Land and forest tenure support project benefiting local communities in Mali

Project Overview

The project’s main objective is to accelerate the implementation of innovative measures contained in the new land policy, for decentralised and peaceful management of natural resources. The project specifically aims to:  

1. Strengthen village land commissions’ operability.

2. Demonstrate how collective rights can be recognised and implemented in a pilot intercommunal forest, and through agreements between communities on social and environmental commitments.

3. Host a strategic dialogue space on the implementation of the agricultural tenure policy and law.

The project will also address the urgent need to resolve longstanding conflict over land by pioneering, testing, and demonstrating scalable approaches and tools that rural municipalities and local communities can use to resolve conflicts among themselves and with other actors. It will set the stage for scaling the success of village land commissions (COFO) across the country by supporting and learning from the experiences of COFO in the south. In later stages, the project’s lessons learnt could be applied to areas where conflict is more prevalent and widespread, particularly in the north of Mali. Finally, the project will build trusting and collaborative relationships between communities, the government, civil society, and the private sector that show the way forward in a post-conflict environment.