Protecting community Lands & resources in africa

The document provides a practitioner-focused guide to securing community land rights in Africa, detailing case studies on resolving land conflicts, strengthening local governance, and resisting forced resettlement. It emphasizes the importance of community self-definition, the use of Biocultural Community Protocols, and the necessity of multi-pronged advocacy strategies involving legal education, media engagement, and the building of alliances between grassroots movements and sympathetic government actors.

• Community self-definition is often complicated by a misalignment between state-mandated administrative boundaries and locally-recognized customary territories, which can stymie legal recognition of land claims.
• In South Africa, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) used litigation and the assertion of customary law to help the Hobeni fishing community challenge a no-take Marine Protected Area and resist a state-imposed 'community' structure that ignored separate village identities.
• In Tanzania, the Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) helped the Hadzabe hunter-gatherers secure a Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO) for 23,000 hectares, marking the first legal certification of land for a hunter-gatherer community in the country.
• The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) in Liberia employs a multi-step methodology for community self-identification to prevent manipulation by politicians and investors, focusing on scoping research, leadership consultations, and community-wide consensus.
• Land conflicts in Northern Uganda are often driven by 'deliberate' encroachers—local elites who use power to grab communal land—requiring strategies that counter their influence with legitimate state power rather than non-binding mediation.
• In Liberia, SDI successfully resolved a boundary dispute between two communities by using a traditional 'leasing' arrangement where the encroaching family paid a token to the land-owning community, avoiding costly and adversarial litigation.
• Strengthening local governance through the drafting of community by-laws and the creation of Land Governance Councils can prevent 'elite capture' and ensure that land deals are not signed without community consent.
• In Togo, the Auto Promotion Rurale pour un Développement Humain Durable (ADHD) uses Village Action Plans (PAVs) to drive endogenous development, allowing communities like Ibefo to prioritize their own needs, such as reforestation and road construction.
• The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) used a combination of rights training, media pressure, and High Court litigation to force the government and diamond mining companies in Marange to slow forced evictions and provide basic infrastructure at relocation sites.
• In Namibia, the Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) supports the Khwe San community within Bwabwata National Park through a Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEKOA) training programme, which restores cultural pride and creates employment as trackers and guides.
• The Association for Law and Advocacy for Pastoralists (ALAPA) helped Maasai pastoralists in Loliondo, Tanzania, defeat an eviction notice intended for a big game trophy hunting reserve by building a coalition of NGOs and using evidence-based public campaigns.
• Save Lamu in Kenya utilizes a Biocultural Community Protocol (BCP) to unite diverse ethnic groups (Bajun, Aweer, Sanye, Orma, and Swahili) and articulate a unified voice against the LAPSSET mega-project.
• In Ethiopia, MELCA successfully protected the Sheka Forest from agricultural investment by facilitating its registration as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, which creates an international commitment for the government to protect the area.
• The Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD) in Ghana used a Community-Driven Health Impact Assessment Tool (CHIAT) and a BCP to help the Tanchara community successfully delay gold prospecting by Azumah Resources Limited.
• In Sierra Leone, Namati supported the village of Masethele to renegotiate a lease with Addax Bioenergy, reducing the leased area from the entire village to only one-fourth after empowering the community to hold their leaders accountable.
• Diamond mining in Zimbabwe's Marange region has disproportionately harmed women, who are often excluded from compensation negotiations and lose access to forest resources and river reeds essential for their livelihoods.

APA

Booker, S., Knight, R., & Brinkhurst, M. (2015). Protecting community Lands & resources in africa. Natural Justice. https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Protecting-Community-Lands.pdf

Chicago

Booker, Stephanie, Rachael Knight, and Marena Brinkhurst. Protecting community Lands & resources in africa. Natural Justice, 2015. https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Protecting-Community-Lands.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Booker |first1=Stephanie |last2=Knight |first2=Rachael |last3=Brinkhurst |first3=Marena |title=Protecting community Lands & resources in africa |publisher=Natural Justice |date=2015 |url=https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Protecting-Community-Lands.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{booker2015protecting, author = {Booker, Stephanie and Knight, Rachael and Brinkhurst, Marena}, title = {{Protecting community Lands \& resources in africa}}, institution = {Natural Justice}, year = {2015}, url = {https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Protecting-Community-Lands.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }