Empowering the Rural Poor through Access to Land

Three-fourths of the current 1.2 billion world’s poor are rural poor. To most of them, lack of access to and control over land and water resources is the key cause of their economic poverty, social exclusion, political subordination and cultural marginalization.

Recent global campaigns to end poverty, however laudable, tend to avoid the issue of democratizing access to and control over productive resources. On some occasions when such campaigns do address the issue of access to resources, they tend to avoid public policies that explicitly confront the structural and institutional causes of rural poverty.

If poverty is to be ended worldwide, anti-poverty campaigns have to focus on the rural world; and if rural poverty is to be eradicated, democratizing access to and control over land and water resources become central. Isabel Lavadenz Paccier, the UN agency IFAD’s  Director of the Latin America & Caribbean Division, discusses the relationship between land access, poverty reduction and economic growth in the following interview.

“Today we know after in-depth research that land is a key factor for economic growth and poverty reduction. Of course access to land will never be a sufficient condition, but it definitely plays a key role. That’s not to say that the control over land is central but definitely access by the poor to this resource is certainly key for poverty reduction and economic growth.”

“Lack of access to land or restricted access to land affects mainly the poor…I would say the poorest of rural areas. Therefore, IFAD’s role has been fundamental in the past decades – maybe because IFAD’s take is a bit different. The main focus of our support and policy dialogue is the people, communities, landless and indigenous peoples. IFAD thinks that there is a menu of options out there and the way in which we can support communities and farmer organizations and indigenous people to get access to land will be determined by the people and for the people, so this is the role that IFAD is playing and I think it will continue to play this fundamental role.

Access to natural resources…land, water…access to opportunities, are really led by the people and should be for the people. We do not believe that there is a recipe for a successful agrarian reform or better distribution of land; on the contrary, we think that every bottom up approach will have its merits. We also think that one needs to work at the policy level that the state, NGOs and farmer organizations have to play a role and they all have a role. The bulk of our work is in capacity building, institutional development, support to communities, farmer organizations and we’ll continue to do that. This is to say that civil society and organizations of the poor are central for land access but are central for everything related to development.

In IFAD we think that market-led reforms or state-led reforms are just part of the solution – depending on the country, depending on other factors and circumstances – but the element that will really make a difference is probably to be found in reforms where people are the ones that are fostering this reform and own the reform so I think depending on the particular economic context we have to see whether markets will play a role for some distributional effects or markets will not do it all and you will have the state and a civil society who contribute with their part.

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