WSSD Press Release

WHERE WILL THE LANDLESS LAND?
The Land Poor Essential Partners for Sustainable Development

The reasons for improving access to land are compelling - poverty reduction, natural resource and environmental management, reduced conflict over natural resources, slowed rural migration to urban centres and increased aggregate food production. However, powerful vested interest stand in the way. Moreover, without land and related assets, the rural poor will be marginalized further by the forces of globalisation."

Common Platform on Access to Land

Prepared by the International Land Coalition  in consultation with Civil Society, UN and International Institutions and Governments

So what? The landless, smallholders, pastoralists, forest dwellers, women, indigenous people have come and gone from World Summits over the past 30 years. The commitments now, as then, were to create policies and enforceable laws to provide the poor with access to productive resources and to protect their rights. The governments attending these Summits have likewise known what is needed and that the related technologies exist. The ingredient, that is increasingly being acknowledged as missing, is the political courage to undertake pro-poor reforms.

The past tells us that government-led reforms without the involvement of civil society and civil-society efforts without the support and enabling policies of government have both failed. Furthermore, there has been inadequate coherence in the assistance, technical and lending policies of international and bilateral donors.

In response to these lessons, civil-society, the United Nations (IFAD, FAO, World Food Programme), international financial institutions (World Bank, European Commission) and governments decided to forge a new consortium to unite their work to empower the rural poor through secure access to land and related productive assets and to increase the capacity of the rural poor to influence public policies and decisions affecting their daily lives.

This consortium, formed in 1995 - the International Land Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty  - has undertaken an extensive, worldwide consultation that has developed A COMMON PLATFORM ON ACCESS TO LAND . This consultation began at CSD-8 and continued through each PrepCom along with extensive efforts by Coalition partners in multiple venues over these two years. It was finalized following PrepCom IV in Bali.

It is complemented by the launching of country-level action programmes known as L and A lliances for N ational D evelopment, commonly referred to as LAND Partnerships.

WSSD is the launching ground to widen participation in this COMMON PLATFORM ON ACCESS TO LAND and to join with governments and civil society to establish LAND Partnerships.

"Land is fundamental to sustainable human development. The processes and policies that exclude the poor from the means to improve their well-being will either change through enlighted leaders or be postponed until the underlying desperation of poor people leaves them no choice but to repeat, as history has shown, a return to revolutionary campaigns. Let us all hope that this will not become their last hope."- according to Bruce Moore, Director of the International Land Coalition .

The International Land Coalition  is a convening mechanism to build common ground, work to find compromises and negotiate strategies to resolve land conflicts.

The International Land Coalition was created to further the capacity and opportunities for the land-poor. The landless need to land on soils, forest lands and pastures where they know they have secure access to these resources for the future.

The poor understand that sustainable development is about the way societies decide on who has the rights to use which resources, for which purposes, under which conditions and for how long. They must be equitably involved in public decisions of this kind and have socially just access to land and related livelihood resources.

Bruce Moore
Director - International Land Coalition
info@landcoalition.org