Our land: Tools for land governance and secure tenure for all
MANY DEGREES OF PARTICIPATION
tives and parties, they may seek to strength-
There are many degrees of participation, ranging from tokenistic processes, simply
en horizontal links between communities to build social movement organizations, and they may seek to build alliances with other
informing, consulting to some form of shared decision-making or even the delegation of significant decisions. Thus participation may be manipulative in seeking to placate or diffuse opposition, extractive in seeking information whilst reserving decision-making powers, or may be empowering. State actors under pressure to achieve implementation targets may be under pressure to instrumentalize and “water down” participation to extract information or “achieve buy-in”. Grassroots actors too may instrumentalize participation, tactically withholding or distorting information (such as, hiding taxable assets or exaggerating need) in an attempt to influence outcomes. In both cases, the value of participation is reduced. Participatory processes should therefore not be seen as a quick fix. They rather long-term relationships that need to be well managed to strengthen communities’ land rights. MANAGING COMPETING INTERESTS Meaningful engagement between communities and government inevitably means that community interests must encounter other vested interests, such as big land owners. Such conflicts cannot always be surmounted, and there is a need to look for political windows of opportunity, and to take best advantage of these by building political support, particularly through networking and alliance-building, as well as through the mobilization of popular support. Communities may seek links with political representa54
political and social actors such as NGOs, religious institutions, academia, media, international organizations and donors. RECONCILING LOCAL AND TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE Grassroots groups can provide information that government authorities need, yet often the value of this information is not recognized because it does not match the technical standards of land professionals, for example in geo-referencing accuracy. At the same time, government authorities hold information that communities may need, such as maps, planning documents or the texts of legislation and implementation guidelines. Yet this information may not be widely accessible nor meet grassroots standards of comprehensibility (for example, by using technical or non-local language). This can be a barrier to effective participation, and particularly to informed consent. Bridging the gap between local and technical knowledge may involve efforts to make information more accessible, to build the confidence or technical specialists in the value of local knowledge, and to build the capacity of communities to produce information at an improved technical level, for example through participatory enumerations or mapping.