Land Rights for Net Zero
Investors in land-based carbon projects wield more power than local communities. To correct this imbalance, policymakers must prioritise communities’ land rights and inclusivity to shape interventions to their benefit.
Current efforts to achieve climate neutrality often neglect the land rights of local populations and Indigenous Peoples. Driven by expanding carbon markets, land-based carbon projects have already triggered human rights violations. Policymakers must prioritise inclusivity to ensure communities living on the land benefit from these interventions.
Changes in land use are essential to current climate mitigation efforts. Achieving net zero by 2050 necessitates reducing landuse emissions, principally by decreasing or halting deforestation and decreasing industrial livestock farming. Further, climate models demonstrate the need to sequester CO₂, primarily through afforestation, reforestation and rewetting peatlands.
Land-based projects that reduce, remove or avoid carbon emissions do not yet systematically acknowledge Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ land rights. The failure to acknowledge land rights in land-based carbon projects can have serious social consequences, such as displacement of local communities, deterioration of women’s land rights or heightened violent conflicts over land within and between communities. In one such case, the Ogiek community in Kenya was evicted from their ancestral lands in the Mau Forest, ostensibly in the name of forest conservation for the purpose of climate mitigation.
However, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) have already adopted binding human rights agreements that acknowledge access to land as a key element of several substantive human rights, such as the right to food and housing. Further, the rights to information, participation, equality and self-determination are considered procedural rights and are equally enshrined in binding human rights treaties. These human rights agreements also apply in the context of climate policies and land-based climate mitigation measures. States have the obligation to protect local communities and Indigenous Peoples’ land rights.
Figure 1
No contradiction
Communities are successful ecosystem stewards when they have the rights and resources to do so.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities claim customary rights to approximately 65 percent of the world’s land area. However, only a small portion of this–10 percent–is officially recognised as formally owned, and 8 percent is recognised as being under their control. At the local level, rights to access, use and extract resources may be allocated to different individuals or groups, leading to varied claims on ownership and use. Women in the Global South often only hold informal access rights and therefore risk exclusion from potential payments related to carbon sequestration. It is therefore crucial to understand local land rights, as well as uphold the rights of both communities and individual actors. Not only is this essential for just climate mitigation policy, it is also more effective. Analyses of protected areas show that participatory management of these areas is associated with better protection outcomes. In other words, alienating people from their lands actually decreases the likelihood that carbon will be sequestered.
There needs to be a shift in the current power imbalance between local communities and those who invest in land-based carbon projects. Protecting land rights is a necessary first step to achieve this. Local communities need decision-making power over land use, including, for example, the right to reject reforestation or carbon market projects that impinge on their rights, livelihoods, cultural practices or access to essential resources. Democratic spatial planning processes and community-led participatory mapping of legitimate land rights are key. These empowering approaches are imperative not only for sustainable land management but also for the revitalisation of traditional cultures and knowledge systems. If a community consents to engaging in a carbon market project, additional support, such as legal counselling, empowerment initiatives and access to justice are necessary to address power imbalances between communities and carbon project developers. Reducing the involvement of middlemen and working directly with local communities could be the first steps toward ensuring equitable distribution of benefits.
Figure 2
A glaring gap
Responsible investments in land-based climate mitigation projects could contribute to meeting climate finance needs.
As investments in carbon markets develop significantly faster than efforts to regulate them, it is crucial to establish grievance mechanisms for land-based carbon projects. Existing rights holders and land users must have the opportunity to communicate rights violations and seek redress effectively.
The protection of women’s land rights is a crucial step to achieve inclusive land-based carbon sequestration. Parties to the UNFCCC can build on progress made in the other two United Nations Rio Conventions Conventions on biological diversity and desertification. These two conventions include specific decisions on land tenure or land rights-related indicators. The further development of UNFCCC’s Gender Action Plans offers a promising avenue to advance these efforts.
Furthermore, as Parties to the UNFCCC negotiate a Just Transition Work Programme, a broader understanding of what the just transition entails must be embraced: one that goes beyond the present focus on jobs, principally in the Global North. Moreover, land rights and community empowerment should be incorporated into climate strategies to ensure that the transition to net zero is both environmentally sustainable and socially just. A more comprehensive understanding should also address historical injustices and create opportunities for marginalised communities to benefit from climate action. A just transition involves not only technical solutions, but also governance reforms that promote inclusion and equity. This means creating mechanisms for meaningful participation of local communities in climate policymaking and programme design and ensuring their rights and interests are protected.
