Community Land Trusts and Informal Settlements in the Global South

Global South Book Cover

Available now worldwide, 158 pp.
PAPERBACK ISBN 9781736275917 $15.00 US
EBOOK ISBN 9781736275924 $5.00 US

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Community Land Trusts and Informal Settlements in the Global South is the fifth in our monograph series, with seven essays exploring the growth of CLTs in the Global South.

The fertile seedbed for CLT development in this part of the world has been informal settlements. These are residential areas where people have built their own homes, usually without regard for whatever governmental standards, codes, or regulations that might exist. They have sited their self-built homes, moreover, on lands to which they lack a legal right of ownership or occupancy.  Buildings, community ties, and a way of life have become firmly established, even as the residents’ tenure has remained precarious.

Community land trusts are being promoted by community activists in the Global South as a resident-led strategy for formalizing tenure and securing people’s homes in communities like these. Several chapters in the present monograph focus on the formation or exploration of CLTs in urban areas, including densely populated informal settlements in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Voi, Kenya; Karachi, Pakistan; and Dhaka, Bangladesh. Another chapter focuses on a remote rural area of Honduras, where a CLT is working to secure the watersheds on which widely dispersed mountain villages depend.

Six of the seven essays contained in this monograph were selected from On Common Ground: International Perspectives on the Community Land Trust, published in June 2020. A seventh essay, written more recently, was added to provide a context for the others. They all have a similar focus on using community-owned land to regularize tenure in informal settlements.

Throughout the world, but especially in the Global South, there are millions of people who occupy urban or rural lands – or who make use of land-based resources like water, forests, pastures, and arable fields – without possessing a legally protected, formally registered right to do so. Their tenure is informal and insecure. Displacement looms as an ever-present possibility.

The chapters contained in this monograph discuss various configurations and applications of the community land trust as a strategic response to informality, promoting and protecting security of tenure for vulnerable populations.

  • Chapter 1: Patricia Basile & Meagan M. Ehlenz, “Examining Responses to Informality in the Global South: A Framework for Community Land trusts and Informal Settlements.”
  • Chapter 2: Line Algoed, María E. Hernández-Torrales, Lyvia Rodriguez Del Valle & Karla Torres Sueiro “Seeding the CLT in Latin America and the Caribbean: Origins, Achievements, and the Proof-of-concept Example of the Caño Martin Peña CLT”
  • Chapter 3: Tarcyla Fidalgo Ribeiro, Line Algoed, María E. Hernández-Torrales, Alejandro Cotté Morales & Theresa Williamson, “Community Land Trusts in Informal Settlements: Adapting Features of Puerto Rico’s Caño Martín Peña CLT to Address Land Insecurity in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.”
  • Chapter 4: Claire Simonneau & Ellen Bassett, with Emmanuel Midheme, “Seeding the CLT in Africa: Lessons from the Early Efforts to Establish Community Land Trusts in Kenya.”
  • Chapter 5: Hannah Sholder & Arif Hasan, “The Origins and Evolution of the CLT Model in South Asia.”
  • Chapter 6: Kirby White & Nola White, “A Watershed Land Trust in Honduras: Profile of the Fundacion Eco Verde Sostenible.”
  • Chapter 7: Liz Alden Wily, “Challenges for the New Kid on the Block – Collective Property.”