Land Tenure Insecurity and Climate Adaptation: Socio-Environmental Realities in Colombia and Implications for Integrated Environmental Rights and Participatory Policy

By: Brianna Castro and Christina Kuntz

This research was originally published as a chapter in: Holland, M.B., Masuda, Y.J., Robinson, B.E. (eds) Land Tenure Security and Sustainable Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Abstract

This chapter explores how land tenure impacts households’ resilience and adaptive capacity in the face of a changing climate. Following a review of the ways in which climate change adds pressure to land availability and natural resources, the chapter highlights how land tenure can constrain individuals’ options to adapt to shifting environmental conditions. An exploration of a case study of protracted drought in an agricultural region of Bolivar, Colombia, demonstrates how landlessness, socioeconomic vulnerability, and confusion regarding complicated land tenure policies in a post-conflict environment guided families’ resilience strategies and adaptive capacities. This case demonstrates that it is necessary to nuance understandings of (in)secure tenure to include local knowledge of land policies and precarious tenure claims as predictors of adaptive capacities in vulnerable, climate-stressed regions.

Our planet has warmed 1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a land- mark special report demonstrating how the climate has changed and the future impacts that could be avoided if continued global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To do so requires reaching ‘net zero’ carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, which could only be accomplished by overhauling the global economy. Even with warming limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, 70–90% of coral reefs will be lost, 14% of the world population will experience extreme heat waves about every five years, droughts will be more frequent, and sea levels will continue to rise (IPCC, 2018). Global commitment to climate mitigation is evident in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which include climate change mitigation and natural resource protection, the Paris Accords signed in 2016 agreeing to mitigate climate change through lowered greenhouse gas emissions, and national-level climate adaptation plans. However, progress toward these goals to date has been limited and CO2 emissions persist at unmitigated rates.

While cities, national governments, the private sector, and intergovernmental organizations work out whether and how to mitigate climate change through net-zero CO2 emissions, communities face more frequent and severe quick-onset disasters as well as gradual changes in sea- sons, temperatures, and rainfall. Global temperatures are rising, especially in the tropics, as is the incidence of extreme hot and extreme cold days, and coastal land is disappearing into the sea at rapid rates (IPCC, 2018). Multi-scalar climate adaptation in response to these impacts is already occurring through the adjustment of natural and human systems. In rural developing regions, adaptation to climate change most often involves changes in resource use. Unlike in more urbanized areas where planned adaptation prioritizes improved infrastructure or coordinated state programs, in the rural developing world households turn to adapting their homes and livelihoods on their own (Adger et al., 2003; Smit et al., 2000; Masuda et al., 2019). This local-level, autonomous adaptation requires new ways of using land in place, temporary mobility during environmental stress, or permanent migration (Fankhauser et al., 1999). Whether planned or autonomous, adaptation in the rural developing world is intrinsically connected to land tenure security, which can enable or impede people’s capacity to adapt to shifting resource availability and climate conditions.

We take this insight—that adaptation in the rural developing world hinges on security of rights and access to land and resources—as our starting point for this chapter on climate adaptation and land tenure security. After discussing how climate change squeezes resources and the socioeconomic impacts of that pressure, we review research on land tenure security and climate change adaptation. We then examine the connection of complex land tenure history and climate stress in Colombia, South America, one of the world’s most biodiverse countries where complicated tenure has increased displacement, inequalities, conflict, and natural resource destruction, thus resulting in increased social vulnerability and impeded climate adaptation for rural populations. We use a protracted drought in the rural Montes de María region of Colombia to illustrate how households’ adaptations are impacted by (mis)understandings of their rights to land and tenure laws in a country in a transitional era toward post-conflict. As land tenure realities and the effects of climate change vary drastically by location, studying specific cases in the rural, developing world can help policymakers better understand the relation- ships between these variables. Policy that is flexible, attuned to environ- mental rights, and is coupled with effective citizen participation models can help ensure sustainable implementation of land tenure programs and heightened climate adaptation planning for some of the most vulnerable communities.

Winners and Losers in the Climate Change Landscape

The changing climate significantly impacts land by causing it to be degraded or disappear. As land is disappearing and degrading, competition over freshwater access and land resources increases in tandem. Though the global community works to mitigate climate change impacts, its effects on land persist and are not experienced equally across the globe. Furthermore, the states that contribute most to human-caused climate change through emissions experience less of these land impacts than states that have contributed least to rising temperatures (Andrew et al., 2018).

Global sea levels have been on the rise for a century, but the rate of rising waters has escalated over the past few decades and is expected to accelerate dramatically in the decades to come (IPCC, 2018). The effects of seas rising at accelerated rates are intensified by increased settlement along coastlines over recent decades made possible through hardened infrastructure and engineered coastal protection through dikes, sea walls, and levees. These infrastructural protections, however, were built based on past estimates of rising seas rather than the accelerated pace of sea level rise due to climate change (IPCC, 2018). Coastal land and Pacific Islands are subsiding due to the sea level rise, and this land disappearance will increase at an exponential pace. Habitable land on the island of Nuatambu, for example, has decreased by over 50% since 2011 (Albert et al., 2016) and five Pacific Islands have already disappeared[1]. Up to 180 million people worldwide are directly at risk of the sea submerging the land where they live, and over 1 billion people live in low-elevation coastal zones that will experience the effects of proximate rising seas (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018; Neumann et al., 2015). These effects include eroded coast- lines and saltwater infusion, which changes vegetation and wildlife resources that communities depend on for their livelihoods, as well as inhibits agriculture in coastal areas. Land disappearing in the sea creates complicated land tenure dilemmas including, for example, whether or not those who owned the land that disappears will be compensated, if those without secure tenure who lose the land on which they lived have any recourse, and how to resettle communities on land projected to be uninhabitable due to sea level rise (IPCC, 2018).

While sea level rise impacts are experienced along coastlines, land degradation permeates the global landscape and concentrates in tropical and subtropical regions. Shifts in average temperatures, extreme hot and cold days, and precipitation add increasing pressure to existing land resources through shifts in soil, water availability, and biodiversity. Increased droughts and soil erosion cause land degradation and force changes in the use of arable land (Ahmed et al., 2016). Countries in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere subtropics expect the greatest impacts on eco- nomic growth caused by climate change. Net reductions in the harvests of maize, rice, wheat, and other cereal crops are expected and will be significantly worse in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018).

In the face of these direct climate impacts, the international community demonstrates commitment to mitigating climate change in a number of ways. As of April 2019, 185 parties committed to maintain the global average temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius through the Paris Agreement. The international commitment to increasing resilience and adaptive capacity, as well as mitigating climate change, is outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG #13, and global finance flows to fund climate mitigation and adaptation increased 17% in the year after the Paris Agreement was reached (United Nations, 2018). This commitment continues at the national and subnational levels, where governments have created national, sub-national, and city-level climate adaptation plans outlining the necessary steps to adapt physical and social infrastructure to protect populations from climate hazards. These large-scale climate mitigation efforts, however, disproportionately shift how land is used in developing countries (Sunderlin et al., 2018).

Though the global community has made ambitious commitments to climate mitigation and adaptation, these commitments are outpaced by the rate at which the climate is changing. Catching up to the pace of climate change requires quicker economic restructuring to eliminate harmful greenhouse gas emissions, access to climate finance needs to be accelerated, and adaptation efforts rescaled to match climate hazards (United Nations, 2018; IPCC, 2018). While the global average forest loss is slowing down and increased financial resources are contributing to biodiversity protection, biodiversity loss and land degradation continue at disturbing rates and forest loss has spiked in key places. Trends of deforestation and emissions show that global commitments are not enough as greenhouse gas emissions reached record highs in 2017, after the Paris Accords were signed, and more than one-fifth of the Earth’s total land area has been degraded since the turn of the century by human- induced processes such as cropland expansion and urbanization (United Nations, 2018).

These land effects of climate change have variable impacts globally. Those who are more socioeconomically vulnerable experience more harm as the climate changes (Morton, 2007; Thomas & Twyman, 2005). There is stark inequality in the way countries bear the brunt of climate impacts globally—where the majority of countries with the highest emissions are the least vulnerable to climate change impacts. At the same time, of the lowest greenhouse gas emission countries, the majority are extremely vulnerable to climate impacts (Althor et al., 2016). Developing countries are more likely to experience less habitable land, less hospitable conditions for human settlement, and less food and water availability (Morton, 2007). Areas most at risk of forest degradation, desertification, rising seas, encroaching salt water, and loss of biodiversity are found in developing countries and at the margins of developed countries such as tribal communities in coastal North America. The tropics and Southern Hemisphere subtropics expect the greatest impacts on economic growth resulting from climate change as well (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018). Such losses in developing countries are rooted in climate change, combined with long histories of colonization and development (O’Brien & Leichenko, 2000; Paprocki, 2018).

The Tangled Web of Land Tenure Security and Adaptation

‘Adaptation’ to climate change (as used by the IPCC) describes the steps taken to decrease the climate hazard vulnerability of populations and infrastructure (2018). Though adaptation can occur at any scale (international, national, or local), our focus is on local-level adaptation that occurs either in anticipation of future climate risks or during climate stress. Adger et al. (2009) outline three moments when climate adaptation occurs—the first adaptation response occurs when an environmental condition necessitates an adaptation response. This would be when a farmer who relies on rain-fed agriculture waits to plant seeds, for example, because the seasonal rains have not begun when expected. The second moment occurs when the initial adaptation becomes insufficient and stops working. In this case, the same rural farmer has waited to plant their seeds but the rain season never arrives and planting is not feasible. If drought conditions continue into the following harvest season, they may adapt in additional ways, such as planting in a different location or planting without rain and bringing water from nearby freshwater sources. Typically, these second phase adaptations require greater resources in the form of financial investments, tools, or knowledge. A third moment, and the most extreme, is when the nature of the relationship between the human and their environment has substantially changed. This would mean that a farmer could no longer productively farm on that land and their land-use activity must shift entirely. Rural dwellers may adapt through either temporary or permanent migration of one or more house- hold members after exhausting options for autonomous climate adaptations in place (Castro, 2019; Meze-Hausken, 2008; Stark & Bloom, 1985). In some cases, adaptations in place fail but populations remain ‘trapped’ in place amid climate stress due to socioeconomic factors (Black et al., 2013; Schewel, 2019).

In the climate change landscape, where communities in rural develop- ing zones face rapid and unpredictable climate hazards, the long-term development goal should be to foster adaptable and flexible livelihoods to weather these pivotal thresholds of adaptation (Adger et al., 2009; Bardsley & Hugo, 2010). Local- and regional-level studies of adaptation in resource-dependent societies show considerable flexibility and resource- fulness to climate change (Mortimore & Adams, 2001; Reij & Waters- Bayer, 2014). Depending on the local-level context, communities rely on different mechanisms and perspectives in their adaptations. In Cameroon, rural villages coordinate their adaptations to environmental stress through local-level institutions that are cornerstones of rural life and land management in particular. These coordinated efforts improve villages’ abilities to be more resilient to climate-related stress through forest protections, coordinating land use during crisis, and providing insurance through sav- ings groups for future emergencies (Brown & Sonwa, 2015). In Ghana, social vulnerability and dependence on climate-sensitive occupations require adaptation among farmers. Frequent adaptations include crop diversification, engagement in non-farm secondary employment, rural- urban migration, and increasing the amount of land farmed (Dumenu & Obeng, 2016). Yet in the Rural Sahel, though farmers are aware of cli- mate change, they often attribute issues of land use and livelihood change to economic, political, and social rather than climate factors. As such, their adaptations in land use and livelihoods due to climate stressors are attuned to non-climate, rather than climate, factors emphasizing the importance of framing climate change as an adaptation driver in adaptation programs and policies to ensure climate-friendly land-use adaptation responses (Mertz et al., 2009).

Climate change is a threat multiplier, however, which intensifies existing risks across the board in terms of human security and conflict in climate-vulnerable regions (Unruh & Abdul-Jalil, 2012), while the resulting droughts and floods add pressure to land and land use due to strategies employed in the early phases of local adaptation and mitigation. Early-stage adaptations include working land harder, depleting resources on the land itself (Morton, 2007). Local-level adaptation mechanisms such as those described here will face increasing pressures as climate impacts escalate and resource pressures can provoke conflict. The relationship between land tenure security and climate adaptation functions in a number of ways as rural dwellers adapt in place and later through adaptive migration. Shifts in land tenure can be expected as landowners farm more land to increase crop yields, and therefore acquire more land to do so. Climate change creates insecure tenure by making it more difficult for farmers to support and maintain the land currently in their possession during climate stress. The opposite is also true, depending on the context, where landowning farmers sell parts of their land for financial resources to cope with failed harvests. Farmers may also adapt by temporarily leaving their land with the expectation of return once the land has recovered, but others may occupy the land without permission during this period, resulting in tenure conflict over land claims after the climate crisis subsides. This buying, selling, and illicit acquisition of land in the context of climate stress creates vulnerability and the possibility of exploitation either among farmers with varying resources or by large landowners or multinational corporations interested in acquiring land.

When in situ adaptations fail, mobility is the most important adaptation to climate stress especially in response to variations in rainfall and droughts. Land tenure insecurity constrains families’ either temporary or permanent mobility. During climate stress, farmers without formalized land tenure are likely to exhibit greater mobility in search of more hospitable farming environments. These mobile farmers without land tenure security may encroach and individuate communal lands or lands with questionable tenure (Morton, 2007). Such mobility without tenure increases social vulnerability and often pushes families to the most climate-vulnerable areas, those considered unfit for tenure and residence along land prone to landslides, above marsh water, or at the borders of nearby municipalities.

Complicated Land Tenure in Colombia (Past and Present)

Socio-political events throughout Colombian history have created lasting complexities in land tenure, especially in rural communities. In such communities, households may make climate-adaptation decisions based on their understanding of precarious rights to land and resources. Rural inhabitants in Colombia have a profound connection with, and dependence on, land in ways that urban populations do not. In rural settings, ‘land’ dictates people’s livelihoods, production methods, consumption patterns, and interactions with the larger society. The control of land has been one of, if not the most, influential perpetrators of Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict, which has lasted for over 60 years and has dramatically affected Colombia’s people and natural resources. As the demand for agricultural products increased in the 1920s, so did the demand for land (del Pilar Lopez-Uribe & Sanchez Torres, 2018). However, most small- holder farmers did not have formal land titles, and agrarian reforms starting in the 1930s inadequately protected their land rights. All of these factors allowed for the privatization of rural land by larger landowners. As a result, groups of smallholder farmers organized themselves to form revolutionary movements that would later evolve into guerrilla groups in order to reclaim rural land on which they used to farm but no longer had access (Alfonso Sierra et al., 2011).

As these smallholder farmer-based groups gained power, paramilitary groups formed to protect private property, which escalated the conflict. In rural areas that lacked a strong state presence, guerrilla and/or para- military groups were typically the main authorities who oversaw and established rules. This, along with unequal land distribution, weak land tenure, and poverty in rural Colombia, perpetuated the further appropriation of rural land, especially for small farmers and ethnic communities (Historical Memory Group, 2016). Particularly since the 1990s and 2000s, deregulated global markets and new laws have helped dismantle paramilitary groups. However, this has also created new opportunities for private agricultural and industrial projects to acquire land and natural resources in rural areas with weak tenure (Alfonso Sierra et al., 2011). These large industries have added complexities to tenure and environmental policy (Planeta Paz & Oxfam, 2017).

Today Colombia has the world’s second-largest population of force- fully displaced people. According to the UNHCR, in 2018, there were estimated 8 million Colombians who had been forcefully displaced, all of whom experience increased tenure insecurity. In the case of Colombia, 98% of those forcefully displaced remain in Colombia (UNHCR, 2018). Several laws since the 2000s have recognized failures in Colombia’s constitution and courts to prevent forced displacement and give victims of the armed conflict additional support mechanisms (Amnesty International, 2014; Ley 1448, 2011).

Fertile land coupled with weak land tenure and persistent underdevelopment in rural communities has furthermore enabled illicit crop production to thrive in Colombia, which has increased conflict, rural displacement, and environmental damage (Alvarez, 2007). According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, cocaine production levels are on the rise in Colombia, and production increased by 17% between 2016 and 2017 alone, thus demonstrating the continued need for tenure and resource security in rural areas (Oficina de Naciones Unidas Contra la Droga y el Delito, 2017).

Particularly since the Colombian Constitution of 1991, Indigenous and Afro-descendent ethnic communities have gained additional constitutional protection, recognizing ethnic groups’ added vulnerabilities due to land insecurities. Around 3.4% of Colombia’s population is identified as Indigenous, of whom 70% live in rural areas, whereas Afro-Colombians represent 10% of the national population (Amnesty International, 2014). The Colombian State allows ethnic populations to continue their traditional livelihoods and fully manage their land and resources in protected areas (Roldan Ortega, 2004). Such areas cover approximately 27% of the country and increase environmental conservation potential in addition to livelihood protection for ethnic groups (Amnesty International, 2014). Despite added protections, many ethnic communities still lack communal land titles, and weak security in rural areas increases their vulnerability to violence and exploitation.

In 2016, the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrilla group signed a Peace Agreement, outlining ambitious goals for achieving peace, reparations, and reconciliation. ‘Land’ was the first topic discussed at initial negotiations for the Peace Agreement, and ‘Comprehensive Rural Reform’, which aims for structural transformation and comprehensive development of rural Colombia, is the title of the first chapter in the final Peace Agreement (Guereña, 2017; Acuerdo Final, 2016). This chapter also prioritizes development programs in rural areas that have high poverty levels, weak institutions, high presence of illicit crops, and have been most affected by armed conflict (Acuerdo Final, 2016). However, the notion that the Peace Agreement has moved Colombia into a ‘post- conflict’ era is a misleading assumption which can leave already vulnerable populations and natural resources more vulnerable. While the Peace Agreement does present opportunities for a new path toward post-conflict (Latorre Restrepo, 2018), it also presents vulnerabilities that stem from newfound expectations, confrontation of past trauma, and shifts in power dynamics.

Despite the Agreement’s commitment to comprehensive rural land reform, including mechanisms for restitution of land and formal titling, this complex issue is slow and difficult to change. In 2017, an estimated 79% of rural areas in Colombia were still without basic cadaster information (World Bank, 2017). Institutions in charge of land reform often lack sufficient resources to attend to the many cases coming forward, and information-sharing challenges between institutions further slow processes (Commission Étnica para la Paz y la Defensa de los Derechos Territoriales en Colombia, 2019). Countrywide there has been a dramatic increase in the number of assassinations and threats received by community leaders since the Peace Agreement was signed (Ojeda et al., 2015). Of the assassinated leaders, an estimated 70% have been small- holder farmers and/or from ethnic communities (El Tiempo, 2018). The continued violations of human rights throughout rural Colombia are intrinsically linked to the extent that land has been systemically devalued and natural resources destroyed. Land inequality in Colombia is growing, and Colombia continues to have the most unequal land distribution rates in Latin America (Guereña, 2017).

Climate Adaptation Amidst Tenure Confusion: The Case of Montes de María, Colombia

The complex land and conflict history in Colombia has direct implications for how the most socially vulnerable rural dwellers respond to climate stress. To understand the intersection of land tenure context and climate adaptation, we turn to the Montes de María region. The Montes de María are a series of low mountains in the southern part of the Bolivar Department on the Northeastern Caribbean coast of Colombia. This fertile region became a seat of intense fighting during the armed conflict, resulting in two cycles of violence and sweeping levels of internal dis- placement. First, from 1995 to 2005, the region experienced its highest levels of forced displacement and violence due to the army, paramilitary, and guerrilla groups battling in the same territory over control and ownership of land. Afterward, from 2005 to 2013, additional displacement and land tenure complexities were caused by the private sector, specifically extractive industries such as mining and agro-industrial projects, looking to take advantage of deregulated international markets and deescalated violence in rural areas. In the name of development and economic advancement, large areas of rural Colombia, including in Montes de Maria, were purchased by such industries. Land and the resources on it were often sold at cheap prices by ‘secondary occupants’ as the original owners had been displaced by conflict or were unable to gain a formal title to the land that they had previously held. Crops such as palm oil and teak tree plantations were planted throughout the territory and additional large swaths of land were acquired. Such projects have often been criticized for long-term environmental damage including loss of soil nutrients and depletion of water sources (Ojeda et al., 2015). In addition, there have been negative consequences on the health and livelihoods of rural farmers as their land and resources decreased and as they become wage laborers for large monocrops (Alfonso Sierra et al., 2011). By 2013, 43% or 74,000 hectares) of farmable land in the Montes de María were owned by investors from outside of the region and monocrop cultivation reached 100,000 hectares of land (Ojeda et al., 2015).

The majority of displaced farming families from the Montes de María returned to the area after active conflict calmed between 2010 and 2012, but this homecoming was met with problems of tenure insecurity. Rural properties that were formally owned tended to be large areas of land that were difficult for smallholder farmers to maintain through insecurity due to conflict (Planeta Paz & Oxfam, 2017). In addition, land ownership was typically inherited through family generations, often without formalized or registered tenure documents. Therefore, displaced families found them- selves unable to demonstrate legal rights to their former land upon return if large companies or landowners had made claims to their property. Another common practice in the Montes de María was selling land in good faith through a signed note from the seller to the buyer; however, these documents do not hold up in a formal land dispute. Land restitution began with the signing of the Colombian Peace Agreement in late 2016. The Peace Agreements prioritized Montes de María for land restitution and, while more land titles have been formalized than in other regions, the over- whelming majority of claims remained in December of 2019. At the beginning of the drought, some families had submitted paperwork to formalize their tenure, and after the signing of the Peace Agreements, the majority of families began filing for their land to be restituted if they lost possession of the land, whether formal or informal, during the conflict.

In addition to land grabbing, displacement, and conflict, the Montes de María is already experiencing and anticipates more severe droughts, salinization of groundwater, shifts in precipitation, and increasing extreme heat that compound existing tenure insecurity (IPCC, 2018). The adaptation impacts of Colombia’s complicated land tenure laws and conflict history came to the fore during a protracted drought in the Montes de María[2]. The region experienced the most severe drought on record due to an extended El Niño that lasted from 2013 through December 2016 (Cai et al., 2018). In the first year of drought, there were scarce rains and the majority of harvests failed. In 2015 and 2016, there was no rain at all and harvests were completely lost. The effects were particularly dire in this rural, developing region, which had no water or power infrastructure. Over the course of these three years of atypical drought and hot temperatures, farming families crossed all of the adaptation thresholds—adapting first in place and later through migration. When and how each family adapted depended on the security of their tenure, as well as their understanding of the land restitution process in the conflict recovery context.

In 2013, families first adapted to drought by waiting as long as possible to plant, but this proved problematic after seeds were lost through failed harvests when rain did not arrive for the entire ‘rainy’ season. Over the following four seasons, farmers planted on a more limited basis reducing the amount of land they planted and the variety in crops. Again, these harvests failed and farmers’ seed stores ran out, food for consumption was limited, and assets liquidated. By 2015, as in situ adaptations had completely failed in the absence of precipitation to sustain rainfed agriculture, farmers began to adapt through migration. Adaptation through mobility depended on access to tenure and on understandings of tenure laws in this post-conflict context where the majority of farmers were in active land restitution processes. Families with legal title to their lands had higher tenure security: they were able to migrate temporarily and wait out the length of the drought, preserving their resources and reducing stress on their drought-affected land. Though doing so required selling livestock that also depended on rainwater, these families were able to leave without the perceived risk of losing their homes.

Families that had filed for land restitution, which would not begin until the Peace Agreement was signed, believed that their claims to land would be lost if they did not physically remain on that land. Even though the Office of Victims and the Office of Land in Colombia said that this was not the case, families were unconvinced that their land tenure claims would be honored if they displaced due to drought. Farmers also expressed fears of land grabs by corporations, other farmers, or illicit crop producers. As a result, these families depleted their financial and social capital while remaining on dried out land for the duration of the El Niño drought. This effort to remain in place came at a high cost—requiring families to liquidate their limited assets, remove children from school because they could not afford transportation or send them walking with- out sufficient water or food in the heat, and take out loans from banks to buy seeds and attempt to plant over and over each season leaving them indebted after the drought ended. This was the most common case for subsistence farming families in the Montes de María region, who made due in place by exhausting their resources in order to stay on their land parcel and continue their unresolved land tenure claims. Furthermore, unresolved tenure claims prevented families from making investments in their properties that would have fostered their resilience to climate hazards, such as digging water reservoirs, installing mechanized pumps to deliver water to fields and animals, and installing permanent dwellings that would provide more protection from high temperatures. Tenure confusion ultimately generated a highly vulnerable, trapped population in the Montes de María.

The misalignment of government and community priorities is evident in the way land restitution is administered—through titling plots throughout the drought-prone region and allotting livestock, specifically resource-intensive cows, to farmers in an already-water-stressed region. In Colombia more generally, more than double the amount of land deemed suitable for livestock is already being used (Guereña, 2017). In the first two years of land restitution and implementation of the Peace Agreement, farming families described their desire to move to land less prone to drought and closer to freshwater access, but also noted their inability to do so due to their land restitution claims tied to the Montes de María. Many farmers opted to begin pig raising operations as opposed to cows after the drought because pigs require less water and less land than cows, then received cattle as part of their land restitution pack- age in 2018 and 2019 and began wrestling with how they would secure water and pasture for cattle as local rainfall remains low. Even homes provided by the land restitution process came without water storage as part of their design. Across the board, lessons for climate adaptation that farming families learned the hard way during the El Niño drought are actively undermined by national land restitution and conflict recovery policies that fail to consider the climate realities of the Montes de María.

Looking Forward: Considering Land Tenure and Climate Adaptation Together

A close look at the Colombian case highlights the need for more effective and long-term global sustainable development policy that considers land resources, land tenure, and climate change jointly in order to be effective in today’s climate change reality. Land tenure policy could be improved in two ways—by flexibly embracing and incorporating environmental rights and citizen participation. Improving land tenure security is key to enabling responsive, local-level autonomous climate adaption.

We argue that socio-environmental vulnerability can only be mitigated through regarding the natural environment as deserving of rights and protection. Regarding ‘land’ as a living being which also merits rights could bolster the protection and prosperity of natural ecosystems and all organisms that depend on them (Acosta, 2019). In the face of climate change, humans need environmental rights to foster sustainable development. However, the interconnection of human rights with environmental rights is largely absent in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN General Assembly, 1948). Policies across fields should incorporate environmental rights not just because of international pressure, but also because considering a cost-benefit analysis of development without environmental protection demonstrates a high potential of harm to natural and human systems. The Sustainable Development Goals are an example of one such framework that incorporates environmental rights and protections as part of broader development goals. The Colombian case demonstrates the need for flexible policy that can be responsive to a variety of locally occurring adaptation mechanisms in different contexts and cli- mate stressors (Unruh & Abdul-Jalil, 2012).

The other side of flexibly incorporating environmental rights into all realms of development policy is the need for flexible citizen engagement requirements in land policy processes. Realities of land tenure, demographics, and natural resources differ greatly depending on location and, furthermore, as climate change manifests in different contexts, the relationships between these variables are hyperlocal and are in flux (Quan & Dyer, 2008). In order to account for such differences, it is paramount that policy, including for land tenure and climate change, contains citizen engagement[3] and participation requirements. If higher-level policy can incorporate such priorities, the pressing needs of the most vulnerable in addition to root causes of their grievances will be more effectively addressed.

Within international development organizations, there has been a movement to include citizen engagement mechanisms for project beneficiaries. The World Bank, for example, which plays a role in land tenure projects in Colombia and around the world, outlines requirements in its Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in World Bank Group Operations. Here, the World Bank mandates citizen engagement in 100% of its projects with ‘clearly identified beneficiaries’ and aims to achieve this strategy by “empowering citizens to participate in the development process and integrating citizen voice in development programs as key accelerators to achieving results” (World Bank Group, 2014). Such requirements are significant in themselves for increasing the likelihood for citizen engagement; however, they must also be flexible and adaptive to local contexts (Fox, 2014). Community consultations should be coupled with ‘hard’ accountability mechanisms such as sanctions and answer- ability requirements in order to increase the likelihood of effective participation and feedback (Fox, 2007). Furthermore, instead of focusing reporting upward to donors or government agencies, sharing mechanisms which give results outwardly to citizens also help perpetuate project accountability. Undoubtedly, international organizations and their policies have a large role to play in citizen engagement. Land tenure projects that include effective citizen engagement mechanisms will be more likely to account for climate-based needs and foster adaptive livelihoods in rural areas.

In sum, concrete yet flexible land and development policy attuned to environmental realities could protect the rights of rural dwellers in the developing world, making populations less socio-environmentally vulnerable and thereby facilitating successful local autonomous adaptation to climate stress. Less vulnerable people are better able to adapt to their environment and utilize land resources in the ways that works for them. This adaptability requires rural, resource-dependent populations to be nimble in the face of shifting environmental conditions. Current development and land policies are rigid, trapping populations in adaptations that may not suffice in the era of climate change.

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[1] https://theconversation.com/sea-level-rise-has-claimed-five-whole-islands-in-the-pacific- first-scientific-evidence-58511

[2] Evidence from farmers during the 2013–2016 El Niño drought is based on the qualitative field- work Castro conducted from 2016 through 2019 in Montes de María. Ethnographic data includes 130 in-depth interviews with farming families, local experts, and government officials, as well as copious field notes from ethnographic observation.

[3] 3 Citizen engagement is ‘the two-way interaction between citizens and governments or the private sector within the scope of interventions that gives citizens a stake in decision-making with the objective of improving the intermediate and final development outcomes of the intervention’ (World Bank Group, 2014).