Secure land access, secure environment:
Lessons from landless youth receiving land rights in exchange for restoring degraded natural resources in the World Bank-financed Ethiopia Sustainable Land Management Project II (SLMP 2)
The intersection of land rights, management, value, and use forms the key development issue for millions of rural Ethiopians facing climate insecurity, water insecurity, food insecurity, and livelihood insecurity – especially the youth, who face severe challenges of landlessness and joblessness.
In most SLMP-2 watersheds, natural and economic wealth is being built by improving land rights among landless youth. An innovative approach to restoring land and improving land tenure security has been proven in Oromia, Amhara, Southern Nations, Tigray and BenishangulGumuz and is ready for further scaling up. Legal landholding certificates and extension support are given to landless youth in exchange for their restoring degraded communal lands. The project is reducing youth unemployment, and incentivizing good land stewardship among the next generation of community leaders, while boosting the climate resilience and carbon storagepotential of production landscapes by bringing land back into production.
So far, as of December 2016, over 740 youth groups with more than 15,000 members (40 percent female) have organized for tenure rights to over 2,850 hectares, receiving group landholding certificate or other legal documentation.
But much more is planned.It would be feasible to reach 100,000 landless youth given sufficient financing for the next generation of financing for resilient landscapes and livelihoods to complement the $100m of IDA tentatively planned for approval before July 2018.
Local ownership and demand:The land registration and certification intervention helps to increase landholders’ tenure security and facilitates rural land rental transaction in a better way. Moreover,the positive impact is supported by beneficiaries’ views of high turnout during field adjudication of land rights and communities’ willingness to encourage youth groups through monitoring their performance to better conserve and manage the allocated degraded communal lands to them.
Challenge addressed: Youthstend to have limited access to agricultural land because of a high degree of land scarcity as one goes from the most lowland to most highland regions. The distribution of landholding is disproportionate and relatively biased against women and youth in all 135 major watershedssupported by SLMP-2. Tenure security for the youth is about ensuring that there are appropriate and affordable tenure options available. SLMP is supporting the process of adjudicating, surveying, mapping, registration and issuanceof landholding certificates to individual and communal lands.
The federal and regional land laws state that every citizen from 18 years of age who wants to make a living from agriculture should be accorded free access to land. However, its practicality is challenged due to scarcity of land due to ever growing rural population and limited employment options. Despite positive achievements of allocating degraded communal land to youth groups, the increase in youth landlessness and unemployment remains a pressing challenge in rural Ethiopia in the years to come. Without security of tenure, households are significantly impaired in their ability to secure sufficient food and sustainable rural livelihoods.
The significance of the social, economic and ecological benefits are difficult to over-state. The activity increases livelihood opportunities, empowers youths who have few other options but to migrate, and strengthens the basis for more citizen engagement and participation in local development and natural resource governance. Besides, functional land tenure systems are crucial to diversify and balance competing land uses in rural landscapes and are therefore a key to climate resilientdevelopment.