ResourcesIssue Briefs

Landesa’s Issue Briefs provide a closer look at how land rights can improve lives and have a positive impact on the world’s most persistent challenges.

Although existing evidence points to meaningful linkages between land tenure and climate change, findings can fail to critically consider whose land tenure security, decisions, and practices contribute to key climate change outcomes, and how. Enhanced understanding of the complex and critical connections between women’s land tenure security and climate can advance our knowledge of the investments and planning needed to mitigate climate change and achieve more resilient futures.

In 2019 the world lost 46,000 square miles of forest every six seconds. The destruction of these forests – which shelter a kaleidoscope of plant and animal species, offer live­lihoods for indigenous and local communities, and store vast amounts of carbon necessary to mitigate climate change – is preventable. With strong land rights, women and men across the globe can slow down deforestation and contribute to restoring forests.

Enshrining land governance and land tenure security within policy frameworks is essential to providing a foundation to support women and men smallholder farmers, and indigenous and local communities across the Global South sustainably manage their lands and better adapt to the effects of climate change. Doing so is also critical for governments to effectively manage climate displacement to prevent further poverty, inequality, conflict and land degradation.

This issue brief describes the best practices to overcome barriers against securing women’s rights to land to unlock the socioeconomic benefits gained when rural women have secure rights to the land they farm and build a home upon to support themselves and their families.

An overview of commercial land acquisitions around the world outlining the historical context, facts, misconceptions, risks, benefits, recommendations for investors, and resources for further reading.

This issue brief establishes the link between improved land rights, particularly for women, and subsequent benefits in improved household food security and nutrition. When farmers, especially women, have more control over assets like land, they are better equipped to grow and purchase nutritious food for their families.