“Access to land, because of political difficulties or resistance by powerful vested interests, really requires new ways of collaboration between international development organisations, UN agencies, international financial institutions, donor agencies, governments and people themselves/civil society. ”
– Mr. Bruce H. Moore.

In this interview Mr. Bruce H. Moore, Coordinator of the Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty, explains to the Network why land reform is key to development, why it should be integrated in development strategies and the importance of having civil society involved at the national level.

THE POPULAR COALITION TO ERADICATE HUNGER AND POVERTY is a global consortium of civil society, intergovernmental and governmental organizations working to empower the rural poor through improved access to land and related productive resources. The work of the Coalition is based on the knowledge that secure access to land, water and other productive assets is basic to lasting solutions to hunger and poverty. It leads to greater productivity, increased family incomes and sustainable land use. To achieve these goals the Coalition aims to build strategic alliances among diverse development organizations, placing particular emphasis on the role of civil society in improving the access by the rural poor to natural resources, especially land. The Popular Coalition is the outcome of the international Conference on Hunger and Poverty convened by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Brussels in 1995. The Popular Coalition was founded on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of issues needing urgent action and the range of policies requiring attention. These include the inequitable distribution of wealth, lack of access to productive resources, insufficient participation by the poor in decisions that affect their daily lives and the need for reforms in macroeconomic policies that adversely affect the poor. The Popular Coalition aims to address the long-standing difficulties encountered in previous agrarian reform initiatives by creating the national and international conditions for policy dialogue, supporting practical community-level action, establishing knowledge networks communities, and building public commitment.

Why is secure access to land fundamental to development?

It has been taken into account in a number of the international summits of the 1990s and early 21st century. It is in the plan of action of World Food Summit (1996) and World Food Summit: five years later (WFS:fyl) and recently in the results of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). As in these conferences, the issue is not exclusively on land reform but instead on the various ways and means by which the poor can gain secure access to land and natural resources. While land reform is one method, others include long term leasing, sharecropping, protecting communal land systems and the use of land by people who have territorial and ancestral ties to and use of the land. The return of land to national and global agendas is integral to sustainable development - being the process that defines who has the right to use which resources for which purposes and for how long. And, of course, food security is one of our shared and leading concerns wherein we know that when people have secure access to land they will invest in and protected its long term productivity. After all who would invest in degraded land, such as by planting trees to restore the soil, if they could be sent away at any time by the land owner who would expropriate their investment?

Expressed more broadly, we know that poverty and food security is first and foremost a rural issue. It is generally accepted that 70% of that 800 million people who were defined as "food insecure" live in rural areas. These people are characterized, among others, as not having household assets and not having power to influence the decision which affect their livelihood options and income sources. The irony of the situation is that farmers and agriculture workers are among those who are most vulnerable and food insecure. They have neither any assurance that they will have rights to use the land in the future nor that they will work under fair conditions as agricultural laborers. For rural people who rely on agriculture, secure access to natural resources, especially land, is the most promising way to accumulate family assets- assets with which they can produce for subsistence, earn income from marketable surpluses, produce fodder for livestock, leverage credit. In this way, the poor gain wider and more secure livelihoods and the ability to begin to self-insure themselves against agricultural and economic shocks.

In this way it can be seen that land is cross-cutting to development including to food security, to sustainable use of natural resources and to conflict resolution.

Where are the main land conflicts today?

There are some that are highly visible. For example, Zimbabwe is facing a difficult period that some analysts consider to be more a political conflict than a land conflict. While this is a a period of internationally prominent conflict, it may be a wrong portrayal of land reform, for those within and outside Zimbabwe, to judge or generalize the viability of land redistribution given the wider political circumstances unfolding in the country.

There are many other cases of land conflicts, some of which are higher profile than others, such as those of the MST(Movimentos dos sem Terra) in Brazil. In the Philippines, which the Coalition views as having a relatively progressive agrarian reform program, we see a situation where even with proper legislation providing for the distribution of sugar lands the process has been highly conflictual. It has reached the level, in some cases, involving the loss of lives of beneficiaries legally entitled to move onto the land. In other regions, such as Central America, we find mounting conflict where the land reform provisions of the peace accords have not been fully implemented. In other countries, conflict in the hinterland involving the territories of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities has been long standing and in some cases increasingly difficult where extractive industries, including mining and forestry, have been granted rights to the ancestral lands of rural dwellers.

What political and social preconditions contribute to the enabling framework for starting a land reform process?

What needs to be done to improve the secure access by the rural poor has not changed substantially since the FAO World Conference of Agrarian Reform and Rural Development or WCARRD in 1979. More commonly referred to as The Peasant's Charter, we can find the elements for land reform that, while expressed in new language today, remains essentially the same.

What is important is that today there is a renewed willingness to consider this issue. In order to proceed we must remain mindful that land reform is not as much a technical problem as a political problem. The issue of people gaining access to land has to do with powerful political and economic interest that are frequently the holders of large parcels of land. Successful agrarian reform requires creating the political climate where leaders and government bureaucrats recognize that the long-term development of their economy is constrained by poverty and the unequal distribution of land. Unequal distribution is not only an issue of social justice but also of productivity, purchasing power by the poor, improving aggregate food supplies, generation of employment in post production activities, et cetera.

Are there some economic preconditions?

The conditions can vary depending on whether the land to be made available is public or private land. Private lands are obviously the most contentious. The debate surrounds the conditions and compensation arrangements in expropriating land for re-distribution. More than the issue of compensating current owners is the matter of at what cost will the land be made available to the landless and near-landless. At full market value, peasants are unlikely to acquire land or if they do they will be or are likely to become indebted to the extent that they will eventually loose the land. In some recent situations , such as is being considered in South Africa, the debate is on restituting land that was wrongly taken by particular powers that existed not so long ago. In other cases restitution may be less viable since the time period since colonial acquisition of land has been followed by land transactions that make it difficult to turn exclusively to earlier wrong doing as the basis for expropriation without compensation.

Which UN agencies are dealing with this issue? How are they coordinating their efforts?

First of all FAO, from the technical point of view, through the land tenure service. Second, organizations such as IFAD, which provides loans to governments for rural development. Third, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Fourth, the World Food Program (WFP), because it recognize that people having access to land is a way of prevention and protection against droughts and other crisis. Work is also evident in the programmes UN Habitat and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that recognizes the importance of access to resources, as does the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), were we see their view that environment and sustainable use of land has to do with the poor having property rights. Also the World Bank, the regional development banks and the European Commission are also working on these issues.

In terms of coordination , most of these agencies contributed to the formation of the Popular Coalition, which was specifically created out of the view that the issue of improving access to land requires new ways of collaboration involving international institutions, UN agencies, financial agencies, governments and people themselves/civil society.

What are the roles for civil society in a land reform process?

We believe that there are several ways to involve civil society. Land access and land management is a process that really has to grow with the active involvement of people themselves. Civil society has to be involved in terms of input in developing legislation, designing financial services, and in the discussions with governments to formulate policies that determine how land will be distributed and who will benefit and under which conditions. And, civil society needs to be involved in helping to establish the services to make land productive. In the past land reform programs stopped once people got land. But unless people get access to markets, t technology, inputs, training and credit, they will not have the ways to make their newly acquired land productive. When the land owner leaves or the land is no longer in the hands of the large plantation, alternative methods must be put into place to deliver these services. In the Coalition, we have witnessed that NGOs can be the agents to provide this role. They can work with governments who may otherwise find it to be very difficult to provide extension services in remote areas. Governments cannot be expected to respond to all of the needs of the rural poor but very often the NGOs who have been historical partners with the poor , can be the agents to teach people how to get access to credit, et cetera. As such, civil society can be a broker between government, the private sector and market and the poor to make the connections so that when poor acquire land they gain the other means to make it productive.

How can progress be achieved in countries where Governments do not recognize the role of civil society?

This is a very delicate area. One thing the Coalition is trying to do by working with FAO and other members is to establish a common political position on land to be used as a way to lead by example. A lot of the work of the Coalition is to directly support civil society groups in each country to develop networks, to adopt common positions for advocacy and to help to improve their power, their collective power, so they can influence land policies. We are speaking about participation by poor people, who may not have previously had the chance to participate in the formation of national positions. Through the Coalition, rural people can learn about strategies that have worked in other countries. This is a way to strengthen rural peoples' networks, so they are in a position to represent or defend their resource rights and to further their struggle from an informed standpoint. At the same time, the Coalition is trying to engage support from international donors who can also do international advocacy with their member governments.

Why is special consideration required for women and indigenous people in land reform?

We know that agriculture is being increasingly feminized and also that nowadays men have moved to the cities in search of work leaving women as the main household providers. The issue is not on the role of women, their roles are long established, but it is an issue of the power of and for women. In this sense there has been some progress in that the Coalition, as well as the SARD initiative, successfully lobbied in the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg for the free and uninhibited right of women to own, to acquire and to inherit land. In many cultures when women become widowed or divorced they loose their access to land. The challenge, beyond the Johannesburg outcome, will remain to work in solidarity so that women not only have the right to own land but that the right is put into practice. While the Summit outcome states explicitly that women have the legal right to own and inherit land, it is well known that women are often denied this right because of cultural traditions. In these cases women are being denied the right to support themselves and their children. Land reform most often focuses on land as an economic resource, as a source of food security and livelihood. However, for indigenous peoples the question is very different. Here land has to do with the ancestral domain or territory. It is an issue that includes culture and identity. There is strong interest in the Coalition to discovery where there may be complementary efforts between indigenous peoples and the other civil society partners of the Coalition.

What related measures have to go along with the laws to make land reform effective?

The issue of access to land has to do with access to the means necessary to make land productive. The history of previous agrarian reform started out to be quite promising, many people got land in the 60s and 70s but when they did not get access to markets, credit, technologies and training they soon found themselves indebted and subsequently having to sell their land - with it often reverting to the prior landed elites. Put simply, effective land reform requires the means to make land productive.

How can the UN System Network on Rural Development and Food Security work with Popular Coalition to improve the land rights of the poor?

The Coalition has several things in common with the UN System Network on Rural Development and Food Security such as the stakeholder approach. In support of the land question there are several things we are doing. We have developed a knowledge network which documents and shares lessons that have been learned in other countries ranging from technical and political factors including legislation and regulatory issues, to communal property and traditional practices. Second, we strive to strengthen networks at the country level. We support the coming together of different interests from civil society, such as farmers, peasant movements and women so they can develop a common strategy for negotiating with governments for their access to land. Third, we operate what we call the Community Empowerment Fund which supports innovative approaches to try to find new ways to address land questions and problems. Fourth, we work with international agencies, donors and governments to assess and propose how to improve existing methodologies. For instance with FAO we are currently looking at methods to resolve land conflicts. With the World Bank we are examining the roles and limitations of market forces for landless and near-landless people in gaining access to land.

We aim to bring to the attention of the international agencies the implications of different approaches as seen through the experiences of rural peoples organizations. Finally, we promote and support LAND partnerships, meaning Land Alliances for National Development, which if put in a simple way is to establish within countries an advisory body that has responsibility to advise on any and all interventions regarding the planning or implementation land policies and the means for improving land access. LAND partnerships involve the appropriate authorities of the national governments, the appropriate representatives of rural people, and the donor agencies, both bilateral and international. In this structure for dialogue, there will be the people who affect and are affected by land policies. Those who are or will be affected by land policies will have a voice in identifying the main land policy issues and seek a way forward that is in the common interest.

Can the Popular Coalition and the Thematic Groups Collaborate at the Country Level?

Yes. We see the Thematic Groups as an important vehicle for national development. Within the framework of land issues we would hope to identify practical country level actions that can be jointly planned and implemented. We invite the thematic groups to contact us where the above information suggests areas where they perceive possibilities for mutual benefit.

For further information contact Mr Bruce H. Moore at: b.moore@ifad.org

Click here to read "A Common Platform on Access to Land", the document presented at WSSD. If you need hard copy of the document contact b.moore@ifad.org or this secretariat at rdfs-net@fao.org.

Click here to read "Land Alliances for National Development".