The rush on land observed since 2008 has prompted the international community to launch many initiatives. The Voluntary Guidelines represent today the most comprehensive effort in establishing new procedures. At the French cooperation level, we aim at mobilising analytical tools and internal procedures to ensure compliance in all activities supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development or the French Development Agency (including its Proparco subsidiary to support the private sector), and more broadly by French actors engaged in agricultural investments leading to land ownership.
This work was led by the Technical Committee "Land and Development", co-chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French Development Agency, which is a unique place for debate of ideas and enhancement of research reflections and project experience. It has mandated the consortium Gret-IIED-Agter to animate this collective thinking, which mobilized members of the Committee but also a dozen project managers from AFD and Proparco. Through an iterative approach and a dozen meetings and individual meetings held in 2013 and 2014, a review of existing voluntary frameworks, an analysis grid and an educational guide have been produced and can now be used by each institution for to evolve its internal procedures for project appraisal.
The text presented here provides an analytical review of existing international volunteer frameworks. It was written by Michel Merlet (Agter), with the participation of Amel Benkahla (Gret), Lorenzo Cotula (IIED), Thierry Berger (IIED) and Mathieu Perdriault (Agter).
Several members of the "Land and Development" Technical Committee also contributed to the production of this document. This document reflects the dominant position of the members of the working group but does not involve their respective institutions.
This document, as well as other related work, including the ex-ante analysis guide for agro-industrial projects with land rights, can be downloaded from the "Land and Development" website.
(Www.foncier-developpement.fr).
State of legal frameworks and voluntary land directives (in french)
Check out our short brief on why we think the solution is people centred land governance.