Judith Rosendahl, Alexander Müller and Matheus Alves Zanella from the Global Soil Forum (GSF) attended the stakeholder conference on “Scaling-up Strategies to Secure Community Land and Resource Rights“ from 19-20 September in Interlaken, Switzerland. It was organised by Oxfam, the International Land Coalition and the Helvetas Rights and Resources Initiative. To contribute to the diversity of stakeholders, IASS/GSF invited representatives of two indigenous peoples’ organisations from Burkina Faso (GRAF) and Bolivia (Fundación Tierra).
The objective of the approximately 400 participants was to bring together a wide diversity of stakeholders — governments, local communities, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, private investors, food and resource companies, and conservation organizations. Together, they discussed the priority of community land rights in global policy making and corporate investment planning. A major point for discussion was the target to double the global area that is under communal tenure by 2018. IASS senior fellow Alexander Müller gave an input on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure Land.