Land Rights and Climate Change

Legal empowerment can empower poor people and communities with the legal tools they need to protect themselves from droughts, deforestation, desertification, sea-level rise, flooding and the other impacts of climate change. At the same time, legal empowerment can enhance poor people's access to new climate financing opportunities such as the carbon markets. Secure land rights, for example, will be critical to ensuring that poor farming communities can attract carbon financing for their efforts to rehabilitate forests, grasslands and agricultural land. The result could therefore produce a triple dividend: improving livelihood security, stimulating economic development and helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.