Geopolitics of Land Degradation
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The past decades have seen the complexity of land management rise significantly, and, alongside, the contested nature of what, in a given context, should count as good and sustainable land management. The external factors that have made the life of land policy makers and, by extension many governments, more difficult, are well-known and frequently interconnected: continued high levels of population growth, rapid urbanization, accelerated economic development, a seemingly changing climate, and persistent governance issues that render effective public policies a distant dream in still far too many places, an issue I would like to come back to later.
Land itself has been the first casualty of this changing environment. Notwithstanding hopeful, but still too modest, signs of a better future, phenomena like deforestation, desertification and widespread land degradation now threaten not only our future, but also that of generations to come. They have caused people to fight – for example in pastoral areas such as the Sahel and the Horn of Africa where desertification has led nomads to clash with sedentary farmers; to starve when degraded land can no longer support a growing population; and to move, in ever greater numbers, away from places that are no longer hospitable. In the part of the world I come from, for example, land degradation causes between 600,000 and 700,000 people to migrate away from the Mexican dry lands per year, posing a multitude of challenges. And many other examples could be given.
The connections between land degradation, on the one hand, and migration and mobility, on the other hand, are of course of great interest to me. They are also the first topic that I would like to briefly discuss. There are a multitude of angles from which these connections could be explored, but I want to focus on two aspects. First I would like to highlight that, while they are all too often presented in a negative light, migration and mobility can be part of the solution when in a certain area, the land can no longer sustain the population that traditionally lives there, whether permanently or temporarily. Migration does not always mean that everyone moves: many households engage in the migration of some family members as part of an “income diversification” or “insurances strategy” to protect them when local livelihood opportunities dwindle. Remittances can then become a source of income that not only helps the household to cope with the consequences of land degradation but also, with the right incentives, may allow it to invest in the right land restoration and adaptation to climate change measures. Another example is how outward labor migration can be one way for a country to reduce its reliance on agriculture and hence the pressure on its arable land, which may already be under strain due to climate change and an increased population. Human mobility can be one possible adaptation strategy to the impacts of climate change on the environment and on people’s livelihoods.
Migration and mobility are of course no magic bullets to deal with the impact of land degradation, and nor are they necessarily easy fixes with their effectiveness depending greatly on States putting the right policies in place. To the extent that they involve cross-border migration they also require regional and global collaboration which requires considerable effort and persistence in an area as complex and sensitive as migration. Migration should be part of the toolbox that we consider how we can best deal with land degradation, related pressures and adaptation to climate change. It is also important to underline that, no matter whether endorsed and promoted by public policies or not, migration and mobility will be one of the ways in which people will deal with increasingly hostile and unfriendly environments. The tendency in disaster risk reduction policy discussions to focus on planned, state-driven relocation should not obscure that, also in the future, individual and household decision-making is likely to remain the main driver of environment and land degradation-related mobility, a reality for which we need to be prepared.
The second aspect of the relationship between land degradation and migration that I would like to highlight has to do with the challenges it can pose, in relation to land, in the places of destination, especially in contexts of forced displacement. From the perspective of land degradation, the biggest risk that large-scale population movements away from areas that have become too hostile pose is that they will cause further land degradation, this time in the place where displaced populations settle. Urban and rural environments pose their own particular challenges in this regard, but in both environments land and, indeed, social relations, can come under a great deal of stress if the population increases considerably in a short period of time. All around the globe we see, for examples, cities expanding so rapidly, that neither urban planning nor basic services delivery can keep up with the demands of the rising population, causing severe environmental, social and political challenges.
It is of course not impossible to prepare for that, and many governments are indeed taking action to deal with current and future land degradation-related migration and displacement, but more could be done. Here I want to highlight one particular area of work that we at IOM have been promoting and supporting and that is to increase the understanding that policymakers working on disaster risk reduction, land management, adaptation, urban planning, or rural development have about migration, displacement and mobility. Indeed, an understanding of past and present migration patterns and trends in a particular country or region can often help to predict, or at least indicate where people are likely to move to, and where land degradation will continue to be unabated in areas that are currently under strain or at risk of for example desertification. Investment in research of this kind can hence provide governments with invaluable information that will allow them to better prepare, and hence save resources, later down the line.
When we talk about the potential for land restoration to improve security, development and climate change mitigation; for migration and mobility to be part of the tool box to deal with the consequences of land degradation; or of the need for governments to prepare for people moving, there is one critical issue that, in reality, will determine to a large degree what, out of all the measures that need to be taken, will actually happen on the ground. And this is the quality of the governance in the country or the area affected by severe land degradation, which is the second topic that I would like to briefly discuss with you in this address.
Conventions, laws and policies to address and combat land degradation can, on paper, contain all the right measures, but without effective and transparent State institutions that operate within a rule of law framework, they are likely to, at best, have little or no impact on the ground where the problems are. This is of course true for almost all other policy areas as well, but the centrality of land, and the linkages it has with wealth, social status and political power, make the question of good governance even more acute in this particular area. Beyond issues of land degradation, there are many examples around the world, and our development colleagues will agree with me, where well-intentioned land management initiatives ended up making the situation worse for the poor and most vulnerable due to a lack of good governance, for example at the local level. It often leaves populations rightly sceptical about the intentions of State institutions, and with little trust that the measures they propose or promote are indeed in their own long-term interest.
Addressing these issues of good governance and the lack of trust that populations may have in their State institutions – a phenomenon that is particularly pronounced in, but not exclusive to, countries that have just come out of conflict or major upheaval – is critical for our success in addressing and combatting land degradation. This requires more than capacity building of State officials in, for example, disaster risk reduction or land restoration techniques. While increasing knowledge and technical skills are indeed very important – and IOM has been investing considerable resources over the past 20 years to support States and authorities doing exactly that – they are effective only in environments where State institutions operate under the Rule of Law, where the public interest trumps private power, and where the population has sufficient trust to collaborate with the State in implementing the policies the government has adopted to address land degradation in their area.
Working towards good governance is of course not a task that those working on land degradation can or should address alone or in isolation. They need to link up, talk to and collaborate with other national and international actors focusing on issues like state building, the promotion and establishment of the Rule of Law and, in transitional post-conflict contexts, peace building and local-level peacemaking and community stabilization. We need to continue to ensure, in short, that working on the effects of environmental degradation and climate impacts remains embedded in broader efforts to ensure accountability and transparency of governments to their own populations.
As an intergovernmental operational and field-based agency, IOM is also very much aware that it is critical for policy thinking to integrate implementation from the start, and not as an after-thought. Unless measures to address and combat land degradation are tailored to the actual capacity of both public and private actors on the ground, then they risk remaining policies on paper only, and hence contributing to the lack of faith populations have that the State can actually address the problems they face. The need for policies to combat land degradation to integrate realities on the ground, brings me to a third and final topic that I would like to briefly address here, and that is the impact of prevalent informality on what we can do to address the environmental challenges we are discussing throughout these few days.
In many countries, formal land registration is the exception rather than the rule, especially when it comes to the poorer and more vulnerable parts of the population. This applies to rural areas – where in many countries land continues to be governed by customary law and authorities, not infrequently despite laws claiming exclusive land management jurisdiction for the state – but also in urban areas. This is especially true in the global South, where rapidly expanding cities are characterized by informal land tenure arrangements, especially in the poorer parts of towns where rural newcomers tend to settle. It is important to underline that informality does not only affect land management – in many of the countries that today are affected by land degradation, an important part of the population continues to live without the documents that we tend to take for granted. According to UNICEF, globally the births of 230 million children under the age of five have never been recorded anywhere. Dealing with migrants and displaced populations around the globe, IOM is confronted daily with the challenges people face when they have no ID documents, and no formal records to prove where they came from, and what they had, before they decided or were forced to move.
This informality impacts how we can respond to land degradation and its impact on affected populations, how we can plan for land degradation-related migration and mobility, and, indeed, what we know about the affected populations and the impact our policies have. More work can be usefully done, in our view, on fleshing out the implications of prevalent informality in fragile contexts, including the exchange of successful practices of addressing the adverse effects of informality on people’s ability to access services and initiatives designed to assist them. IOM, as well as others working in the humanitarian and post-humanitarian field have developed an extensive set of tools and practices that could usefully be explored also in the context of discussions on land degradation and ways to address it. In the context of land restoration, for example, it is critical to ensure that rights based upon informal and non-State arrangements are given as much consideration as those based upon, and evidenced by, formal State law and its institutions. Otherwise our policies and interventions risk to not benefitting those that need it most, i.e. the most vulnerable populations for whom land degradation is but one of many life-threatening challenges they face.
The obstacles that lie in front of us are formidable, but I am confident that, in fostering global collaboration; ensuring the exchange of information and discoveries in this burgeoning field also with those coming from far afield; and promoting and sustaining active networks of concerned public and private stakeholders, we will be able to find and implement the solutions need to transform and preserve the world as a habitable place, also for generations to come.
By Ms. Laura Thompson,
Deputy Director General, International Organization for Migration.