Natural Justice Co-Hosts Brainstorming Workshop on “The Future Development Finance and Accountability Landscape”

With the world on the brink of the biggest infrastructure boom in history, infrastructure project funding is increasingly slated for the Global South. Here the projects are often located in environmentally and socially sensitive areas, including on lands inhabited by indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups. While these projects can have great benefits, they can equally constitute serious threats to already marginalized groups. At the same time, the models for financing new infrastructure are growing increasingly complex, with the creation of new institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Global Infrastructure Facility, and a call for growing private sector involvement. 

Against this backdrop, Natural Justice, Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Center of Concern, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and Inclusive Development International, with the support of the 11th Hour Project, co-organized a brainstorming workshop to bring together experts in finance, development finance, infrastructure development, and human rights. The workshop took place over two days (21-22 April 2016) at Columbia University. The purpose of the workshop was to build an understanding of the current system and projected future financial models and develop a plan for where to focus efforts in order to ensure that financers of infrastructure are accountable to international human rights standards.

The workshop served as an opportunity for people from many different backgrounds – private finance, pension funds, the UN, civil society, academics, and others – to sit together and share information and experiences on financing infrastructure. It was clear from the workshop that while so called “downstream” accountability (e.g. remedies after harm has occurred) is critical, building more accountability at the “upstream” (e.g. project design, procurement) level is equally important. Unless human rights impacts are taken into account in project design and financing, communities will always be playing catch up during implementation.

International Fellow, Luchino Ferraris reflects on his internship with Natural Justice

My four-month internship period at Natural Justice (from January to the end of April 2016) was not just a high level professional training, but also an unforgettable life experience.

With an elegant office situated at the sixth floor of the prestigious “Mercantile Building” – one of the most traditional and well-preserved buildings in Cape Town, located at the heart of the Central Business District (CBD) – Natural Justice is a team of professional and committed people primarily fighting for indigenous peoples’ rights on a national and a global scale and drawing on a wide array of tools (legal, political, scientific) to reach this aim.

If anybody reading this post has in mind the cliché of the intern making photocopies twelve hours a day, please forget about it and keep on reading. On the contrary, the team immediately welcomes you and makes you feel involved in its projects, always giving you the possibility to have a say in the organization and encouraging you to adopt a personal and critical view at every stage of the work.

Thanks to my legal background - and particularly in international and environmental law, acquired during my undergraduate in “Law” at the University of Milan and in the master (LLM) “Global Environment and Climate Change Law” at the University of Edinburgh - I focused on numerous legal and political-related issues such as the research and drafting of a working paper on the outcomes of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the drafting of a policy brief on the Right to Food and Food Security in Southern Africa and at international level, the elaboration of strategies to defend indigenous peoples’ rights at judicial level and the development of plans to raise awareness on the protection of traditional knowledge and intellectual property rights.

The carrying out of such tasks is reflected in my dynamic daily life at the office which involved desktop research, team meetings, interviews with other researchers and politicians, as well as the participation in workshops, conferences and the frequent contact with the teaching staff of the University of Cape Town (UCT). On this point, the one-week field work we conducted in the Richtersveld desert (Northern Cape) with the Nama community definitely deserves a special mention.

On a personal note, I wish to stress the serious, transparent and respectful attitude of the whole team, with whom I undertook not only a professional, but also a human relationship. I therefore strongly recommend such an experience to everyone who wishes to undertake a highly professionalizing experience and to spend a magnificent period in the gorgeous Cape Town.

Post by Luchino Ferraris.

How to Help Communities Protect their Lands

Guest Blog by: Rachael Knight, Director, Community Land Protection Program, Namati

The scale of the global land grab is staggering. While international actors have made excellent progress establishing complaint boards, issuing principles for responsible investment, and securing commitments from multi-national corporations, these protections do not chart a clear course of action that communities can follow to protect their lands and natural resources before an investor arrives seeking land.

The problem is that once an investor arrives to “consult with” a community, it may be too late. After a deal has been made in capital city conference rooms or in clandestine meetings between chiefs and company representatives, communities are forced on the defensive. At this point, all they can do is try to mitigate the negative impacts of investors’ plans - rather than assertively proclaiming their legal rights, demanding that the investor abide by FPIC principles, and then choosing whether to reject the investment or accept it on terms that ensure that the community benefits and prospers.

Meanwhile, many of the “investors” grabbing land are national or local elites unaccountable to international institutions – the cousin of the President or the nephew of the Minister – who operate with complete impunity, protected by powerful connections to government, the judiciary and the police. Such individuals do not answer to shareholders or complaint boards, and are not the least bit concerned with principles of corporate social responsibility. If  a community’s land claims are unrecognized or undocumented – and if the community’s leadership is weak or corrupt – the easier it is for these elites to manipulate their power to claim what land they want.

To have a fighting chance against elites’ bad-faith actions, communities must proactively take steps to know and enforce their rights, prevent their leaders from transacting land without community approval, and seek legal recognition of their land claims. And they must do so before elites and investors arrive.

After years of working with partner organizations around the world to support communities to protect their land rights, the international legal empowerment organization Namati has developed a comprehensive approach designed to support communities to do just this: proactively document and map their land claims, seek formal government recognition of their land rights, and strengthen local governance.

To share this approach with frontline advocates and activists across the world, Namati has published a Community Land Protection Facilitators’ Guide as a step-by-step, practical “how to” manual for grassroots advocates working to help communities protect their land rights.

The guide, available to download for free, details Namati’s five-part process for protecting community lands and examines questions such as: “Who is included or excluded when defining a ‘community’?”, “How to resolve longstanding boundary disputes?”, and “How can communities prepare for interactions with potential investors?” The guide goes beyond documentation to address issues of women’s land rights, inclusive governance, cultural revitalization, ecosystem regeneration, and more. Every chapter includes exercises, sample forms, and tips from veteran land protection advocates. All activities are easily adaptable to a range of cultures, contexts, and community goals. The guide is accompanied by short, animated videos that demonstrate the community land protection process visually.

The goal is not just to protect land, but to leverage community land protection efforts to build:

●   Inclusive, diverse communities that respect the rights of women and other marginalized groups;

●   Sustainable local economies fueled by diverse local livelihoods;

●   Environmental stewardship that results in flourishing ecosystems, food security, and the protection of future biodiversity; and

●   The revival, maintenance, and inter-generational transfer of dynamic local cultures, languages, ceremonies, and traditional knowledge.

By adapting and using the approach in the guide, advocates around the world will be better able to not only help communities resist elites and investors’ bad-faith efforts to grab their lands, but to also empower communities to drive the course of their own development, create more just, equitable societies, and preserve ecological and cultural diversity for future generations

Join Namati’s Global Legal Empowerment Network to learn more and exchange strategies and experiences with other community land protection and legal empowerment practitioners.

Namati is a proud member of the #LandRightsNow campaign - learn more and sign up today!

African Civil Society Engages the 6th Special Session of AMCEN

Natural Justice joined the ‘Pre-AMCEN African Post Paris/UNEP MGSF Consultative Workshop’ held in Cairo, 15^th April 2016. The workshop was organised and hosted by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), and CSO representatives from across Africa met to deliberate on key issues on the agenda of the 6^th African Ministers Conference on the Environment (AMCEN). The aim of the workshop was to reflect on the COP21 outcomes, the Sustainable Development goals and plan for the 2^nd United Nations Environmental Assembly scheduled for 23-27^th May 2016, Nairobi, Kenya.

The UNFCCC Paris Climate Agreement was analysed and Natural Justice’s Dr. Cath Traynor joined a panel presentation on the agreement and discussed the implications of the mitigation decisions for Africa, other issues covered included adaptation, finance, gender, and technology transfer.

The following day a consultative workshop was held on ‘Energy Transformation and Access’, participants discussed the African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI), which aims to enable the installation of large-scale renewable energy capacity on the African continent by 2020. Speakers shared post-Paris discussions on renewable energy, and what the initiative could mean in practical terms for Africa, breakout groups discussed how energy transformation and access could be accelerated in Africa.

Ms. Hindou Oumarou (PACJA Executive Committee), Representative for Hon. Dr. Khaled Fahmy (AMCEN Chair/Minister for Environment, Egypt), & Mr. Mithika Mwenda (PACJA Secretary General)

Representatives from both workshops drafted key messages for AMCEN, these included calling on their governments to play a leading role in the forthcoming April 22 UN Paris Agreement Signing in New York, to compel developed countries to sign and ratify the Agreement, to fulfill their commitments and indeed to raise their Nationally Determined Contributions ambition so that the collective goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5^oC above pre-industrial levels can be achieved. They also called for their governments to translate the provisions of the Agreement and other AU resolutions into domestic laws, policies, structures and development strategies. Regards to AREI, they called for comprehensive safeguards, the involvement of local communities in the energy transition, and for decentralized energy. Mr. Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General of PACJA presented the collective message on the first day of AMCEN.

During AMCEN Ministers reaffirmed that adaptation to climate change is a priority for Africa, they highlighted the need for adequate support for implementation of adaptation measures, and that developed countries must adhere to their pre-2020 commitments in the Paris Agreement.

Natural Justice has produced a Working Paper ‘The Binding Nature of the 2015 Paris Agreement and Outcomes for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ – please email cath.at.naturaljustice.org.za for a copy.