Identifying indicators and targets on land at the global level is important in order to deliver on better land governance, tenure and land rights, particularly for beneficiaries and NGOs that are involved at the ground level. Iris Krebber, Global Donor Platform focal point for DFID, explains takeaways, priorities, coordination efforts and a vision for land governance as discussed at the World Bank conference on land and poverty.
This interview was conducted by the Secretariat of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development.
Global Donor Platform Secretariat: Iris, you just came back from the annual World Bank conference on land and poverty in Washington. What is the most important impression from there for you and what is the key outcome of the conference?
Iris Krebber: Well I think these four days were the greatest opportunity ever for stakeholders working on land governance to come together, exchange the latest on evidence and research, and also to forge technical partnerships to move forward. I was very pleased (and I think for the first time ever), there were a huge number of participants from the global side, both from the government and non-government. They actually also started talking much more closely, south to south, which is something we would want to promote, and for donors that is also an important element of support.
Secretariat: The Global Expert Group on Land Indicators met in Washington as well. The question would be: Why is it really that important to have indicators and targets on land altogether?
Iris: Well, if we have learned one thing from the Millennium Development Goals, I think (that) if we want to deliver on better land rights protection and overall better land governance, we need a target and we need an indicator on that. I am quite pleased that the Global Land Indicator Initiative actually did agree on a proposed target and two proposed indicators to measure this land rights targets. I think it is very useful compromise; it is based on months and months of researching the evidence of what is already out there, what is working well and what might be politically acceptable, which is very important because we need to consider if there is going to be a negotiation process.
Secretariat: I have one question about that, the universal applicability of those targets. How is that managed? And the second question to follow on to that would be: Is there not an over attention to measuring things too fine and in scientific detail? Would it not be good enough to stay on a broader level to just make political agreements?
Iris: I think the target is sufficiently generic to be valid at the global level and it can be usefully broken down into sub-indicators to take care of specific national context – I think that is the important thing. It is politically appropriate to use this level of indicator, but as you may know from the World Bank initiatives and other research work, there are a host of at least 80 indicators underneath those proxy indicators, which can then be specified at the concrete regional, sub-regional, national level to measure specific outcomes in line with the international context and still have the opportunity to aggregate that into negotiated and agreed global targets.
Secretariat: The Platform hosted a session at the conference and in that you introduced a new partnership to secure tenure rights and to promote responsible investment for food security in Sierra Leone. Why is that important – this kind of agreements – and to whom is it important?
Iris: We are quite pleased that Sierra Leone has now joined. In the first half-year of these partnerships, we have really confirmed proof of what we expected these partners to deliver. That is to galvanize support for better land governance and there are quite a number of countries that need this support and that are increasingly showing interest in ownership and in delivering. The partnership as such is a demonstration to donors that governments are really moving on what they are promising and that also unlocks funding that these governments need to do major reforms. What I also think is a good byproduct is the improved co-ordination among donors with governments and with non-governmental stakeholders through this partnership agreement. Last, but not least, it locks all the partners in the partnership into very rigorous accountability.
Secretariat: We always have this question about the importance for donors: What is the vision for donors? You had a meeting of the Global Donor Working Group on Land
Iris: And it was great because the conference as such opened a huge opportunity for donors to engage where there is a strategic window at the moment. An increasing number of large companies are seeing a point in thinking about how they go about land-related investments and they see not everything is working so well and very often it is not working at all as the government counterparts promised them it would when they come to the grassroots.
Now, we have the voluntary guidelines on land tenure and we are soon going to have the principles on responsible agriculture investments, and governments are saying, “Yes, we see the point. We are committing to doing better, but how do we do that?” NGOs are helping out to see what we have ignored so far, what we have on our horizon. Now we are committing, but we urgently need support to deliver and we need an operationalization of principles and global guidelines as voluntary guidelines on land are, but you cannot implement them as such. I think that is a huge opportunity for donors to engage and the coalition of the willing helps forge these coalitions and fund where funds may be needed; that is one of the opportunities.
At our Global Donor Working Group meeting, we also discussed our vision for the next two years. I am quite pleased to say that we came up with a range of priorities that we agree to take forward. One, as I already mentioned, is to work much more closely and robustly with the private sector, but to also move beyond the voluntary guidelines, the rights and what other principles there might be and to flesh out a vision of an industry-wide standard.
We also discussed how donors can contribute towards getting there. We also prioritized work to join up the dots. That is on the one hand to continue our improved coordination at all levels for donor support and align our funding and maybe even engage in more joint funding. On the other hand, also when you look at all the technological innovations for innovative spatial mapping of life, fast track registration of community land right, you have a lot of great pieces to the puzzle, but at the moment they are not joining up to a better, complete picture.
A third priority was to flesh out, widen and deepen the partnership concept that we discussed earlier. To continue with the G8 partnerships, but also to expand them to be more international, to not just be restricted to the G8 and we have quite a few expressions of interest from other donors as well, and to pull in the civil society world much more intensively and to see where the collaboration potential is with the corporate world. So these are three top priorities for the next three years and I am sure they will keep us busy.
Secretariat: Thank you very much!
Iris: Thank you!
Further Reading
Trilateral partnership agreed with Sierra Leone — press release by Food and Agriculture Ministry Germany
Global Donor Working Group on Land
