Liz Alden Wily (2020)

Transcript of the Interview with Liz Alden Wily conducted by Line Algoed of the Center for CLT Innovation (September 30, 2020) 

Line Algoed: [00:00:54] Hello, Liz. It’s really nice to talk to you today. How are you?

Liz Alden Wily: [00:01:00] I’m very well. A bit overworked with community land matters, but fine.

Line Algoed: [00:01:07] I can imagine. And I’ve heard how busy you are. So, I’m really grateful that you’re willing to do this interview. I was actually really looking forward to catching up with you and hearing a bit more about your work nowadays. And of course, hearing a little bit more about the chapter that you wrote in our book On Common Ground.

To start this interview, can you just start telling us a little bit more how you got involved in a supporting community land rights and why you believe this work is important.

Liz Alden Wily: [00:01:41] My first experience in community land rights was when I was 22 years old in the Kalahari desert, and I went there as a very naive person to Botswana and set up the first school for Bushmen, or ‘Basarwa’ hunters-gatherers, as they were then known.  A borehole was sunk in the Desert for the San at Bere. This attracted pastoralists from all over the country with their cattle. There were many attempts to push the San, the hunter-gatherers out. So, at a young and naive age, and only equipped with a medieval English language degree, I became politicized about land rights, but it was a long, long time ago. And everything I learned was from the ground up. And then I just proceeded on that, for many years, mainly in Africa, looking and getting more and more interested in customary rights, and actually the similarity among countries. So, and then I get my academic work, really, since then. So, I’ve worked in many, many countries on these issues, including in Afghanistan and other post-conflict states and in many countries in Africa. And I have spent a lot of time over the last three decades getting new laws into place.

Line Algoed: [00:03:45] Impressive. Thank you very much for all that work. It’s absolutely great. So, another initial question, we were supposed to do this interview last week and you had to cancel, and you told us it was because of an emergency meeting in Kenya about the land rights of forest people. I was really curious to just know a little bit more about that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Liz Alden Wily: [00:04:10] Yes, for sure. So, I live in Kenya and I’m doing a lot of work with rural communities. We have a very good new land law, called the Community Land Act. Community lands, which are basically customary lands, cover over half the country. But those communities whose lands have been taken by the state, and for example, in the case of forest people, turned into protected areas, the state is very reluctant to recognize those lands as their lands. And so there have been endless evictions, a lot of violence, even some killings. And that particular case was when people who have wrongfully been given the land of the Mau Ogiek, who are a traditional forest people, were attacking these hunter-gatherers because government is now saying they should leave. It’s really problematic. So, there has been quite a lot of massive violence, many killings over the years. And it’s still an issue that is in the courts, in the domestic courts and in the continental court, the African Court of Human and People’s Rights, which rule favorably in their regard, in the regard of forest people, which government is, how can I say it, going very slow on applying the ruling. So that was just one crisis, but there are crises every day I’m afraid, at this time.

And it relates very much to the subject we’re talking about, which is, as I hope I show in that chapter in your book, that there is a whole revolution in understanding customary rights, which affects 3 billion people around the world, as property. And, there are new things happening, new laws coming in which really after some centuries in Latin America and one or two centuries, or three, in Asia and one century in Africa are now saying: Oops, these people do own their land after all. That’s where it links in with what we’re doing, but there is a struggle in every country on this. It’s not reached yet.

Line Algoed: [00:07:06] The other thing I wanted to ask you probably ties into to that a little bit. In the book On Common Ground, you call collective property, or community ownership, the “New Kid on the Block”. It’s an interesting title, I think it really interests people. Can you tell us what you mean with this? Because many of us will connect communal land with traditional land use, rather than an up and coming property regime. Can you say why you called it that way, the new kid on the block?

Liz Alden Wily: [00:07:49] Well, as you rightly say, Line, communal property, which is always community based, is far from new. It’s been around for several millennia. But what is new now is recognition that these are not just lands that are occupied and used, but that they are owned, that they are property in land. I mean, let’s just agree, we’re talking about land and property in this conversation. There are many other properties. But [here we talk about] property and land. And the big revolution is this change in saying: Yes, this land is owned and, moreover, it can be registered, documented, surveyed and registered as owned, which maybe we should talk about later, about what’s the role of that titling of registration. So that’s why it’s the ‘new kid on the block’. There are at least 160 countries around the world where there is thriving, customary and community-based property, most of which has a customary basis, so a traditional basis. And today, at least half of those countries are meeting this new reform and saying: Yes, this is not just land that is occupied and used, it is owned. And that’s very important, because it is overturning a very big colonial empire building orthodoxy, which basically, the idea that all property only exists if it’s recognized by the state is very deeply entrenched in Europe, 2000 years ago, beginning from Roman times. And then over with the industrial revolution, the notion of property was: It’s only property if it is a commodity, if it can be detached from the owner and sold. And it was also always assumed, for millennia, in fact, from Roman times until really the last century, definitely even in the initially in the Rights of Man in France, only a couple of centuries ago that property was individual, it was male, and it was always saleable. So that’s what the revolution at the moment is about, and which is still ongoing. Now, when it came to colonialism… Oh, and Line, often people don’t realize how much actually was colonized. Really, they’re only maximum 10 countries which were never colonized, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Japan, Korea. And so, when you realize that, you realize: Oh, so was the world empty? No, there were people living throughout the world and they were forced through colonialism. Initially, of course in Europe itself, British against the Irish, but then, in Latin America, they were forced to adopt the norms of the colonizing state. And it was in England, France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain’s interests to pretend that indigenous people, that communities on the ground didn’t own the land, they were just occupying it and using it. And that became such… And they also dismissed it as possibly being ownership. When communities said: No, we don’t sell our land! This is our territory. And it was remarkably consistent across the world as community based, whether that was a clan or a village or a tribe or some tribes. So, that orthodoxy became very rooted, that property only exists if it’s saleable, if it’s individual and if government records it. So, what has changed is all those things, in this revolution.

Line Algoed: [00:12:59] Because indeed still, nowadays, as I’ve learned from LandMark, for example, is that most of the world’s surface is still communally held. More than half.

Liz Alden Wily: [00:13:08]. Yes. At least half. No one really knows exactly how much, that’s a work in progress. But let me give you an example of one continent that I know well, Africa, and my own estimates are that 78% of the landmass in Africa is subject to community-based systems, i.e. customary land systems. We tend nowadays to call them community-based, because most of them are neo-customary, because a community is both a member of a community and often, but not always, carries on the norms generation to generation, but also citizens. A good example of that is women under many customary systems, they tended not to have many land rights, but now, citizens, they have equal land rights. So, I think the more correct term is neo-customary, but generically, we tend to use the word in the land sector ‘community-based.’

So, I would estimate there are over 3 million communities around the world who comprise, let’s say 3 billion people as members. And yes, indeed, their land area that they claim or historically claim, is about half the world’s land surface, 6 million hectares. Now, the trouble is a lot of that land, governments have taken over as their land along this long colonial history and which persist after colonialism, this idea: Oh, if you don’t have a title deed, you don’t own the land. So, you’re just a tenant of the state. You are there for as long as the state says you can be there. You can use the land in the way the state says you can use it. And, generally, not in all countries, there are exceptions, but generally any land that was commonly held, not only held by family for a hut or a house or a farm, but held by the community in undivided shares, like for forests or range lands, and really valuable swamp lands, used in one season for fishing, the next season for dry grazing. All these lands, the state claimed as unowned land, you will know the expression, terres sans maitres.  ‘Wastelands’ was the English version. The German version was Herrenlos. The Portuguese version was baldios. And millions and millions of these hectares were basically country to country deemed as national or government land, because there were no owners, even though they were anciently used and are still used today.

Line Algoed: [00:16:33] And when you say 78% of Africa…

Liz Alden Wily: [00:16:38] Yes, of the land mass of Africa, customary tenure. That includes the Sahara, which is a classic case of government saying this is wasteland, no one owns it. In actual fact, it has been anciently owned by pastoralists until now. But again, that’s a good example because Tunisia and Algeria, and Morocco to a lesser degree, they all provide now for communities to register land, including particularly grazing lands. They don’t generally include forests, which is an issue, but grazing lands, there is provision for communities to secure a form of title over those lands. And so that’s changing too. But again, to use Africa, at least 15 countries in Africa now provide very clearly a new community or village land acts or customary land laws for rural communities to hold land in common.

Line Algoed: [00:17:51] You sound positive, which is really hopeful I find. Because at the time, same time, like when you look at LandMark, for example, you see that a lot of that actual community owned or community-based lands, it’s also where the states or governments are implementing large scale projects, like mining projects or… it’s often at the same place. So, I must say that is a worrying thing. Because we know that community-based lands is actually very important in maintaining, preserving biodiversity, trying to stop, at least to a certain extent, climate change.

Liz Alden Wily: [00:18:46] It is the major threat and it comes down again to that colonial history of declaring all these lands national lands, state lands, unowned lands, often in many countries, government lands. Not just national lands, belonging to the community, but actually owned by some governments, millions and millions of hectares. And so, when you suddenly declare in a constitution or a law that customary land rights, community lands, are actually property and have to be acknowledged. There is such an entrenched history of state landlordism, over millions and millions of people on all continents, less so Europe, but most continents. This is why it’s quite revolutionary. You are changing the whole perception of A) what is property, but also you’re having to… What you take from the state to get communities, many governments don’t want to do. So, there has been quite a long history since the 1990s, when most of the new laws came into force. There were odd, exceptional cases like Mexico in the 1920s. But mostly it’s been in the last 30 years, where laws are enthusiastically passed. And then let me put this in a very lay way. And then the government turns around and says: We don’t want to lose that much land. So yes, there has been a steady pushback. In many, many countries where the government will say: Oh, but all forests must stay with the state or all waters, there’s been a rush of new water legislation, declaring all water in a country state land. That’s relatively new. Or, now, when it comes to mining, or hydrocarbons, large scale commercial agriculture, that land… Well, two things happened. It forces those laws to have to change how they operate, which is also a slow process. The mining sector is the most advanced, in that more and more mining laws are requiring the free and informed consent of local communities, are required to engage in benefit sharing. And even, where the community must get a certain percent of the profit, but the bottom line is at the end of the day, they can’t refuse because if they don’t get that consent, all these laws also say: Oh, but government in the last resort can take that land. Same with protected areas, which is a very interesting and topical issue. Particularly now that CBD [Convention on Biological Diversity] wants to double, bring protected areas up to 30% of the world’s surface. Admirable. But again, that new percentage, where is it going to come from, and many of us in the sector are engaged in making submissions saying, the growth area of protected area must be community owned forest, community. You don’t take it away and automatically make it state property. State governments have not proved particularly good conservatives in the first place, but particularly in the tropics. And secondly, we’re in the 21st century and there is a whole movement towards much more citizen and community inclusive strategies. So, as far as forests, range lands, which are also important for biodiversity, swamp lands, marshlands, all critical, most of those are in the hands presently of communities. But as you say, looking, for example, at the LandMark site, which is trying to make more and more maps of these areas, many of those lands are not yet confirmed as community property. And then of course we have a lot of retrenchment or revisionism, for example, even if a law is very clear, Brazil is a very good example, with indigenous people in Brazil, but then, you get a new government and a new administration, and it can change the law or it can use loopholes in the law. So, all this is going on. So, even though there are up to 73% of laws of countries that do provide for collective property and which if I can remind our listeners, this is socially collective property. It’s not corporate property. It has a social dimension. It’s people who know each other and have norms and have a governance system. They make the rules, they changed them every generation, which is one of its strengths, but the rulemaking and the governance, the management, the dispute management is all done by the community. Very different from a company or a cooperative actually. So, it’s a long battle. It’s a long process.

Line Algoed: [00:25:40] You write in the book, and you also talk about this now, about the importance of communities registering their lands as property, as collective property.

I was remembering when we first met, this was at this World Bank conference in Washington DC on “Land and Poverty” a few years back. What struck me then, it was my first time at such a conference, was that most of the presentations were about registering land, about property registry, cadaster, mapping and titling land in the Global South. There were several presentations of groups presenting new tools and instruments specifically designed to map communal land or customary land that could then be divided into individual plots. Basically, many of them were talking about privatizing communal land.

I remember being really surprised, probably naively, that the critique of Hernando De Soto has not become mainstream, that a lot of professionals still follow him, Hernando De Soto, that they still think that individual land titles are a sine qua non to lift communities out of poverty. Individual titling still is the preferred “land reform” strategy of corporations, national governments, World Bank, etc. In fact, there was hardly anyone, except for you, who talked about the importance of communal land ownership.

So, I guess my question is, yes, it is important as you describe in your chapter in the book, and as you talk about now, that communities register land as owners, communally, as communal owners, but how can communities avoid that the process of registering their land, and the partners that will be involved in this process, do precisely the opposite: by putting community’s land on the map, it becomes up for grabs in the “global land rush” as you describe it? Are certain communities right to be reluctant about having their lands surveyed and registered, because they’re afraid that it’s going to be put on the market?

Liz Alden Wily: [00:28:15] Okay. There are several points here we need to cover. First is, by the way, if I can say about Hernando De Soto. His book, The Mystery of Capital, came out in the year 2000 and I forget the year we first met, but certainly in that decade, the World Bank conferences began in the 1990s, certainly in the 2000’s, it was very much a hot topic. Secondly, I don’t remember the year, but every year they select one topic and it may have been that year, the main topic was on tools and registration.

Some other points: we need to separate titling from individualization, or also by the way, DeSoto became very famous and he wrote in a very snappy way, but there was nothing new. He was rehashing the whole orthodoxy that property only exists if it’s saleable property, it means you can get collateral. It means you can sell it, and buy that bigger place, et cetera, et cetera. Now we can come back to whether any of that has proven the case. In fact, let me address that, right now: there are very few banks around the world who accept the property as the only basis of collateral of a loan. They want to see you’re going to repay the loan. So, they generally insist on seeing a salary. Not even just a steady income, but they use their rating of that, which is a salary, a proven salary. So, right there, millions, if not several billion poor are excluded from getting mortgages anyway, even if they have a title. But what has happened is this: because of the pressure on the lands, which has gone over the last century in waves of acceleration, and then we had a big foreign investment wave in the 1990s, and then after the financial crash, we had another big wave of massive globalized investment. And we also always had, and still have governments looking for big investors. They claim that’s for jobs, often it is, but it’s for income and for development of the country.

So, what we have at the moment is a global land grab that is happening. It’s no longer an event. It is a permanent condition where in Africa, for example, the African development Bank, the African banks, the African Union, the Economic Commission for Africa have a plan to link up all African states. So, they’re proposing to have roads, rail, airports, water, hydroelectricity throughout the continent. And so, you don’t just get private investors to set up a massive soybean or a vessel farm, wheat farm, or oil and gas or wind farms covering thousands of hectares, you get massive land grabbing of communities’ lands for infrastructure.

So suddenly communities find the bulldozers come in and taking 10 kilometers this way, and that, massive fuel oil pipeline and road, taking hundreds of thousand hectares, particularly of pastural lands at the moment. So, we’re seeing all the hinterlands in Africa opening up with these massive connections through companies.

Now that’s happening everywhere else too. And there’s this whole wave of new investors. There are the old, still frontline investors, which tend to be European and American. But there are also very wealthy, large investors like China, for example, and then behind them, local investors and private investors, all looking. There is a massive threat to the land. Now, the reason I elaborate this is just at the time where communities around the world being recognized as: you’re not squatters on unowned lands, you are not tenants of the state. These are your lands. And we have to find a way to formalize that. At the same time that’s happening, you’ve got this massive search and land takings. So, this is why, even people like myself who perhaps in 1992, thought that identifying each community’s lands, surveying it, adjudicating it, demarcating it, and registering it, and then the community getting a copy of the page and the register, which is like a ledger in government, increasingly digitized, but still many, many registers of paper registers, particularly in Asia, Africa, some Latin American States and getting that piece of title is that extra way to say: No, you even agreed this was our land. Don’t come to us and tell us, this is not our land. It’s become very, very important.

So those ideas of titling have also shifted. Now, you noted at that conference, a lot of people still talking about individualization and you’re absolutely right. I would say the World Bank, which you’ve given an example of, it’s not a monolith and there are many in the Bank who do support that. And there are many in the Bank who do not, who are actually promoting quite significantly, collective land title, and not for the purpose of subdivision. Now, one of the reasons for this, which I think I mentioned in the chapter, and it’s always surprising to people that remarkably little of a community’s land, whether in Vanuatu or whether in Bolivia or whether in Mali, or in Tanzania, very little of it is actually farmed. As FAO tells us, only 12% of land around the world is actually farmed. Secondly, most of the land of communities, there are exceptions where it’s very densely populated, which tends to be in very fertile areas and often around mountains, but most community land is made up of what we call natural communal resources. They’re not farms, they’re not houses, they’re not businesses. They are the forests, the range lands, the swamp lands, the mountains, the ritual sites. And that is why so many communities never wanted to have any title because the value of the land is actually in the shared non-farmlands.

And that’s also why people like myself who are at heart political economists and want to see more inclusion, do not want to see those very valuable assets just claimed and disposed of by the state. No one in the sector is looking just for the house and farm to be secure. They’re looking for all the shared lands to also be secured.

So, titling has become very important. And in this revolution or this reform I’m talking about, titling of family property, which is more important often in some countries I know, in some countries in Africa, Gabon, for example, family property is stronger in many ways, except among Hunter Gatherers, then community property, because say very large extended farms, maybe a thousand hectares each family, or at least several hundred hectares, which includes its own forest.

So, this can be quite important, but there is this tension going on. Final thing is: what about individual titling? In fact, this country where I live is a very good example. In the 1970s, after independence, the late sixties, independence was in 63, late sixties, seventies, the government passed a law, trying to settle down pastoralists and they provided each group with vast lands, which was good and necessary. But they really put pressure on them. They got a group ranch, but it was vested in nine representatives. A number which proved highly problematic. And secondly, they put pressure on these pastoralists to subdivide the land. Complete failure. Although it became by law necessary to subdivide, it caused enormous dispossession because all women were not on the register. No women were on the register, many poor families were not registered. So whole towns were set up when the elite subdivided the ranch. So, the Community Land Act of 2016 requires the remaining group branches to become community lands. And every single man and woman, 18 years above, has to be registered as a co-owner of the property.

So, there are still a lot of people who think that an individual title is the only good title. I would not say that that is gone. This is still in transition. However, most new laws also recognize that even in the past, but today, especially within a community land, which can be very large often, members do want some security on their house, especially if they have invested money, very scarce savings and a roof and windows and glass. Also, with land pressure, they want to be sure their permanent farm is not going to be taken away. So what we’re seeing around the world, you get this in Oceania, in some Asian states, and you also get it all over Africa, is the community gets the title, owns the land, but a family, or if they prefer an individual can get a certificate of occupancy and use to a particular parcel. So, they don’t own that land, but although they own it as a co-owner, they own the exclusive right to occupying and using that land. So that’s the main thematic compromise we’re beginning to see in this reform. And, but there are still some people, you’re quite right and some agencies who still think, let’s subdivide it all.

Line Algoed: [00:41:58]

Liz, we both do solidarity work with the people of Barbuda, part of the twin state Antigua and Barbuda, where a lot of the things that you’re talking about come back. There is the effort of the central government, especially after the hurricanes that happened in 2017, but even before, is trying to undo the Barbuda Land Act of 2007, which recognizes that land in Barbuda is owned in common by all Barbudans, which has effectively been so for several centuries. A lot of the things that you’ve discussed, the bulldozers coming in, the attempts to privatize the lands, the use of pristine beaches in this case, very important for biodiversity on the island, in the entire region, for marine resources that people depend on for their livelihoods, for their lives. Why would you say the case of this very small island of less than 2000 inhabitants is so important globally?

Liz Alden Wily: [00:43:14] That’s a very good question. First of all, I have some bad news for you. The Barbuda community did go to court, to try and stop, to put a stay on the repeal of that very important Barbuda Land Act, not an old act, 2007, but the court rejected their appeal. And it’s very interesting for what we’ve been discussing because it rejected it on very old-fashioned grounds. One: that they couldn’t possibly own that land because they couldn’t sell it, nor could they lease it. Now those, globally, in global international law, in the laws of so many countries, that was completely unsound, legally unsound.

Now the Barbudans have the opportunity to appeal on legal grounds, appeal the grounds on which that decision was made, in the Privy Council. Antigua and Barbuda is one of the Commonwealth countries that still uses the Queen’s privy council, the colonial council as its court of last resort.

There is some doubt that the lawyer of the community will get organized in time, there is a time limit. So that may not be happening, which would be very sad because that means that Barbudans are landless, like colonial times, they are just there at the will of the state. And it is extremely unfortunate, because among all the Afro descendants, the descendants of the 6 million African slaves sent to sugar plantations all through much of Latin America, they had secured already by 2007 a logical community land title, and there are circumstances. We don’t have time to go into why that was Barbuda. Why it’s been rejected, as you say, Line, nothing new.

And the hurricane Irma of 2017 just was a trigger or an excuse to pursue that, to clear the island of the people and declare that this land was not community property, it was government property, but government was going to be very nice and give them all, for $1, they could get a title deed to their own house.

Now, again, this phrase, the question is the house is not where the buyer is. The house is in that communal right, their shared ownership, their co-ownership of this beautiful island, which has enormous potentials for conservation projects, for tourism at a sustainable level, fishing, and research; a tremendous potential. Which has been taken away from them and they in return are to get a freehold title to a piece of land, which has always been theirs, and just for the house plot or for the business premises. So, why it’s so important? We have globally, we have seen many governments, Duterte, Bolsonaro, there is a whole list of them who are undermining community land rights, customary indigenous people land rights in a very dramatic way. And in the process also causing massive environmental damage. We’re seeing that, we have not seen much before the Barbuda instance, of completely overturning their rights as if saying, you’re back three centuries ago. You’re just: we decide everything for you. We’ll give you some food. We’ll not give you a house, but really you don’t turn down nothing. And it’s also very important internationally, in international law, because Afro descendants, many of whom have been in Latin America and in America, for four centuries, they are recognized now as customary landowners.

And so that includes many, many, many millions of Brazilians who, we all know Brazilians are about 40%, if not 50% of African descent, this affects everybody. When a country, however small, completely denies the land rights of customary landings. So that’s why I’m concerned, and I know you’re concerned too.

Line Algoed: [00:49:32] We have to keep helping them in their fight because I know they’re not giving it up, because they say: It’s our survival, it’s nothing less than that.

Liz Alden Wily: [00:49:44] I would like to mention another element, which is quite common too, which you have experienced, I believe, in Barbuda in that case, you know, often communities are often divided within themselves and there are definitely some Barbudans who actually really just want a title deed for their house. And there is a lot of, forgive me saying this and, but I’ve seen a lot of documentation suggesting a lot of malfeasance corruption, bribing, politicians bribing some Barbudans. And that is not rare, unfortunately, in the 21st century where there is very class-ridden society. And I think there are often elites within rural communities and every country who can sometimes work against the interests of the majority. But I think this too much people are too interconnected among themselves too aware of their rights these days. It is tough. Land defenders are dying all the time, but I think it’s very difficult. I think I say this in that chapter. It’s very difficult to put that back in the box.

Line Algoed: [00:51:18] Let’s start finishing because we actually ran over time a little bit, but it’s so interesting. But as a last question, Liz. You talk about the Pandora’s box in your chapter. What is your prediction for the future of communal land ownership?

Liz Alden Wily: [00:51:43] I do think that, simply based on the type of lands involved, that they are not truly collective. A forest doesn’t work so well, a natural indigenous forest, when it’s subdivided and fenced into little plots. Range lands definitely don’t work through subdivision and we have so much evidence of that. Namibia, one third of the commercial ranchers are unusable because of overgrazing and bush encroachments. There’s a reason why pastoralists are pastoral, nomadic within areas, for example. So, the nature of these lands, there’s potentially five and a half billion hectares, they call for collective ownership. The big transition is how far… We also have democratization, end of dictatorships, always a battle also. So, we’re seeing very high demand for governments to cease behaving as landlords. That is a colonial legacy. Many people now are saying, a government should be legal advisor, lawmaker at the parliament, should be the monitor, should be the rule maker, but it should not hold lands. It should not. That makes the dirty hands and its citizens. And of course, in agrarian economy and most economies are not purely industrial where everybody lives in the city, they are agro-industrial or agricultural agrarian, where land and resources are the basis of the economy. It really fits that collective entitlement and socially collective entitlement, including poor citizens, is becoming a major, major form of property. You know, there are many forms, individual types, but becomes a major paradigm, a major form of property, socially collective titling. And it affects several billion people, I think by the end of the century, it will be very entrenched, very widely spread. But, it is going to be a continuing battle. To get there and there’s a lot more work to do.

Line Algoed: [00:54:54] I can imagine that. And, thank you so much, Liz. I think this was really, really interesting.

And I thank you for all the important work that you’re doing in helping these communities battle and protect these communal land rights. So, I suggest we finish here this interview.

Liz Alden Wily: [00:55:19] Thank you, we’ve got lots more to talk about.

Line Algoed: [00:55:22] We do hope that we can continue the conversation, also with the people who have been listening to this. So, let’s talk again. Thank you so much. Bye.

David Smith: [00:55:38] And so then it just remains for me to thank our two very special guests today. Line Algoed in Belgium and Liz Alden Wily all the way in Africa.

Thank you for that fascinating conversation. If you enjoyed that, which I’m sure you will have, I very much encourage you to visit the Center for Community Land Trust Innovation website at www.cltweb.org where you can find similar interviews from contributing authors to the book On Common Ground, which was published in June, 2020 by Tierra Nostra press and is available still at all good and some not so good online retailers. I encourage you to go out and buy a copy. Other than that, just to say, take care, keep wearing a mask, keep pulling down some statues, November 3rd is not too far away. Thank you for joining us this afternoon and check back in the Center soon to see some new content.