African countries have committed to restoring 113 million hectares of degraded lands and forests. And although Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is also expected to reduce rural poverty and enhance food security, one big question remains – where will restoration take place? With ambitious goals to meet, FLR must look beyond government or private lands, and include those occupied and used by communities. These lands, however, fall under complex tenure regimes, often legally owned by the state but also under customary systems. Customary systems often go unrecognized, and tenure rights may be insecure. Experience tells us this insecurity is a central obstacle to scaling up restoration. This means that to meet Africa’s restoration goals, addressing community related tenure in security is crucial (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. A simplified view of expected results and summary questions on the relationship between tenure security and FLR adoption.
Although clear, secure tenure is a must, it is also not enough to guarantee widespread investment in restoration. In Africa – where 78% of land is estimated to be under customary regimes – successful FLR also requires solutions that meet local needs.
Weak governance, together with insecure tenure, disincentivizes people from investing in forests and land – resulting in a vicious cycle of degradation, increased poverty and declining food security. One way to break this cycle is for the state to recognize community tenure systems and work with them to develop rules and investments that make sense for communities. This means understanding how those systems work, and when and how their capacity to provide security is undermined; engaging governing bodies at all levels, to create the right conditions for community tenure regimes to succeed; and finding tools to foster tenure security.
The study
‘Securing tenure, forests and livelihoods’ is a participatory action-research project designed to develop tools to enable FLR programme managers, practitioners and policymakers to have a better understanding of how community tenure systems operate, as well as when, how and for whom they deliver tenure security. Funded by BMZ, under its initiative to assist African countries in meeting their restoration goals, the project takes a change oriented approach, engaging with multiple levels of governance and sectors of society to encourage tenure reforms that will enable community tenure systems to provide security in an inclusive and equitable way. The project will compare community tenure systems in Cameroon and Madagascar, two countries investing in both tenure reform and FLR.
Figure 2 Project site map
What is forest landscape restoration (FLR)?
What is forest landscape restoration (FLR)? FLR is an adaptive process that brings people (including women, men, youth, local and indigenous communities) together to identify, negotiate and implement practices that restore and enhance ecological and social functionality of forest landscapes that have been deforested or degraded. This process implies achieving an agreed balance of ecological, social, cultural and economic benefits of forest landscapes, taking into consideration different land uses and governance arrangements (formal and informal).
Source: elaborated by the project team based on IUCN, WWF and the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration
What is tenure security?
The ability of an individual to appropriate resources on a continuous basis, free from imposition, dispute, or appropriation from outside sources, as well as the ability to claim returns from investment in the resource
(Migot-Adholla et al. 1991)
Landholders’ confidence that their rights will be upheld by society
(Robinson et al. 2017, 4)
To go from ‘security’ to ‘securing the validity of tenure rights’ is to express the idea that security is not a stable state but the result of a whole series of factors to be taken into consideration on a case by case basis
(Le Roy et al, 1996: 21)
Gender, tenure, FLR and food security
Women’s access to land under community tenure and their ability to participate in community-level decisions vary in both Cameroon and Madagascar. Generally, though, women are less likely to inherit land, or are more likely to inherit less land, than their male relatives. In some cases, they may lose access to land if they get divorced or their husband dies. Yet women in both countries play a key role in household economies, often farm their own parcels, and collect forest products like fuelwood, fruits and nuts. Women’s secure access to land and resources is critical to meet basic household needs. One Cameroon study argues that women’s land rights affect the country’s ability to guarantee its population’s food security. This flags that both customary rights reforms and FLR projects need to take gender into account.
Acacia plantation near the village of Moussa, Yangambi – DRC. Photo by Axel Fassio/CIFOR-ICRAF
Gender is central to the design of this project. It takes a gender-responsive approach to tenure and FLR stakeholder analysis through systematically integrating gender into all research and action activities. We use a gender lens to analyze how tenure rights play out for different actor groups, what prevents different groups of people from adopting FLR, and how it relates to food security.
This project aims to empower women, supporting them to tackle gendered barriers to engagement in FLR, as well as through working together on action plans to improve women’s tenure security and participation in FLR in ways that meet food security needs.
