governance and Climate Change:
A Research Agenda
Nancy McCarthy, LEAD Analytics
Key Evidence Gaps:
➢HH Level
➢ Evidence on impacts of different specific dimensions of tenure security on farmers’
incentives to make resilience-building investments
➢ Secure tenure often necessary but not sufficient, identify key complimentary policies
➢Communal Level
➢ Evidence on how climate change risks and uncertainties affect performance of communal
resource management, including distributional impacts
➢ Potential role of changing management to increase resilience
➢Landscape Level
➢ Identify climate change impacts on (often complex) institutional landscape
➢ Climate change increases value of flexibility in regulatory framework, how can frameworks
be designed to increase flexibility but ensure tenure security

33. We Assume Nature & our
Environment at our Peril
Environment - the foundation for land use, agriculture, conservation &
our lives
Edmund Barrow

34. Challenges for Real Environmental Integration
1. We depend on our environment; yet we assume, abuse & discount it –it is
integral to our future on Earth. We can steward our environment & secure
tenure can support if incentives are right.
2. ILM an opportunity (integration) & a challenge (moving parts &
complexity). Make case for sustainable environmental management, & for
benefits of integrated resource use & management – not silos.
3. Research into & strengthen environmental governance & rights at IPLC
level so accountability is more local & integrated. So secure IPLC rights &
respect their science. Glasgow offers opportunity to respect & enhance
management of environment (restoration, NBS)
4. Food security more than yields & quantities – quality, environmental
sustainability, rights (& waste post-harvest, consumer)
5. Conservation & development need to talk with, not at each other – joint
research, publications, work – not silos

35. Gender,Tenure Security
and Landscape Governance
Key knowledge gaps and research needs:
a. Tenure security is key for range of development goals; but there is limited
understanding of what strengthens or weakens tenure security
b. Need to analyze which particular rights can actually be asserted by women and
men of different social and economic status
c. Need to understand gendered tenure security through an intersectional approach
d. To understand gendered impacts of tenure security; need greater diagnostic
attention to complexity of land rights regimes, measurement of land rights at the
household level, and gender roles
e. Positive pathways for change need to focus sequentially on reach, benefit and
empower dimensions.

36. Poverty, Tenure Security
and Landscape Governance
Research and Knowledge
Needs for the Global South
Phil René Oyono
December 7, 2021

37. Priority Avenue
❖ Empirical knowledge on the tenure security and poverty imbrications - for science,
policy makers and action
• Although widely highlighted and known, the links and the interdependecies between
security of tenure and poverty remain theoretical. Property rights are studied by
researchers and scholars : schools of thought have emerged, with practical
implications in people’s lives. All these schools of though magnify tenure security. But,
apart from doctrinal and epistemic discussions, it has not yet been demonstrated,
through mapping processes of concrete cases which of these schools, if translated into
policies and practices, could contribute to equitable and sustainable results for the vast
majority of the poor. Well argued and enriched with concrete cases, such research
effort would improve critical knowledge for science and offer policy and planning
options.

38. Anne Larson: Concluding Remarks
First, I want to say that I’m going to miss PIM! How many webinars with scientists from such different backgrounds go straight to a discussion of
indigenous peoples, local knowledge, the politics of influencing policy-makers and social, political and empowerment aspects of tenure?
With regard to the last question about whether devolution is more likely to support integrated landscape approaches, in addition to what Krister
said, the other issue is that we don’t yet have a lot of integrated landscape approaches to study. We are still experimenting with such approaches,
but we have a long way to go.
I wanted to give a quick summary of the take-aways that I have captured from the rich discussion here today:
Embrace complexity. There is complexity in terms of scale (household, landscape, country, globe), intersectionality, sectors, interests. Quick fixes
are likely not to work or are likely to cause problems. Like tenure. Nayna reminded us that tenure security is very complex, yet many people still
think it is solved with a land title.
The importance of partnerships. Especially deep engagement and collaboration with whomever we are working with, but particularly local
peoples. We see them as partners and not beneficiaries, or people we are trying to ‘impact’. Rather, we collaborate, together, for impact.
In all of this, we recognize inequality, power differences and power relations, and distinct goals and interests.
Among other things this means hiring social scientists! People who can understand the complexity and the problem, who can help address issues
like Krister’s point about how certain people and issues don’t have a voice.
As Einstein said (paraphrasing), if I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes solving it. We need to
define the problems in all their complexity in order to define solutions. We need to think big, beyond what we normally do and think innovation.

39. Q&A
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