Key messages

Secure tenure increases the positive impacts of LDN initiatives for people and the planet.

Addressing tenure in LDN initiatives begins with the assessment of local needs and conditions.

Meaningful and inclusive consultation and participation is essential to ensure that legitimate tenure rights are not overlooked in LDN initiatives.

Gender-responsive approaches can address underlying inequalities in control and access to land resources and are needed for realizing transformative change.

Nine pathways to increase tenure security in LDN initiaitives:

Pathway 1: Enhancing policy and legal frameworks – focuses on aligning the policy, legal and organizational frameworks for the governance of tenure at national and local level to promote an integrated and sustainable approach to LDN.

Pathway 2: Establishing targeted policy coordination mechanisms – addresses sectoral fragmentation and fosters coordination, information sharing, and monitoring in LDN initiatives, by integrating the VGGT principles in an inclusive manner.

Pathway 3: Securing women’s tenure rights and access to land and natural resources – addresses existing gender roles and norms, policies and administrative systems which inhibit women’s tenure rights and access to natural resources through understanding and responding to the differentiated needs and roles of women and men.

Pathway 4: Setting up accessible and transparent grievance and dispute resolution mechanisms – defines ways to address potential complaints and disputes over land that may arise through LDN initiatives, by setting up mechanisms that are transparent, accessible by all stakeholders, and aligned with internationally recognized human rights.

Pathway 5: Designing and implementing tenure-responsive and participatory integrated land use planning – highlights ways in which legitimate tenure rights can be recognized, respected and safeguarded against threats and infringements through integrated land use planning to more effectively promote sustainable land management practices which sustain land resources for the future.

Pathway 6: Supporting LDN through land administration tools – focuses particularly on the use of land consolidation and land banking to address land fragmentation, land abandonment and land access problems that lead to land degradation.

Pathway 7: Recognizing and documenting legitimate tenure rights on public lands – identifies ways to ensure the continued use of public lands by legitimate rights holders in a sustainable manner, for their livelihood activities such as agriculture, grazing and forestry, among others.

Pathway 8: Recognizing and documenting tenure rights for the sustainable management of commons – focuses on how to strengthen the responsible governance of commons to improve land and natural resource management by the recognition of institutions that govern them and the demarcation of their boundaries.

Pathway 9: Allocating and strengthening rights and duties on private land – focuses on tailoring approaches to the different capacities of private landowners who represent a diverse group of actors in terms of the size of landholdings, the type of tenure rights considered (owner or lessee rights), and the type of actor (natural or legal persons).