Skoll Awardee Profile

Organization Overview

Key Info

Social Entrepreneur Tim Hanstad

Year Awarded 2012

Issue Area Addressed Economic Opportunity, Environmental Sustainability

Sub Issue Area Addressed Arresting Deforestation, Human Rights, Livelihoods, Smallholder Productivity

Countries Served , , Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe

Website http://www.landesa.org/

Twitter handle Landesa_Global

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/LandesaGlobal

Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/LandesaGlobal

About the Organization Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas where land is a key asset. Of those people, more than a billion lack legal rights over the land they use to survive, causing entrenched cycles to persist over generations. Founded in 1981, Landesa has helped more than 180 million poor families in over 50 countries gain legal control over their land. This transformation—from land insecurity or landlessness to secure rights to land—has boosted agricultural productivity in the developing world and improved health, nutrition, and school enrollment across the globe. New wealth from women and men with rights to their land strengthens local economies, raises per capita income, and increases national GDP. Landesa partners with governments, civil society organizations, and corporations at the national, state, and local levels. Landesa’s programs are designed to respond to the geographic, political, historical, and cultural context of each country. Landesa’s work includes assessments to identify existing gaps and challenges in existing laws, policies, and cultural conditions; collaborating with public officials to adopt pro-land policies; assisting in the implementation of new laws to benefit landless families; and monitoring and evaluating impact. Landesa’s work on land rights creates a wave of impact, starting with people who have the least access to power and rippling outward to communities, countries, and across the globe.

Impact

In 2019, Landesa’s activities played a considerable role in the adoption of five national or sub-national land laws, policies, or regulations relating to rural land rights in China, India, Liberia and Myanmar. As a result, over 550 million women and men have had their land rights strengthened. In India, Landesa designed training curricula and legal literacy land programs that helped over 480,000 rural women and men, and provided resources and training to government officials and service providers that helped strengthen the land rights of over 3.8 million rural women and men. In China, Landesa was worked with government officials to offer policy recommendations. Now, for the first time, women’s names now appear on rural land certificates, guaranteeing them equal rights to family land, and China has also repealed an earlier law that required farmers to give up their land rights if they migrated to the city. These amendments have equipped 500 million people with stronger land rights.

Path to Scale

Land rights are an economic engine that powers sustainable growth for families, communities, and countries. Landesa’s path to scale identifies and delivers practical recommendations and solutions to governments and civil society partners so rural women and men can benefit economically and socially from more secure land rights.

Social Entrepreneur Inspired by his mentor and professor, founded Landesa to secure long-lasting land rights for rural communities worldwide. Tim Hanstad joined the organization in 1986. He grew up in an agricultural community in the US Pacific Northwest. As a child and the grandson of Norwegian immigrant laborers, he worked on farms alongside Mexican immigrant families and became acutely aware of rural poverty and the importance of land and landownership. At the beginning of his legal career, he started working with his University of Washington law professor and international land reform expert, Roy Prosterman, on moonlighting efforts to legally secure land rights for rural communities worldwide. Tim later joined the law faculty and continued to team with Professor Prosterman, working with developing country governments to change laws and policies in order to provide land rights for poor families. In 1992, Tim initiated taking this work out of the law school into an independent non-profit. That nonprofit, now known as Landesa, has grown from Hanstad and Prosterman working out of a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle to 150+ professionals working out of more than 20 offices around the globe. Humbled by the legacy created by Prosterman and armed with the tools and experience to strategically scale Landesa’s impact globally, Tim transformed Landesa from a small, university project into the world’s leading land rights organization.

In 2015, Tim moved into a senior advisor role to act as a global ambassador for land rights and build the capacity of Landesa’s growing global team. After two years as senior advisor to Landesa, Tim became CEO of the Chandler Foundation and serves as a Landesa Board Member. To succeed Tim, Landesa hired Chris Jochnick, an international development leader who came from Oxfam America, where he led Oxfam’s work with the business sector, including the successful “Behind the Brands” campaign. Prior to Oxfam, Chris was a corporate attorney on Wall Street and a social entrepreneur in Latin America where he co-founded and led a non- profit organization that addressed threats to indigenous people’s land rights. Chris is a former fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and Echoing Green.

Equilibrium Overview

Current Equilibrium

Three quarters of the world’s poorest live in rural areas where land is the most important asset—the primary source of food, income, wealth, power, and status. Unfortunately, more than 600 million poor, rural men and women around the world who rely on land lack secure, legal rights to that land. This results in a myriad of social and economic problems -- for them, their families, and for the broader societies in which they live. Without ownership of land, poor rural families often lack adequate shelter, suffer from food insecurity, do not have incentives to invest for the future, are trapped in the informal sector, and lack access to credit, government services, markets, and political power. The absence of land rights is at the root of their poverty. It prevents them from having a strong stake in society, and blocks their best path to upward social and economic mobility. Women fare the worst. While providing much or even most of the agricultural labor in developing countries, they rarely own land. When women do not have rights to their land, children are more likely to be malnourished and under-educated. Women are more likely to suffer from domestic abuse, to have little voice in the household and community, and to earn lower incomes. [i] The current equilibrium weighs heaviest on the more than 600 million poor women and men who lack secure land rights (together with their children representing more than 1.25 billion people). But it also drags down broader social and economic progress in the countries where the problem is most prevalent—primarily in Asia and . Landlessness and weak land rights are closely associated with higher levels of violent conflict (USAID, 2013), greater environmental degradation (Deacon R., 1999), lower rates of broad economic growth (Keefer, Philip, and Stephen Knack, 2002), lower levels of investment in education (Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E., 2010), and greater difficulties attracting foreign investment (Rights and Resources Initiative, 2012). [ii-vi] In most countries, overcoming the current equilibrium requires changing policies and laws, and then effectively implementing them. This is primarily the work of government; to make these changes, governments must have both the political will and the expertise to address the problems. In many settings, one or both of these—political will and/or expertise—are missing. Governments do not always understand the value equation for addressing the problem, or have the tools to make and implement the needed policy and legislative changes. In recent years, multinational corporations have also become significant stakeholders in the current equilibrium. Recent, massive increases in large-scale land-based investments have highlighted how gaps in policies, laws, and regulations can create risk for multinational companies as well as for the poor communities where these investments take place. Over the last 16 years, 186 million acres of land have been transferred to international investors or are currently under negotiation. Africa is the most targeted region both in terms of number and area of the deals. These investments also give multinational companies significant influence over land tenure—for bad or for good, which has prompted the need to involve corporation in the process to improve the situation. [i] Landesa Infographic – Women’s Land Rights (link: http://www.landesa.org/resources/womens-land-rights-and-the-sustainable- development-goals/) [ii] U.S. Agency for International Development, Issue Brief. Land and Conflict: Land Disputes and Land Conflicts, (2013 March). [iii] “Deforestation and Ownership: Evidence from Historical Accounts and Contemporary Data”, Robert T. Deacon, Land Economics, 75(3): 341-359, August 1999. [iv] Keefer, Philip, and Stephen Knack.(2002).“Polarization, politics and property rights: Links between inequality and growth.” Public Choice 111.1-2: 127-154. [v] Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E. (2010). Property rights for the poor: effects of land titling. Journal of Public Economics, 94, 700-729. [vi] “The Financial Risks of Insecure Land Tenure: An Investment View” Rights and Resources Initiative, The Munden Project, December 2012.

New Equilibrium

In the new equilibrium, governments will better understand the value equation for secure land rights, be more motivated to act, and be better equipped to adopt and implement laws that provide secure land rights for their citizens. Most or all poor women and men who depend on land for their well-being will have secure rights to the land they live on and use, resulting in increasing farm yields and food security; rising incomes and wealth; improved child welfare; greater voice and status, including for women; better access to government services, credit and markets; and reduced domestic violence. Women will be able to inherit land and hold title, building the perceived value of women in society and advancing gender equality. As these poorest citizens gain a pathway to upward social and economic mobility, the broader society will also benefit. More secure rights to land will result in: reduced societal conflict and crime; increased private investment and more inclusive growth; greater incentives to steward environmental resources; a basis for a land property tax to finance local government services; and less government corruption. Governments, companies, and communities will work together to ensure that, as companies invest in land and build supply chains, the rights of the people living on or near the related lands are protected. Companies and markets will perpetuate this new equilibrium by realizing the financial value of legal, conflict-free land deals that benefit communities.

Innovation

Landesa’s country-level work is based on a theory of change aimed at catalytically bringing value into the current equilibrium in order to prompt governments to take the needed steps to change and implement laws and policies. Landesa accomplishes this in three ways. First, Landesa increases a government’s willingness to act by highlighting and often reframing the costs of not acting and the benefits of taking action. Second, once sufficient political will is established, Landesa provides the often missing legal and policy expertise to develop the needed changes in policy and law. Finally, in settings where lack of implementation of good law and policy is the constraint, Landesa can provide the needed implementation support to governments by working with them and other stakeholders to design and pilot scalable models, to train government officials, or to provide feedback on implementation. Over the years, Landesa has used this innovative approach in more than 50 countries. In 13 of these countries, Landesa has been able to document measurable progress toward equilibrium change. Landesa partnered with governments to shift the equilibrium to adopt and implement reforms that have provided secure land rights to more than 120 million poor families. Secure rights to land allow these families to put themselves on an upward economic and social trajectory. When accomplished at scale, Landesa helps countries develop a foundational building block for a peaceful and prosperous society. These implemented changes in law and policy have lasting and sustainable effect. When poor men and women finally do obtain secure, legal rights to land, they are the most effective defenders of any subsequent change that would take away or weaken those rights. And, because secure land rights provide a pathway out of generational poverty, they provide impacts for decades to come. Landesa has been successful in part because of its innovation in selecting where to work. Landesa uses a complex set of criteria to choose country settings where its expertise and experience has the greatest potential for shifting the value equilibrium in a manner that will prompt the government to act and impact the greatest number of lives. This involves identifying common prerequisites for equilibrium shifts (such as moments of political transition) and looking for equilibrium shifts that will positively impact the largest numbers of poor people. In the countries where it chooses to engage, Landesa has developed an innovative model for how to help change and implement laws and policies. Landesa’s work often starts with an invitation (sometimes solicited) from a country struggling with the task of whether and how to create improved opportunity for citizens through land rights. There are typically four steps to an engagement: RESEARCH — Conducting desk and field research to identify and understand both the institutional framework (laws, regulations, policies) and the ground realities (current conditions, cultural considerations) that poor and marginalized populations face in accessing secure rights to land. Landesa uses these findings to frame the value equation for the government, as well as to inform the specific design of a reform.DESIGN —Providing policy and legal expertise to help the government with changes to laws, programs, and regulations based on research, against the background of comparative work in more than 50 countries, and with local partners;ADVOCATE — Educating public officials about the value equation of specific problems and the benefit of making change, as well as the menu of specific potential policy, legislative, and program solutions;IMPLEMENT POLICY CHANGE— Promoting, planning, and assisting in the adoption and implementation of improved laws and policies through designing and helping to implement scale pilots, monitoring and evaluating implementation to learn from the process and recommending further changes where appropriate. Landesa’s unique success and innovation can also be attributed to: Strong Government Relationship Management. A distinct ability to cultivate a myriad of relationships with government and transcend turnover, effectively influencing at the national, state and local levels.Culturally Relevant Approach. Offering tailored approaches, crafted to fit the particulars of geography, political institutions, history, local customary law, and culture.Multi-faceted program implementation. A multi-step engagement approach ensures the implementation of best-fit solutions for a particular region (e.g. field research, pilot development, policy design, advocacy, education for public officials and on-the-ground programming).Gender Lens. Landesa emphasizes women’s rights to land across all of our work and through the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights, which has become a leading voice in the field for promoting laws, policies, programs and practices that provide women and girls improved legal rights to land. Over the years, Landesa has expanded its scope of services within countries in order to identify and support the most catalytic interventions. Landesa has expanded the number of focus countries where it is working, as well as the range of ecosystem actors with which it engages—moving beyond the government to civil society, educational institutions, and, importantly, the business sector. Finally, Landesa has added an initiative to more effectively influence the land rights ecosystem at the global level, including elevating the issue on the global development agenda, building the land rights capacity of key global actors, and helping to build a global land rights movement. Landesa’s headquarters is located in Seattle, Washington and has 120 staff around the globe. Landesa currently has offices in Washington, D.C., USA; Beijing, China; Karnataka, New Delhi, Odisha, West Bengal, India; Monrovia, Liberia; Pathein and Yangon, Myanmar; and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In Sub-Saharan Africa, Landesa primarily works in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Ambition for Change

Landesa works to secure land rights for the world’s poorest, mostly rural women and men, to provide opportunity and promote social justice. Landesa works to improve the status of women and environmental sustainability. Long-term impacts include reduced poverty, more inclusive economic growth, and increased agricultural productivity and food security.

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