“Nature-based” solutions to climate change require the acquisition of large swaths of land for reforestation, afforestation, conservation and renewable energy sources. However, corruption in the land sector is already widespread and this additional demand for land may aggravate pre-existing corruption risks, as well as causing new ones.
Green energy (and/or renewable energy) requires large areas of land to operate, often more so than energy generated from fossil fuels. The acquisition of land comes with accompanying corruption risks which can lead to challenges such as land grabbing and illegal displacement of communities. To help mitigate corruption risks and their consequences, strong regulatory oversight and rigorous licensing requirements are needed, as well as transparency and community-based approaches to ownership of green energy projects.
Corruption in land governance is commonly defined as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain while carrying out the functions of land administration and land management. When land investors target countries with weak governance, the risk of corruption is high. Likewise, corruption is more likely to occur when local elites are able to manipulate their country’s land governance systems for their own benefit
Presenta ocho "temas esenciales para la acción empresarial" centrados en la tierra, y las recomendaciones correspondientes, que las empresas líderes pueden integrar en sus esfuerzos de sostenibilidad existentes.
In a context of conflict affecting northern Cabo Delgado, the government approved the request for allocation of 12,000 hectares of land located in Palma in favour of the Cabo Delgado Economic Development Promotion Centre (CPD), an unknown public entity created in May 2021 and whose attributions and competences are confused with the mandate of the Integrated Development Agency of the North (ADIN). The approval of the provisional DUAT in favour of the CPD was not preceded by a public consultation with affected communities, as required by land legislation.
This publication is based on the “Study on Fraud in Land Administration Systems” presented at the Twelfth Session of the Working Party on Land Administration in 2021. It is an update to the 2011 “Study on the Challenges of Fraud to Land Administration Institutions" (ECE/HBP/165). It analyses the current state of play and best practices in addressing fraud in land administration systems in the ECE region.
The Sustainable Development Goal 15 “Life on land” commits world leaders to work together to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) for safeguarding life on land. One of the objectives that comprise LDN is to reinforce responsible governance of land tenure. Land rights are a key factor for achieving LDN. This publication by the UNCCD CSO Panel aims to analyze and highlight the linkages between land rights and land degradation with the objective of offering policy recommendations to enhance land rights for both the prevention of land degradation and the recovery of degraded lands.
This policy brief presents strengths and weaknesses of state and traditional land justice institutions in relation to access, costs and speed in concluding the process of resolving land cases. In the current legal and institutional framework, strengthening of the customary justice system would bring benefits. With 93% of land in the Northern and Eastern regions under customary tenure, the most important institution is the clan, yet clan rulings are most often ignored by a parallel state system.
Public lands accounted for 80% of the country area until a decade ago. As Cambodia emerged from three decades of civil war and internal strife, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has granted more than 10% of the country area or 50% of the cultivatable land as large scale “Economic Land Concessions” (ELCs) to private companies, mostly foreign owned, in a mostly rigged process. Land disputes have become a permanent fixture in the press and a hot issue on human rights reports.
The validity of a title deed, or whether a property owner purchased in good faith, has recently been questioned and rejected by the land commission, a body under the auspices of the office of the presidency. In 2015 for over two weeks, both residents ‘abasangwa’ and repatriates ‘abahungutse’, stood together to oppose the Burundi land commission: the Commission Nationale Terres et autres Biens (CNTB, National Commission of land and other Assets), who are revisiting land restitution cases it had previously settled.
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