Land and Resource Rights
WRI’s Land and Resource Rights project aims to ensure that rural people and the urban poor have secure rights over their land and natural resources.
Rural people in developing countries are losing their land and natural resources because of insecure property rights, with negative effects on livelihoods, well-being, local environments, and ecosystem services. Land acquisitions by governments and companies that fail to meet minimum national or international standards contribute to this insecurity. Furthermore, rural people are increasingly migrating to ever expanding cities, contributing to informal settlements vulnerable to climate change and other environmental hazards.
WRI’s Land and Resource Rights (LRR) project aims to ensure secure property rights for rural people and the urban poor. Operating across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, our work focuses on connections between land and equitable access to forests, food, and water. We work with governments, civil society organizations, development agencies, and other actors to strengthen land, resource, and property rights as a path to poverty reduction, sustainable development, and environmental management.
Learn more about our work; view our brochure (PDF).
Photo Credit: CIAT/Flickr.
Focus on Land in Africa (FoLA), is an educational resource for development practitioners and policy makers that explores how land and natural resource rights affect, and are affected by, development in Africa. Through raising awareness of these issues, FOLA aims to elevate land and natural resource rights as an urgent priority for development in Africa.
While never offering a blueprint, FOLA shares a diversity of insights, experiences, and lessons from countries across the continent, highlighting the critical role of property rights in local livelihoods and development.
It examines the impact of land and natural resource rights on agriculture, the environment, conflict, urban poverty, women's empowerment, and other development issues. It provides in-depth analysis of a variety of property rights issues, along with exploring how those issues are being addressed in different countries and contexts.
FOLA is a joint initiative of the WRI and Landesa.