Landac International Conference on Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development

Book of Abstracts

LANDac International Conference on Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development
8 – 10 July, 2015

Utrecht, The Netherlands

Contents

Theme: Local governance and stakeholder participation 7

Session: Where are the real stakeholders? How to promote policy debate in ‘recipient’ countries that include farmers’ organizations 7

Session: Grounded analytical approaches to stakeholder interaction in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa (part one) 9

Session: Grounded analytical approaches to stakeholder interaction in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa (part two) 13

Session: Regulating land acquisition – what is the role of local governance? 16

Session: Community voices and land governance 23

Theme: Urban issues 28

Session: Peri-urban land commodification and commercialization, livelihoods, dispossession / resettlement 28

Session: Land conversion and peri-urban sprawl, land tenure, local governance 30

Theme: Food security 32

Session: Land governance and food security 32

Theme: Public land policies 37

Session: Comparison of public land policies and instruments - Instrument-oriented 37

Session: Comparison of public land policies and instruments - System-oriented 41

Theme: Private sector 44

Session: Beyond plantations - Exploring the viability of alternative agriculture business models 44

Session: Understanding the role of finance in farmland acquisitions 50

Session: Responsible business and land – bridging the gap between corporate investment in land and the protection of local land-related livelihoods 53

Session: The role of guidelines and principles in improving land governance 55

Session: Land governance and the landscape approach 59

Theme: Land tools 61

Session: Innovative land tools 61

Session: Land tools – impact assessment 65

Session: Legal and socio-legal perspectives in land governance 69

74

Theme: Conflict-related displacement 74

Session: Conflict-related displacement: challenges to land governance 75

Theme: Gender 78

Session: Issues in gender and land 78

Session: Gender and commercial land investments 81

Theme: Sustainability of oil palm production in Latin America and Asia 84

Session: Oil palm expansion in Latin America – linking development pathways to socio-environmental impacts 84

Session: Towards sustainability of various oil palm production models in Indonesia - a need for integrated and participatory land use planning, socio-economic issues 88

Session: Towards sustainability of various oil palm production models in Indonesia – a need for integrated and participatory land use planning, bio-physical issues 90

Theme: Environmental issues 91

Session: Grabbing nature to save it – appropriating land for nature conservation 91

Dual Session: Governing the commons and forest governance 94

Session: Climate change adaptation intervention, land use and the production of exclusion 96

Theme: Large-scale infrastructure; Mining 99

Session: Large scale infrastructure development projects – how to make these investments more beneficial for all? 99

Session Land Governance in the artisanal and small scale mining sector (part one) 101

Session: Land governance in the artisanal and small scale mining sector (part two) 104

Theme: Land governance and local outcomes 106

Session: Land governance and local outcomes 106

Theme: Jatropha 109

Session: Can Jatropha have a second chance? Insights based on past experiences 109

Session: Where are the real stakeholders? How to promote policy debate in ‘recipient’ countries that include farmers’ organizations 5

Session: Grounded analytical approaches to stakeholder interaction in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa (part one) 7

Session: Grounded analytical approaches to stakeholder interaction in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa (part two) 11

Session: Regulating land acquisition – what is the role of local governance? 14

Session: Community voices and land governance 21

Theme: Urban issues 26

Session: Peri-urban land commodification and commercialization, livelihoods, dispossession / resettlement 26

Session: Land conversion and peri-urban sprawl, land tenure, local governance 28

Theme: Food security 30

Session: Land governance and food security 30

Theme: Public land policies 35

Session: Comparison of public land policies and instruments - Instrument-oriented 35

Session: Comparison of public land policies and instruments - System-oriented 39

Theme: Private sector 42

Session: Beyond plantations - Exploring the viability of alternative agriculture business models 42

Session: Understanding the role of finance in farmland acquisitions 48

Session: Responsible business and land – bridging the gap between corporate investment in land and the protection of local land-related livelihoods 50

Session: The role of guidelines and principles in improving land governance 53

Session: Land governance and the landscape approach 57

Theme: Land tools 59

Session: Innovative land tools 59

Session: Land tools – impact assessment 63

Session: Legal and socio-legal perspectives in land governance 67

72

Theme: Conflict-related displacement 72

Session: Conflict-related displacement: challenges to land governance 72

Theme: Gender 76

Session: Issues in gender and land 76

Session: Gender and commercial land investments 79

Theme: Sustainability of oil palm production in Latin America and Asia 82

Session: Oil palm expansion in Latin America – linking development pathways to socio-environmental impacts 82

Session: Towards sustainability of various oil palm production models in Indonesia - a need for integrated and participatory land use planning, socio-economic issues 86

Session: Towards sustainability of various oil palm production models in Indonesia – a need for integrated and participatory land use planning, bio-physical issues 87

Theme: Environmental issues 89

Session: Grabbing nature to save it – appropriating land for nature conservation 89

Dual Session: Governing the commons and forest governance 91

Session: Climate change adaptation intervention, land use and the production of exclusion 94

Theme: Large-scale infrastructure; Mining 96

Session: Large scale infrastructure development projects – how to make these investments more beneficial for all? 96

Session Land Governance in the artisanal and small scale mining sector (part one) 99

Session: Land governance in the artisanal and small scale mining sector (part two) 102

Theme: Land governance and local outcomes 103

Session: Land governance and local outcomes 103

Theme: Jatropha 107

Session: Can Jatropha have a second chance? Insights based on past experiences 107

Key note speakers
Jun Borras

Saturnino ‘Jun’ M. Borras Jr. is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS). He is a political activist and academic who has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. Borras was part of the core organising team that established the international peasant movement La Via Compesina and has written extensively on land issues and agrarian movements. Jun is also Adjunct Professor, COHD at China Agricultural University, Beijing; a Fellow at the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Coordinator for Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS).

Pádraig Carmody

Pádraig Carmody lectures in Development Geography at Trinity College Dublin, from which he holds both a B.A. in Geography and History and M.Sc in Geography. He completed his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Minnesota in 1998. Subsequently he taught at the University of Vermont, Dublin City University and St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. He also worked as a policy and research analyst for the Combat Poverty Agency in 2002-3. His research centres on the political economy of globalization in Africa. He is editor-in-chief of Geoforum.

Maria Anne van Dijk

Maria Anne van Dijk is Head Environmental Social, Ethical Risk and Policy at ABN AMRO Bank. As a member of the Management Team Sustainable Development, she is responsible for policy development and risk management in areas of social and environmental issues. Maria Anna has over 10 years of experience working on sustainable development.

Jan van de Haar

Jan is General director of Solagrow PLC, Ethiopia. Solagrow focuses on the development of full crop rotation systems (of potato, barley, onion, linseed, and cabbage) with farmer’s Producer Groups, starting from varieties, basic seeds, crop production and up to marketing in the highlands of Ethiopia. Jan has a background in Plant Pathology at Wageningen University.

Harold Liversage

Mr. Harold Liversage is a Land Tenure Adviser for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). He has 18 years of experience working in land rights advocacy and land policy formulation and implementation, mainly in Eastern and Southern Africa. He worked at a land rights NGO and subsequently as the Land Reform Pilot Programme Coordinator for the Department of Land Affairs in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has also worked as a Land Tenure Adviser for the Zambézia Agricultural Development Programme in Zambézia, Mozambique as well as a Land Policy Adviser for the Ministry of Lands and Environment in Rwanda.

Tony Liwang

Dr. Tony Liwang is a Board member of the Indonesian Oil Palm Community (MAKSI). He started his career in PT SMART Tbk, as a Division Head, in 1999 to establish SMART Research Institute (SMARTRI) and the Dami Mas oil palm seed garden.  In 2007 he also established the Plant Production and Biotechnology Division of PT SMART Tbk. to develop a new era of research in tissue culture and biotechnology in oil palm and Jatropha sp. He received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science from Agricultural Engineering and Physics, Wageningen Agricultural University, the Netherlands.  And his Doctorate in Management and Business from Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia. He joins  Indonesian Government delegations to several countries and occasions to support the Green Campaign for Sustainable Palm Oil. Besides doing research and promoting sustainable palm oil, in the last decade, he has published a book and over 90 papers in national and international journals, seminars and conferences.

Esther Obaikol

Ms. Esther Obaikol is a lawyer with a Masters degree in management. She has eighteen years of experience in legal and social research in environment and land. She has held several research positions at the Faculty of Law at Makerere University, Uganda. Esther has worked on development issues for the last 20 years with broad experience in policy development, legislative drafting, developing institutional frameworks, and training and sensitization on land and natural resources. In 2008 Esther started up a women’s land rights movement that is spreading to the entire country. Since 2004 she has worked on law review and policy development within the land and natural resources sectors in Uganda. She worked as the Executive Director of Uganda Land Alliance. Esther worked as the Country Coordinator for the World Bank’s Land Governance Assessment Framework 2012 - 2014. She is currently coordinating the Global Land Indicators’ Initiative at the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN). Esther is part of the Uganda country team working to improve the governance frameworks around land and agricultural investments.

Robin Palmer

Robin Palmer is a Global Land Rights Policy Specialist, with a particular focus on Southern and Eastern Africa and South-East Asia. He had 20 years’ experience with Oxfam GB in a range of advisory, management and communications posts, with a focus on land rights, gender, HIV and AIDS, livelihoods and food security, and 15 years’ experience as an academic, predominantly in Southern Africa, with a focus on agrarian history. Robin has published extensively on land rights and agrarian issues as a development worker, as an academic and as a Mokoro consultant. He has worked on governance issues, giving advice and programme and advocacy support to civil society organisations, governments and donors on global land rights issues, including women's land rights and legal issues, principally in Africa and South-East Asia. He has undertaken consultancy work on land rights issues for DFID, Danida, the EU, the Legal Resources Centre of South Africa and Oxfam. He is currently working on the impacts of global land grabbing and continues to manage the prestigious Land Rights in Africa website (housed by Oxfam from 2000-12) which was moved to Mokoro in May 2012).

Julian Quan

Julian is currently team leader of the DfID (UK government) land governance advisory and support programme (LEGEND). Dr. Quan has served with the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich for over twenty years. During this time he has worked as a development researcher and practitioner, undertaking a wide range of consultancy and applied research assignments for a variety of international clients, including the African Union, DFID, the European Union, FAO, IIED, SIDA, UNDP, UN Habitat, the World Bank and a number of developing country governments. Dr Quan's work has focused on: land tenure, land rights and land policy; rural territorial development; rural institutions, policy and governance; local economic development; climate change adaptation and mitigation; rural livelihoods, community based natural resource management, development of smallholder agriculture, and rural extension in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and also in Latin America.

Alda Salomão

Alda is an environmental lawyer from Mozambique with a Masters in Environmental Law from the American University, and is a LANDac PhD Candidate at the Utrecht University International Development Studies Group. After working as a lawyer at the Ministry for Coordination of Environmental Affairs in Mozambique from 1995, she worked, from 2000 to 2002, as a project coordinator at the World Resources Institute’s Institutions and Governance Program, in Washington DC. In November 2002 Alda founded the Center for Environmental Research and Advocacy – Centro Terra Viva (CTV) in Maputo, where she initially served as Executive Director and Coordinator of CTV Environmental Law and Policy Research Program. Currently Alda is CTV General Director and Senior Legal Advisor. She represents CTV in several platforms and boards, including the Technical Committee of the National Consultation Forum on Land, the Steering Committee of the Community Land Fund, the Steering Committee of the Civil Society Platform for Extractive Industries, and the National ITIE Coordination Committee. Alda has authored and co-authored several articles on participatory land and natural resources governance.