IV. Case Studies: Successes and Lessons Learned

Colombia’s Land for Prosperity program was USAID’s largest land tenure program in agency history. But USAID/Colombia did not always include land interventions in its programming. Despite the fact that land was at the center of Colombia’s 50-year-long civil conflict, the Mission invested in only one land tenure program just 15 years ago, a small policy subcomponent of a USAID alternative livelihoods program called “More Investment for Sustainable Alternative Development,” or MIDAS. 

Over the course of the last decade and a half, however, USAID/Colombia took advantage of multiple political and technical windows of opportunity, most notably the 2016 Peace Accords between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), to make significant advances in a sector often seen as too politically, socially sensitive, and complex to touch. USAID used multiple TWP strategies to carefully cultivate working relationships with Government of Colombia allies and leverage these relationships to seize opportunities for working on land. Internally, USAID/Colombia technical staff used TWP strategies to elevate the importance of land within USAID/Colombia’s national development strategy and make the case to Mission leadership that progress on land tenure was both feasible and worthwhile.

USAID/Colombia used the following TWP strategies to advance land tenure work:

• Recognize and take advantage of windows of opportunity: When Juan Manuel Santos’ government came to power in 2010, USAID/Colombia recognized the administration’s appetite to tack land tenure as a critical precondition to achieving peace with the FARC. USAID worked with the Santos administration to pass the 2011 Law on Land Restitution and Formalization for Victims of Violence. The law created an administrative unit tasked with land restitution as well as a register of abandoned land and of people who had been forced off their land, and is considered a centerpiece of Colombia’s framework for transitional justice.
• Get out to the field: USAID technical staff made a point of bringing Mission leadership to the field to see firsthand the impacts of land tenure work. Staff recalled that these visits helped Mission leadership see land as a fundamental aspect of justice and human rights, and bolstered its appetite for larger land tenure activities.
• Cultivate trusted local contacts at different levels of government and in civil society: In 2011 USAID funded a team of technical experts to work hand-in-hand with national government counterparts to stand up Colombia’s land restitution unit and develop a plan for how to return land to the millions of internally displaced persons. These experts won the trust of government officials, facilitating an effective partnership on a politically sensitive topic. The close collaboration allowed USAID to move the land rights conversation with the Government of Colombia beyond the narrow scope of land restitution to the broader question of how to secure land rights for all Colombians. 
• Make the case that secure land rights are foundational for other development objectives: In 2006, USAID/Colombia launched its $180 million MIDAS program. USAID technical staff and implementing partners successfully made the case to Mission leadership that without land documentation, Colombian landowners and users were unlikely to invest in their land, and more likely to fall into conflict. By demonstrating that failure to address land tenure insecurity would jeopardize the success of the MIDAS project’s other development objectives, staff secured the inclusion of a land formalization and restitution component within the project.

In the case of Colombia, USAID staff and partners employed a range of TWP tactics to leverage a key political moment and window of opportunity to make progress on a critical issue that had previously been relegated to technical backwaters. While much land tenure work remains to be done nationwide, USAID’s efforts proved crucial in Colombia’s journey towards an efficient and functional national land tenure system.

Madagascar implemented its National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) in three phases spanning 1990 to 2015. The primary objective of the NEAP was to foster harmony between the population and its environment, aiming for sustainable development. This entailed both conserving the nation’s critical biodiversity and enhancing the livelihoods of local communities reliant on natural resources. To support the NEAP, USAID spearheaded a series of flagship environmental programs, initially focused on establishing national parks and implementing integrated conservation and development strategies around them. In the third phase of the NEAP, USAID’s emphasis shifted towards ecoregional conservation and development along two forest corridors, which are integral components of the System of Protected Areas of Madagascar (SAPM). This approach gained substantial momentum in 2003 when the government of Madagascar pledged to triple the coverage of protected areas as part of the Durban Vision.

USAID/Madagascar used the following TWP strategies to advance land tenure work within the NEAP implementation in Madagascar:

• Approach situational analysis and stakeholder engagement as foundational: In the initial phase of the NEAP, field research on land governance and tenure was conducted around newly established national parks. This research utilized participatory tools, primarily rapid rural appraisals, and involved multidisciplinary teams comprising both Malagasy and expatriate land tenure specialists. Many Malagasy graduate students who participated in these teams have since risen to prominent positions within government, civil society, international nongovernmental organizations, and consulting firms. Leading USAID projects were Malagasy and expatriate personnel equipped with profound insights into the environmental and social dynamics of specific ecoregions in the country. These project leaders excelled as networkers at national, regional, and local levels, staying attuned to policy matters and political dynamics facilitated by initial participatory research.
• Create space for a diversity of local voices: USAID supported participatory field research and community dialogues that highlighted a persistent conflict: While international conservation interests aimed to protect globally significant endemic biodiversity, local communities prioritized food security, infrastructure (roads, railways, health facilities, schools, and markets), and, crucially, security of land tenure. Thanks to these assessments, USAID made the decision to involve customary tenure authorities, who wield substantial influence over land governance programs, and redirected its efforts towards establishing community-based forest conservation policy, law, and management structures along the newly created SAPM forest corridors. This strategic shift was motivated by the insistence of local communities that conservation of natural resources contributes to food security and livelihood improvements. For this reason, the mantra for conservation and development became the multiple uses of forests for the hydrological cycles vital for irrigated rice cultivation, which is the bedrock of local economies.
• Cultivate trusted local contacts at different levels of government and in civil society: USAID built trust across government and civil society by providing educational and outreach programs, which were well attended and continued through the course of NEAP implementation. Civil society representatives and leaders of newly established ecoregional governance structures actively engaged in environmental training programs, frequently joining study tours that encompassed walking through the diverse ecologies spanning the 5–25 km width of the forest corridor. Rural communities assumed a pivotal role in educating government officials and civil society about the challenges they faced. These discussions consistently centered on issues of land tenure and resource governance pertaining to both the newly established protected areas and the newly created forest corridors. Learning opportunities facilitated the development of contacts, trust, and networks essential for USAID and its implementing partners to collaborate effectively toward a shared vision for conservation and development in Madagascar.
• Get out to the field: A major challenge USAID navigated was that Malagasy government officials had a limited awareness of the environmental hurdles faced within the country. USAID continuously attempted to overcome this challenge by offering immersive educational and outreach programs to build the understanding of local leadership about local conservation and development challenges. At times, high-level government officials were flown via charter aircraft over the forest corridors to witness firsthand the rapid and extensive degradation of forests. On other occasions, study tours along the Fianarantsoa forest corridor on the Fianarantsoa–Côte Est railway provided government ministers and ambassadors with an immersive experience, including interactions with community members and project staff along the route.

But in the end, did thinking and working politically make a difference in Madagascar? One assessment of the 25-years of USAID environmental programming concluded that: “When governments sweep in and out of power on decennial breezes and people and policies sweep in and out with them, when the whole structure from top to bottom is shaken with every change in constitution, when the government is incapable of maintaining or restoring infrastructures and every cyclone wipes out dams and roads on which farmers depend for their livelihoods (with no systematic provision for rebuilding), it is almost impossible to build a program that will have sustainable results at the scale needed to protect Madagascar’s forests.”¹

This experience points to the fact that TWP strategies are necessary but not always sufficient to ensure program success, and that pursuing the promotion of security of tenure requires strong change management skills and the flexibility to shift tactics to reflect political realities. Sometimes political volatility and local capacity challenges are simply too great. In these cases, employing TWP techniques helps donors position themselves to make meaningful progress on land tenure work, if and when a moment of opportunity presents itself.