Supporting Land Governance Multi-Stakeholders Platforms to engage with the private investors in land and agriculture through cross-regional learning and experience sharing.
Land Collaborative is a global Community of Practice (CoP) fostering cross-regional learning and experience sharing between MSPs practitioners. It rolls out demand-driven learning cycles to promote exchange of experience on effective design and implementation of multi-stakeholder processes to improve land governance, at the national and sub-national levels. Launched in March 2021, the first LandCollaborative learning cycle offers MSP practitioners the opportunity to learn from each other’s experience how to successfully engage the private sector to promote Responsible Agricultural Investments.
With the increasing corporate concentration of land ownership and control throughout the agri-food sector, private sector plays a central role in influencing the way land is used. It is in this frame that in March 2021, LandCollaborative launched its first learning cycle on Land Governance, Multi-Stakeholders Platforms and their Engagement with the Private Sector on Responsible Agricultural Investments. The initiative, promoted jointly by the International Land Coalition (ILC), Welthungerhilfe and the Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG), brings together thirty-nine Multi Stakeholder Platforms (MSP) practitioners to learn and discuss how best to engage with the business sector to foster and monitor Responsible Agricultural Investments, to prevent and address rights violations and to develop positive partnership models benefitting small scale farmers and local communities.
The power of peer-to-peer learning
Coming from 12 countries in Africa and Asia, participants have different profiles and backgrounds - many of them are MSP facilitators or CSO members, but there are also representatives from international NGOs and networks, business sector and government. Such a diversity provides unique opportunities to exchange and to learn from each other’s experiences of MSP-private sector engagement, to identify successful and promising approaches, while reflecting on the challenges encountered and identifying solutions to overcome them.
The Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of Greenwich, an ILC member with extensive expertise in land and environmental governance, rural institutions and responsible business, facilitates the initiative through social learning – a methodology increasingly used in the field of natural resource management. NRI and the LandCollaborative conveners are supporting participants in collectively creating knowledge, identifying case-studies and lessons learned, and sharing experiences in an environment of trust and a spirit of collaboration.
The learning cycle is articulated around three subsequent phases: a first assessment stage where participants analyse country-level private sector landscape and learning needs; a second phase where they engage in demand-driven learning modules to share and reflect on experiences and lessons learned; and a third phase where selected MSPs will be supported in implementing promising strategies of private sector engagement.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the virtual workshops series offers an opportunity for effective cross-national and cross-regional exchange and learning. The knowledge emerging from the learning cycle will be made available for continuing dissemination through the development of various materials, including collections of case studies and tools used for analysis and strategy development, and an international webinar.
In March 2021, the learning cycle kicked-off with an inception workshop illustrating purposes, structure and social learning methodology, as well as introducing the diagnostic tool for country-level private sector landscape assessment. During the two days, participants had a first opportunity to get to know each other and exchange perspectives in small group discussions.
Insights from an MSP participant: the perspective of NES Philippines
Participants from the ILC supported NES Philippines are taking part in the learning cycle with the aim of better understanding private sector behaviour and the way it operates, and to acquire skills to effectively initiate dialogue with them. So far, the attempts of their platform to engage the private sector have been not fruitful, or have been facilitated by intermediary bodies such as the Philippines’ Congress or the Commission of Human Rights, in the context of their activities around the National Land Use Act and the United Nations Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights (UNGP-BHR).
For Nathaniel Don Marquez, Executive Director of the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC), sharing the perspectives or rural poor communities with private companies and investors is key to promote Responsible Agricultural Investments. “Land is not only an economic commodity that can be sold or mortgaged; from the perspective of the rural poor, it is a source of livelihood, of prestige, it is cultural, and it is also connected to politics because it links with power relations”, he says. “If the driving force is only profit, then in most cases the environmental and social impacts of investments are not being properly assessed; hence, it is important to bring the private sector to the discussion table”.
“If the driving force is only profit, then in most cases the environmental and social impacts of investments are not being properly assessed; hence, it is important to bring the private sector to the discussion table” Nathaniel Don Marquez, ANGOC.
Jonna Panganiban, from the Center for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (CARRD), highlights that, especially when governmental public funds are lacking, “engaging with the private sector can help to provide farmers with further opportunities; from productivity to more broadly lessen their poverty”. As Don, she looks forward to discover strategies for private sector engagement from other participants that can be applied to the Philippines context at both national and local levels.
“Engaging with the private sector can help to provide farmers with further opportunities; from productivity to more broadly lessen their poverty” Jonna Panganiban, CARRD.
Achieving a concrete impact with LandCollaborative
This learning cycle represents a unique chance for MSPs practitioners committed to promote responsible investment behaviour to learn concrete strategies and tools from the experience of other fellow practitioners. Thanks to the knowledge and skills acquired, participants will be able to produce real impacts by co-shaping policies and legal frameworks necessary to ensure that agricultural investments are coherent with internationally agreed standards and by replicating concrete practical experiences on how to engage with private sector to strengthen community rights.
By convening more learning cycles in further capability areas, LandCollaborative will continue pursuing its mission of strengthening national multi-stakeholder processes through MSPs stakeholders’ cross-regional exchange and peer learning.