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18 March 2016: LANDac Masterclass at the World Bank Conference Land & Poverty

World Bank Conference on Land & Poverty 2016

Scaling up responsible land governance

Masterclass: Multi-stakeholder dialogue in land governance: lessons learned and ways forward

Room MC C2-131

 

On Friday 18 March, LANDac and its partners are organizing a Masterclass on experiences and lessons learned regarding multi-stakeholder approaches in land governance.

 

The question ‘Under what conditions can foreign and domestic agribusiness contribute to food security and inclusive and sustainable development in Africa, Asia and Latin America?’, framed the launch of the LANDforum in 2013, a Netherlands-hosted think tank comprised of private sector representatives, policy makers, practitioners and researchers from a number of selected countries. The main objectives of the Forum were: facilitating the systematic exchange of information between countries over an extended period; facilitating dialogue between people from different countries and sectors that ordinarily do not interact; allowing for a comparative approach within a mix of ‘target’ countries and ‘investor’ countries, including south-south relationships. After three years, the LANDforum has yielded a number of important practical insights, which will be presented in this Masterclass:

 

(1) Based on the LANDforum and other MSD approaches in the Netherlands, including LANDac and a dialogue chaired by the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation (involving key corporate and Dutch public partners, research institutes and NGOs who work on land-related issues) we will discuss the questions: what is the utility of MSDs in improving land governance? What are models for productive exchange and collaboration? How to achieve real changes on the ground through MSD approaches?

 

(2) The LANDforum showed a shared interest among sectors in inclusive business. Whereas inclusive business as a response to adverse effects of large-scale investments in agriculture is a theme that has recently become integral to donor and government development strategies (even more so in the context of SDGs), there is insufficient understanding of the social performance of different types of inclusive businesses in different contexts. Also, there is often lack of critical reflection on whether and to what extent and under what conditions inclusive businesses are in fact inclusive. This reduces the capacity of inclusive development strategies to deliver impacts at scale and raises a second key question of the LANDforum and to be discussed in this Masterclass: What is the impact of inclusive business on local development, including food security?

 

(3) Most attention in current debates has departed from a private sector point of view: how to make businesses more inclusive (through CSR, government policies, civil society participation etc.). By creating a level playing field, the LANDforum has provided an important platform for sharing ideas about the importance of community-based ideas: What do we know about grass-roots investment initiatives?

 

This Masterclass shows experiences with MSDs and presents and discusses the main outcomes of these processes in the Netherlands. Participants will learn about practical tools for working in MSDs, and will be informed about the main issues coming out of the processes. With MSD becoming an integral part of land governance related projects and programmes this provides useful guidance and practical ideas for researchers, policy makers and practitioners. The Masterclass prepares for the design of a second phase of the LANDforum and aims to involve participants during this Masterclass in the process.

 

A roundtable setting will be used to optimize interaction. The Masterclass is kickstarted with a 30-minute presentation and discussion on the lessons emanated from the LANDforum. In the subsequent 60 minutes, five LANDforum members will facilitate discussions on the three questions posed above.

 

This roundtable is based on collaborative efforts between Dutch and international experts in a range of developing countries.

 

More information about the Conference: World Bank Conference Land & Poverty