In this issue, we focus on the extractive industries, special economic zones, and women's voices in land governance

Legal tools newsletter is sent out every four months to keep you updated on Legal Tools for Citizen Empowerment, a collaborative initiative to strengthen local rights and amplify local voices in natural resource investments.

Editorial

Extractives policies from the bottom-up – on land and in the depths
of the ocean

Dear colleagues,

The Legal Tools team has long been working to change the ways the extractives industries are governed. In the past, we have produced technical guidance for governments and civil society, facilitated lesson sharing among practitioners supporting affected people or engaging with investor-state dispute settlement, and collaborated with partners – for example in Mali – to ‘demystify’ mining legislation among affected communities and facilitate public participation in its reform.

Today, Mali is again revising its mining legislation to increase revenues and promote post-conflict reconstruction. We have collaborated with Malian mining lawyer Ahamadou Maiga to produce a briefing note that discusses policy options for the reform, including reconsidering the tax regime, promoting local development in mining sites and properly regulating an artisanal mining sector that employs over 200,000 people.

Technological innovation has also enabled mineral exploration in the deep-sea bed, with extraction not far off. Yet scientific knowledge of the deep-sea bed’s ecosystems is insufficient to measure the true environmental costs. While mineral extraction licenses are set to be granted by 2020, a new blog called for a moratorium on mining in the deep-sea bed until scientific knowledge, policies and institutions are in place to protect these precious ecosystems

— Legal Tools team

Blogs and webinars

Investor-state arbitration: an opportunity for real reform?

An ongoing multilateral process could provide a unique opportunity to reform a contentious area of global economic governance – but only if it properly identifies the key problems.

International soft-law instruments and global resource governance: Reflections on the Tenure Guidelines (Land Portal)

After a meeting of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), Lorenzo Cotula reflects on the Tenure Guidelines as a key CFS soft-law instrument.

“Women’s Land Tenure Security: A Conceptual Framework” is Now Available in French (Resource Equity)

Philippine Sutz discusses the opportunities offered by Resource Equity’s Conceptual Framework tool
– recently published in French – to improve analysis of women’s land tenure security. (In French and English)

Incentive-based contract farming and agricultural commodities exchanges

Smallholder farmers have long had difficulties getting a fair price for their produce. An IIED webinar discussed how linking farmers to commodity exchanges can help improve farmer-buyer relations.

How to support small-scale farmers
in negotiations with agribusiness

An IIED webinar discussed ways to protect and support small-scale rural producers when negotiating with agribusiness companies.

Project updates

Strengthening women’s voices in land governance

Over the past year, IIED’s local partners in Ghana, Senegal and Tanzania have been leading field activities, working to develop approaches to strengthen women’s voices in land governance. In Tanzania, TAWLA have supervised the adoption of gender-sensitive by-laws in 40 out of 65 villages in the Kisarawe district, with plans to reach all villages by January 2019. In the Nanton traditional area in north Ghana, NETRIGHT and the Grassroot Sisterhood Foundation have organised a series of community engagement meetings and workshops to revive Community Land Development Committees. Local stakeholders have also developed written tenancy agreements which will allow women to document their rights and strengthen their tenure security.

Land Rights Redress Mechanism: news from the Tanzania pilot

The Tanzania Natural Resources Forum (TNRF) and IIED are piloting approaches to assist communities impacted by a now discontinued agribusiness plantation project to seek the return of their lands in Kilwa District, Tanzania. Since August, IIED and TNRF have been consulting with villagers, local authorities and central government, and facilitating a dialogue between the Village Councils and the District Council in order to resolve the dispute. This initiative is being implemented in partnership with the International Land Coalition (ILC) and the Global Legal Action Network.

LandCam: Securing land and resource rights in Cameroon

Among the many recent LandCam activities, the Centre for Environment and Development organised a national workshop on indigenous peoples' participation in land governance, which brought to policymakers’ attention the progress, issues and challenges raised by indigenous communities. LandCam also facilitated a self-assessment by ten Bagyeli indigenous communities of the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between them and the Campo-Ma'an National Park, near which they live, in preparation for a renegotiation due in early 2019.

Empowering Producers in Commercial Agriculture (EPIC)

We conducted scoping visits to Malawi and Nepal for our Empowering Producers in Commercial Agriculture project, identifying partners, priority themes and project sites. Partners from the two countries came together to fine-tune plans at a partners’ planning meeting in London, November 2018. In both Malawi and Nepal, EPIC will develop socio-legal empowerment approaches to support rural producers and their wider communities as they engage with, or are affected by, agricultural value chains.

Events

UNCITRAL Working Group III

Lorenzo Cotula attended as an observer the 29 October-2 November session of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)’s Working Group on investor-state dispute settlement reform. IIED, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) co-organised a side event for delegates and others to discuss the issues at stake.

Intergovernmental Forum on Mining (IGF)

Brendan Schwartz and Fitsum Weldegiorgis attended the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining (IGF) in Geneva from 15-19 October. The technical discussions on how to improve stabilisation clauses in mining legislation and contracts were of particular interest.

UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS 45)

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organised the 45^th Committee on World Food Security in Rome from 15-19 October, where Lorenzo Cotula contributed to a side event on agricultural investment contracts.

UNIDROIT Working Group on Agricultural Land Investment Contracts

Lorenzo Cotula attended the fourth meeting of this UNIDROIT Working Group, of which he is a member (Rome, 9-11 October 2018). The Working Group is developing a guide for legal professionals advising governments, investors and communities.

Global Land Forum 2018

Between 22-27 September, Lorenzo Cotula attended the Global Land Forum in Bandung, Indonesia, which brings together members of the ILC. He presented findings from a stocktake of trends in land governance since the previous Forum held in 2015.

Policy reports and briefings

Special economic zones: engines of development or sites of exploitation?
Special economic zones (SEZs) have spread rapidly over the past 20 years, including in many low- and middle-income countries keen to attract private investment for industrial development. This briefing note argues that, while public debates focus on the economic performance of SEZs, we must also consider the social and environmental dimensions, exploring the place of law as part of the problem and the solution.

Land: Trends in Land Governance 2015-2018
This ILC report, prepared in collaboration with IIED, takes stock of trends in land governance over the period 2015-2018. The report is the first in a new series launched to inform ILC’s Global Land Forum. (Also available in French and Spanish)

Agricultural Investments under International Investment Law
This briefing, produced by CCSI in partnership with IIED and IISD, discusses the reverberations of international investment treaties for investments in agriculture. It introduces the fundamental features of investment treaties and arbitration, discusses their relevance to the agriculture sector, and reviews latest trends in treaty-based arbitrations concerning the agriculture sector.

Sécurisation du foncier pastoral en Afrique de l’Ouest : Des modèles divers et riches d’enseignements
On the back of a wave of pastoral legislation in West Africa, field-level initiatives are testing approaches to secure pastoral land rights in Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal. This report, published jointly with the regional pastoralist alliance Réseau Billital Marobè (RBM), takes a critical look at these experiences. (In French only)

Academic publications

Managing Fragility? Chad’s (Il)liberal Interventions and the Making of a Regional Hegemon
In this chapter from Governance and Political Adaptation in Fragile States, Nikolas Emmanuel and Brendan Schwartz examine two of Chad’s recent military interventions (Mali and CAR) in an attempt to shed light on the dramatic change in the country’s rise from “fragile” state to regional hegemon.

“Land, property and sovereignty in international law”
Land has long held a central place in international law. Taking a long-term historical perspective, this article in the Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law explores how indigenous peoples and foreign investors increasingly resort to international norms to handle land disputes – particularly in connection with large-scale natural resource projects. (Now available for download)

“International Soft-Law Instruments and Global Resource Governance: Reflections on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure”
In this article from the Law, Environment and Development Journal, Lorenzo Cotula reflects on the VGGT as a tool for addressing resource governance challenges, focusing on two issues: the legal significance of the VGGT, and the nature of initiatives to advance their implementation.

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