Human Rights & Social Sustainability
Community land rights
The legally recognised or customary rights of communities and Indigenous peoples to own, manage and use their lands and forests.
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Community land rights are the tenure rights that communities — particularly Indigenous peoples and local communities with customary systems — hold over lands, forests and waters they have used and governed, whether or not formally titled. Rights and Resources Initiative tracking across 104 tenure regimes in 35 countries found that communities had legally recognised rights to only about 15.3% of the world's forests by 2017, though that was up roughly 40% from 2002.
References
tenure categories; 15.3% of world forests legally recognised (2017); 104 regimes/35 countries
RRI coalition scope
Overview
What it means
Billions of people depend on lands to which they hold weak or no formal rights.
How it is used
Securing community tenure — through titling, legal recognition and FPIC — is a central strategy for forest conservation, climate mitigation and poverty reduction.
Why it matters
Secure community tenure correlates with lower deforestation and better biodiversity outcomes, and underpins most land-based climate solutions.
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