LandCam: an exciting new opportunity to support land governance in Cameroon
Together with the CED and RELUFA, IIED launched LandCam in March, an ambitious new project to strengthen land and resource rights in Cameroon. Funded by the European Union, the project will pilot approaches on the ground and help citizens participate in ongoing law reform processes. To find out more, see our project page and project flyer.
Strengthening women's voices in land governance in the context of agricultural and other natural resource investment
Building on our Gender, Land and Accountability project which ended in July 2016, IIED is starting the implementation phase of its new initiative to strengthen women's voices in land governance through legal empowerment in the context of agricultural and other natural resource investment in Senegal, Ghana and Tanzania. The project includes the development and/or upscaling of approaches on the ground to strengthen rural women’s voices in local land governance processes. Implementation in country is in partnership with IED Afrique [website in French] in Senegal, TAWLA in Tanzania and NETRIGHT in Ghana.
Pathways to accountability: new insights on legal empowerment
Our three-year project to support legal empowerment in the context of agricultural investments in Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal has now come to an end. The project supported local land charters in Senegal, grassroots committees in Ghana and arrangements to facilitate access to legal assistance in Cameroon. Funded by IDRC, it was implemented in partnership with IED Afrique, LRMC, CED and IIED. During the final six months of the project, we finalised the tools that had been tested, held a writeshop in Cameroon and disseminated findings through a report, webinar and blog.
Assessing and addressing the impact of large-scale land acquisitions on ape conservation
We have also recently completed our project to assess and address the impact of large scale land acquisitions on ape conservation. Funded by the Arcus Foundation, the initiative supported two case studies in Borneo and Cameroon. In both countries, IIED's partners built an evidence base on the geographic overlap between agribusiness developments and areas of importance for ape conservation. In Borneo, Ridge to Reef and Living Landscape Alliance produced a fine-scale analysis of these issues in the Lower Kinabatangan region in eastern Sabah, while in Cameroon, CED analysed two recently allocated agribusiness concessions in or close to great ape habitats to assess the challenges of coexistence, identify key issues and draw lessons.
Ongoing policy engagement
Outside of our programmatic work, we have continued to contribute to national and international policy events. In May, Principal Researcher and Legal Tools team leader Lorenzo Cotula contributed to a regional training on the legal dimensions of agricultural investments, organised by UNECA's Land Policy Initiative with government officials from a number of African countries taking part. In June, Senior Researcher Philippine Sutz attended the LANDac International Conference 2017, where she presented work carried out by the team under the LEGEND programme, including an analytical paper on legal empowerment in agribusiness investments.
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