Local Communities, and the Women within those Communities Rights - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Water Tenure for Indigenous Peoples’, Local Communities, and the Women within those Communities

Chloe Ginsburg Tenure Analyst, RRI

Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI)

RRI Tenure Data: Tracking Indigenous Peoples’, local communities’ & women’s rights to lands, forests, & natural resources

Informing and influencing advocacy, policy-decisions, research, investment approaches, and other stakeholder engagement concerning the land, forest, water, and other natural resource rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and women within those communities.

2002

Who Owns the World’s Forests?

2012

What Rights?

2014

What Future For Reform?

2015

Who Owns the World’s Land?

2017

Power and Potential

2018

At a Crossroads

• Efforts to advance the recognition of Indigenous

Peoples’ and local communities’ rights have greatly benefited from two developments:

• 1. Endorsement and application a “land tenure”

approach that conceptualizes the bundle of land and forest tenure rights held by Indigenous Peoples and local communities either legally or in practice, and

• 2. Wide acceptance of secure community land

tenure rights as a prerequisite for sustainable land governance and the broad realization of sustainable development and climate goals.

• These have strengthened the position of IPs and

local communities within the political economy of land and forest governance and had tangible positive results.

Lessons Learned: Land and Forest Tenure

Relationships between Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their freshwater

• Community-based water tenure systems are complex, cross-

sectoral, dynamic, and context-specific.

• Customary or traditional water tenure systems and/or

practices may or may not be recognized by statutory law.

• Community waters are under escalating pressure worldwide

due to climate, development, and demographic pressures— which in turn exacerbate threats of displacement, violence, and conflict.

• The realization of communities’ freshwater tenure rights is

directly linked to their ability to realize basic human needs, maintain food security and sustainable livelihoods, and to achieve other essential objectives.

Indigenous and community women’s particular relationship with freshwater

• Women have differentiated knowledge about water

accessibility, quality, and usage patterns that is vital to sustainable resource management, health and food security.

• Woman also have differing responsibilities, priorities, and

needs for domestic AND productive uses of water.

• Main unpaid suppliers of water around the world
• Primarily responsible for using and making decisions about

water to meet daily household needs (WHO and UNICEF, 2017)

• Produce 60-80% of food and constitute 43% of on-farm labor

force in developing countries (IFPRI 2019)

• Unique hygiene and sanitation needs
• And yet, evidence has revealed a clear gap between

women’s roles and their recognized rights.

Water Alternatives / Flickr

Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ water tenure is largely overlooked

• Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and indigenous

and community women are often unaware of—and unable to effectively assert—the bundle of rights necessary to ensure their water security or their water tenure.

• Legally recognized rights comprising communities’

secure freshwater tenure have yet to be conceptualized, widely accepted, analysed, or tracked over time.

An innovative comparative analysis on community-based water tenure

Community-Based Water Tenure Regime (CWTR): A distinguishable set of national laws and regulations governing all situations in which freshwater rights of use and at least either governance or exclusion are held at the community level.

National-Level Threshold Questions Indicators Additional Information

• Human Right?
• Transboundary Due

Process?

• Use (cultural/religious, domestic,

livelihoods, commercial)

• Transferability
• Exclusion
• Governance (rulemaking, planning and

management, internal dispute resolution, external enforcement)

• Domestic Due Process and Compensation
• Duration
• Prioritization/Hierarchy
• Land-Water Nexus
• Procedural

Requirements CWTR-Level Threshold Questions

• Customary Rights?
• Dependent on Land

Rights?

• Women’s Rights?

Key Finding

• Communities’ legal rights to freshwater are dependent on their

recognized land or forest rights in over 60% (25) of 39 CWTRs.

Implication

• These 25 CWTRs establish consistently more adequate protections

for communities’ freshwater rights—including women’s rights to use or govern community waters.

• Legislative “land-water nexus” serves as communities’ only source
• f recognized water entitlements under the national laws of

Cambodia, India, Liberia, and Mexico.

• Legislative harmonization and inter-sectoral collaboration are

critical, with “community-based water tenure” as a conceptual foundation.

Land-Water Nexus

Key Finding

• Laws regulating community-based freshwater rights are typically

gender-blind, with just one-third (13) of 39 CWTRs protecting women’s specific rights to participate in freshwater governance:

• 8 CWTRs protect women’s rights to participate in community-

based decision-making processes pertaining to community lands that include rights to govern freshwater, and

• 5 CWTRs explicitly recognize indigenous and community

women’s rights to govern water resources.

Implication

• Explicitly acknowledge the freshwater rights of women within

indigenous and local communities during legislative reforms.

• Raise communities’ awareness of land-water nexus as basis for

existing, gender-specific rights.

Women’s Specific Rights to Use and Govern Community Waters

Implications for the future of water tenure

• Land laws frequently address water only implicitly or in passing as appurtenant to a

wider set of communities’ territorial rights, whereas water laws often fail to address interactions with community land rights.

• Harmonization across water, forest, and land legislation is particularly important where

legal frameworks do not exclusively tether community water rights to community land rights.

• Legislative and policy reforms must take a tenure-based approach to recognizing the

full bundle of community-based water tenure rights and promote an integrated approach to community-based resource tenure if they are to protect Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights.