Can Forest Carbon Finance Influence Land Tenure Security in Project Areas? Preliminary Lessons from Projects in Niger and Kenya

Abstract

Land tenure security is often considered a requirement for forest carbon (C) finance investments, as a way to ensure that C emission reductions can be legally delivered to buyers and to promote permanence of emission reductions from forest activities. Areas under unsecure land tenure are regarded as less attractive for C finance investments. Nevertheless, there is limited research on how C finance may conversely affect land tenure. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by exploring how land tenure security of local landholders and communities in reforestation areas may be affected through forest C projects. By clarifying C ownership, a C transaction creates a new stick to the bundle of rights associated with land (emission reductions from sequestered C), which normally is created with clear tenure. This can in turn directly affect the overall land tenure for those landholders involved in the transaction. Carbon ownership clarification can be achieved through institutional arrangements, such as community-level benefit-sharing agreements or legal private contracts. Adequate design and implementation of C finance transactions can also influence land tenure security, mainly by supporting the organizations of local landholders around rural institutions and encouraging the involvement of national land agencies in the implementation of the project. These institutional arrangements prompted by C transactions can result in overall increased land tenure security for landholders and communities in the reforestation project area, as evidenced by two case studies from agroforestry projects in Niger and Kenya.