Upcoming Event

Background Information

Jointly with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) RECONCILE is organizing two major meetings in Nakuru next month to generate ideas to engage with the Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor, with a view to ensuring tenure security for the rural poor. The meetings will run from 19th to 26th October, and will be attended up to 80 participants from all over Sub-Saharan Africa. They will be joined by FAO staff and experts from Rome and other leading practitioners on land and forestry resource management from Europe.

Between 19th and 21st October, the Regional Symposium on Trends in Forest Ownership, Forest Resources Tenure and Institutional Arrangements shall be held at Merika Hotel and attended by up to 30 participants. The symposium shall be followed immediately thereafter with the Regional Workshop on Improving Tenure Security of the Rural Poor, which will run from 22nd to 26th October at the same venue. Field trips are scheduled in the course of both meetings to allow participants to see some of the relevant challenges confronting Kenya in securing tenure to the rural poor. Participants will also visit the world famous Lake Nakuru National Park to get a taste of the diverse flora and fauna that makes Nakuru such a great tourist destination.

The two meetings will bring together key stakeholders and actors on forest resource management, land tenure and rural development to consider in a balanced manner factors and/or aspects of tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa with reference to the opportunities that formalisation of individual rights may offer in increasing tenure security.

The Symposium will consider the impact of forest tenure trends on sustainable forest management and sustainable livelihoods, using case studies from a number of Sub-Saharan African countries to focus the discussions. The results of the Symposium shall then be presented and discussed at the Workshop, which in turn will consider how factors and/or aspects of tenure generate complexity in rural Africa, exacerbate vulnerability of the poor and inform the contentions that surround discussions of formalisation as a tool for increasing tenure security.

Topics to be covered at the workshop include:

• Access by the rural poor to natural resources and their vulnerability to major threats;
• Mechanisms and factors that exacerbate tenure insecurity and vulnerability of the rural poor;
• Practices and innovative approaches for securing property rights as a means of improving the livelihoods of the poor

The workshop process shall involve plenary sessions and small group discussions. Case studies and Issue Papers will be presented to help focus the debate and sharing of ideas. Field visit have been arranged to a site not too far from the venue that illustrates the challenges and innovations about tenure security. The conclusions and recommendations of the workshop, the Issue Papers and Case Studies will be used by FAO to prepare a submission package to the HLC LEP and its property rights group.

For more details of the two meeting, contact Eva Malel (eva@reconcile-ea.org) or watch this space.

[Go back to Events Page...]