Who Owns Protected Areas? Time to tackle the last bastion of dispossession … Liz Alden Wily Independent tenure specialist 26 March 2015 World Bank Land Conference, Washington, DC

Protected Areas (PA) Terrestrial PA 197,368 PA 20.6 million sq. km 15.4% of all terrestrial & inland waters Marine PA (0-200 nautical miles 12,076 Marine PA 12 million sq. km 8.4% of marine area within national jurisdiction Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

The Problem With exceptions 1. PA are also traditionally community property 2.PA are Public Land 3.Public Land is State rather than peoples’ property 4.The State is the Government. So a history of embedded presumptions 1.The State is the only safe pair of hands for natural resources 2.The State = Government (exceptions) 3.Public land is defined not by public purpose or benefit but by State tenure: Public lands = Government lands 4.Communal tenure is open access, unreliable and cannot be registered 5.Communities cannot own land & resources because unstable entities and/or are not legal entities; accorded neither status as a natural or legal person. Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

Relevant paradigm shifts in last 25 years 1.Change in attitude to agrarian Governments as “safe pair of hands” for conservation. 2.(Some) devolution for accountability & efficiency i to community levels. 3.The most significant tenure reform is provision for registrable property ownership by families, groups and communities rather than only individuals. 4.Declining requirement for communities to form legal entities to hold real property: increasingly treated as natural persons for land purposes. RESULTS: 1.Rise in legal opportunities for communities to claim & be recognized as legal owners of local communal resources. 2.Rise in community managed and community owned protected areas (especially in forestry sector). Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

So what’s the problem? Change is largely limited to the ‘Off Reserve Sector’ (i.e. areas not already under PA status), so the less valuable. As a consequence, the divide between people protected areas and State protected areas has hardened. ‘On-Reserve’ sector has become more trenchantly State property & State controlled. IUCN’s focus on management classification rather than management & tenure has helped suppress the rights issue. Community owned conservation areas tend to be very few. Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

The negative effects – 1.Upon conservation of PA: leaves them without the advantages of community based conservation: efficiency, sustainability, cheapness, accountability, reduction in conflicts which recognizing communities as owners usually engenders. Sustains high-cost and demonstrably less effective fortress conservation approaches (guns, guards, fences, exclusion) and conflicts. Entrenches rather than removes the divide between people based conservation & State conservation, and contradicts devolutionary governance principles of subsidiarity and inclusion. 2.On land rights: sustains abuse of customary land rights in denial that many PA have active local claimants until the present, including their most valuable assets. 3.Combination of the above: prevents countries benefitting from potentially their best protectors: pastoralists in respect of rangeland PA, and forest peoples in respect of primary forests. Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

The Tanzania Forest Case Community Owned Mode: village based owner- management 2012 data: 500 Village Forest Reserves 2.5 million ha 12% of off-reserve forests State Owned Mode: co-management 2012 data: 282 State Forests 5.4 million ha 41% of on-reserve sector Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

The Case of Kenya’s Forest Peoples 5 Forest Peoples (c. 130,000 people) with hunter- gatherer origins in 31 Protected Areas (c. 480,000 ha) which they actively claim as ancestral lands. They have no other lands, want no other lands, and remain until the present day dependent upon these ancestral forests economically and especially socio- culturally. They are repeatedly evicted. Legal status of PA: defined as Public land under jurisdiction of State agencies (treated as Government property, although technically national property). Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

No dispute between Government & Forest Peoples on – 1.The urgent need for massive rehabilitation (after 80 years of state management) and sustained conservation of forests 2.Maintaining forests as Protected Areas for time immemorial Dispute is around – 1.Ownership of these PA 2.Strategies of conservation Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

State maintains that –  Only the State can own & manage PA of national importance  Forest People need to modernize (leave the forest) And plans resettlement & to fence in the forests. Forest Peoples maintain that – They will be better conservators than the State (“without the forest our societies will die”) Also cheaper, more effective, efficient But need recognition of tenure to underpin this. Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015

Opportunity for win-win but does require change of attitude to Protected Areas tenure Transfer of Public to Community land on strict conservation conditions, including –  No right of sale or other transfer, to be held in perpetuity by community grantee.  Tenure can be cancelled if fail to rehabilitate and sustain the forests.  Limitation on habitation areas and uses.  And other conditions already in principle agreed by Forest Peoples. This is not rocket science: there is plenty of experience of such owner- conservator PA – but it does tend to stop at the gates of high level Protected Areas (Parks, National Forest Reserves, etc.). … Time to open the gates … Alden Wily, World Bank Land Conference, 26 March 2015