Governing Tenure Rights To Commons

Governance of Tenure Technical Guide This guide aims to support states, community-based and civil society organizations, the private sector and other actors in implementing the standards and recommendations of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure. The guide offers twelve strategies in three areas of action: the legal recognition and protection of tenure rights to commons, their effective implementation by states and rights holders alike, and the support of communities to enjoy their rights.

This guide shares a number of initiatives and studies from recent years that have shone a light on pastoral governance and land tenure: on the inherent challenges pastoralists face, the shortcomings of governments in securing pastoral tenure, and emerging examples of success and progress from around the world. This guide proposes solutions to securing pastoral governance and tenure without undermining the inherent complexity of customary arrangements.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has developed a series of Technical Guides to elaborate and provide more detailed guidance on thematic areas contained within the Guidelines. As part of this series, this Technical Guide covers the issues associated with the identification and valuation of tenure rights for different purposes, and provides guidance on how to ensure that valuations are undertaken in a fair, reliable and transparent manner that comply with internati onal norms. It explains why valuations are important, where and when they should be used, and by whom. It is not intended to be a valuation textbook;, instead it seeks to raise the level of awareness of valuation issues and procedures among those involved in land policy and administration and those affected by land tenure decisions. Though this Technical Guide focuses on land, it provides useful guidance that may be applied to fisheries, forests and other natural resources. It is directed prim arily towards developing countries and countries in transition where there is less awareness of the valuation profession and institutions. Legitimate tenure rights involving customary or informal tenure systems may be less clear and not formalized by law or regulations.

This guide is about making the recording or registration of tenure rights more relevant to people who hold those tenure rights, and particularly to people who are currently poorly served by systems to record or register tenure rights. It provides practical advice on ways to improve the recording of tenure rights, including by addressing barriers that prevent people from using recording systems.

Given the new-found importance of the commons in current political discourse, it has become increasingly necessary to explore the democratic, institutional, and legal implications of the commons for global governance today. This book analyses and explores the ground-breaking model of the commons and its relation to these debates.

Increasingly, attention is being paid to recording tenure rights that are not yet recorded, for example, in cases where customary rights have recently been given legal recognition, where new legally-recognized rights have been created based on informal rights, or where new fisheries rights, forest rights and water rights have been created or given legal recognition. In such cases, there is often a need to also create a new recording system with a specific focus, such as for recording forest use rights, fisheries shares or water use rights, or to have the recording done at an appropriate level of government or by a self-governing community.This guide is about extending the recording or registration of tenure rights to people who currently are not served by systems to record their rights. It provides practical advice on ways to introduce a new system to record tenure rights and for the recording of rights for the first time by the state, a process that is sometimes called first registration.

This book analyses three key concepts, global public goods, global commons, and fundamental values, as tools geared towards the protection of the general interests of the international community. After providing an overview of these concepts, the book examines how international law has responded to them in a wide range of fields, and investigates how global governance has improved, or worsened, this response. Contributions from a group of experts explore the legal foundations of general interests, and discuss which interests have or have not been deemed to deserve the protection of international law. Other chapters focus on whether, and to what extent, it is appropriate that international law intervenes to regulate such interests, considering the interplay between multiple actors including states, international and regional organisations, and non-state actors. The book explores how states and other actors have used international law to protect general interests, what lessons can be learned from these efforts, and what significant challenges still need to be addressed.

FAO has been promoting the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) in several countries and the Federal Republic of Germany had significantly contributed by financially supporting FAO’s activities. The programme contributed through multi-stakeholder platforms to an inclusive dialogue which led in most countries to the emergence of a common vision on land governance and positively influenced the land reform processes. It also triggered changes in mind-set which are needed for long-term improvements at country level. Results have shown that the VGGT, while being international principles of land policy, can be translated into concrete actions at the local level. The evaluation stressed the need for greater attention on developing activities to be carried out in local communities which result in defined, precise and achievable gains on governance of tenure and to continue working on women and youth land access issues.