Securing Registered Title to our Lands
Ongoing
From:
01/04/2022
To:
31/03/2025
Budget:
$1,500,000
Proponents:
Community Land Action Now! (CLAN)
Stakeholders:
An estimated 940,000 people, men, women and children who comprise the members of 50 project partner communities and include representation of pastoralist communities (on trust lands and group ranches)
forest hunter-gatherer communities
settled communities
Indirectly the project could benefit 10 million pastoralists and agro-pastoralists seeking collective title
160,000 forest peoples who self-identify as Indigenous, and 50,000 members of fisher-farming communities
Around half of Kenya’s land area is thought to be community land. Through colonization, rights over communal land were subordinated to the interests of state and private rights. The process of land seizure, sub-division and selling continued in the post-colonial era, however in 2010 Kenya’s new constitution recognized ‘community land’ as a new classification equivalent to freehold. A process for registering this land was then laid down in the Community Land Act (CLA) of 2016.
The majority of the project’s partner communities live in arid regions and their traditional nomadic pastoralist and agro-pastoralist livelihoods are adapted to the unpredictability of this harsh environment. However, land use transitions for conservation, mining, energy projects and defense purposes have reduced access to land. These changing land use patterns and pressures have undermined traditional systems for sharing resources between communities, such as allowing transit and temporary grazing rights, resulting in increased competition and conflicts between communities. On-going conflicts have resulted in degradation of resources, and are perpetuated because communities lack access to information concerning their rights. Practical and progressive approaches are also lacking globally, and there is a lack of empowerment and negotiations with land-dependent communities.
To read a brief overview of Kenya, click here.
Project Overview
CLAN is a communal land network comprising a network of more than 40 community leaders and community-based organizations. CLAN is the first of its kind in Kenya being the only network of community leaders (as opposed to a network of NGOs and INGOs) and thus is uniquely placed to bring grassroots voices to county and national policy and law-making levels.
The project’s partner communities are located in 17 of Kenya’s 47 counties, representing the majority which have significant areas of community land holdings and are representative of the full range of ecological zones. Thus the project aims to be relevant to the widest number of communities and county governments, and to have greater impact at national level.
By assisting communities to formalize their rights, the project will contribute to conditions that allow for more sustainable land management, including security of tenure, stronger plans and institutions of land governance, negotiation of land-sharing agreements and mediation of conflicts between communities. The project will also contribute to Kenya’s climate change efforts. By improving tenure security communities will be able to invest in more sustainable land management practices, reducing soil degradation and forest loss, while increasing the resilience of communities to extreme weather events and long-term change. The project is also committed to promotion of gender equality through its constitution, including in its decision making bodies.
Goal:
The project aims to support Indigenous Peoples and local communities to formally register their community lands. The project will support IPLCs in realizing and maintaining their rights to land and forests through raising awareness, supporting communities to map their lands, and increasing community capacity to register their lands; the project will also strengthen the capacity of community institutions to effectively govern their lands.
Objectives:
- Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities have secure rights and governance of natural resources over their community lands in Kenya
- Successful pilots and a supportive enabling environment exist to encourage the acceleration of titling of community lands in Kenya
- The project will also address capacity building and awareness raising for government officials and private sector decision makers who play a key role in the titling process, through briefings, training and providing expert advice.
Actions:
- Providing support to establish legitimate tenure rights in areas where traditional community rights are not formally recognized
- Awareness raising and Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)
- Recruit paralegals and build capacity
- Support Assessment of Development Results (ADR) implementation
- Community assembly, Community Land Development and Management Committees (CLDMC) selection
- Community Land Act application process, community registration land boundary and land zoning defined
- Formal adjudication and dispute resolution process
- Title entered in community land register
Location of partner communities within Kenya
Expected Results:
- Communities knowledge and capacity to secure their lands rights increased.
- Communities register under the Community Land Act and formally obtain their community land title,
- Community governance of communal lands is strengthened.
- Partnerships between communities and Government Agencies or private investors are piloted and lessons learned shared.
Impact:
The impact of this project includes that 50 communities will register and progress with land titling under the Community Land Act. The communities include pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, hunter-gatherers and settled communities in diverse geographic and ecological areas and a wealth of case studies and learning opportunities will be created. Pilot collaborative engagements between communities and Government Agencies and/or the private sector will demonstrate how progress can be made to resolve some existing difficulties on ancestral lands.
Isaac Tobiko
CLAN Steering Committee Chair
thechair@communityland-now.org
Links
CLAN
