Upholding Human Rights in Jurisdictional Approaches: Some emerging lessons

The quest for environmental conservation and sustainable commodity production at scale has led to a very large number of efforts worldwide to promote various forms of integrated land use planning and management. Some of these planning initiatives are referred to as ‘landscape’ projects, often led by consortia of local and international NGOs or involving multiple stakeholders.

From a human rights perspective, these non-State initiatives suffer the major shortcoming that they ‘cannot overcome disparities in power or entrenched interests nor can they substitute for institutions with authority to establish and legitimise property and resource rights’. 

In this paper (Google Chrome users may need to download this PDF in order to view it correctly), we contrast such ‘landscape approaches’ with ‘jurisdictional approaches’ in which local governments of sub-national jurisdictions seek to implement land use planning and management regimes, established by multi-stakeholder participation, that includes the State as a key actor and authority.

Detailed case studies referred to in this briefing paper are available separately:

• Indonesia (Seruyan, Central Kalimantan)
• Malaysia (Sabah)
• Ecuador (Amazon region; available in English and Spanish)

Key Points

Potential strength of Jurisdictional Approach

• Jurisdictional Approaches (JA) should include local government agencies with authority to clarify rights and tenure, resolve disputes and enforce

Review covers 4 different areas

• We studied 3 JA in Borneo (Sabah, Malaysia, and Seruyan and Kapuas Hulu, Indonesia) and 1 in the Ecuadorian Amazon - through literature review, field visits, workshops and interviews.

Human rights challenges are significant

• In all cases existing laws and administrative practices do not recognise customary rights fully or at all. Plantations have been imposed without prior attention to rights leading to numerous land conflicts, most notably in Indonesia.

JA advance understanding of human rights challenges

• By their existence, JA have drawn attention to land disputes, human rights abuses and wider challenges to sustainability and helped focus governance on addressing them.

Multi-stakeholder governance improves JA quality

• Where there has been multistakeholder governance, greater attention has been focused on land rights, conflict resolution and the need for participation, but in all cases forest peoples’ direct participation needs strengthening.

New local laws will be needed to enforce standards

• The more advanced JA already recognise that upholding human rights in line with international standards will require local legislation but enforcement remains a puzzle.

Note: Google Chrome users may need to download the PDF in order to view it correctly