Rights and Livelihoods
Major land tenure reforms driven by well-organized movements of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities are empowering rights-holders in developing countries around the world to exercise more control over rural lands and forests. These groups are also turning their attention from tenure reforms towards capitalizing on new rights in economic and livelihoods terms.
Community-led economic and livelihood approaches have emerged as a “pathway to scale” to quickly respond to urgent human rights, economic, and environmental challenges, driven by the aspirations of local peoples. Yet, as a sector, community-led approaches have languished despite their substantial potential to contribute to sustainability and development goals, and a wealth of experience. Their challenges range from restrictive legislative and policy frameworks and lack of appropriate funding mechanisms to tenuous markets and local capacity constraints.
RRI works with a broad array of actors to advance community-led economic and livelihood approaches, as well as operational and policy guidance to scale up government action and investor support. These efforts have included:
- Workshops to explore the potential of locally-led economic and livelihood models
- Facilitation of learning between communities
- Ongoing research to assess the economic, environmental, and development contributions of community governance of lands
- National level dialogues between private sector, governments, civil society, and communities to explore and pilot development models that incorporate community production of forest commodities into supply chains.
Key Analyses
- Beyond Land Rights: RRI Vision to advance Indigenous, community, and Afro-descendant aspirations for self-determined economic development
- Community Forest Rights and the Pandemic: Gram Sabhas Lead the Way
- Scaling Up Locally Controlled Forest Enterprises: Final Report
- RECOFTC Myanmar community enterprises and national industry associations
- Case Study: Phata Cooperative
- Report: Community-Based Forest Enterprises in Tropical Forest Countries
- Climate Action Solutions: Opportunities through rights-based forestry and territorial management, Programa Regional de Investigación sobre Desarrollo y Medio Ambiente (PRISMA)