Securing customary and collective land rights

👉🏽 This story is developed as part of the Doughnut Economics for Policymakers guide.

Secure land rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities enable collective stewardship of nature, making economies more distributive and regenerative by design. Growing evidence shows secure collective land rights delivers ecological, social, and economic benefits that extend far beyond local communities.

Overview

Indigenous and community lands are governed collectively, often based on longstanding traditions and culture that value the interconnections among all life and embed long-term land stewardship. However, these collective rights have been eroded or denied globally, exacerbating inequality and undermining ecological health.

International laws, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and International Labor Organisation Convention 169, recognise these collective rights to access and control customary land. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals include targets for securing land tenure. In accordance with these international frameworks, an increasing number of national governments have adopted legal frameworks since the 1980s to recognise and support collective land governance. The scope of recognition varies significantly by scope of rights (from full ownership to restricted use rights), governance structures (individual rights under community jurisdiction versus collective rights), duration (permanent versus time-limited), and the extent to which communities can make autonomous decisions about resource use. 

Implementation 

While Indigenous Peoples and local communities steward more than 50% of the world's land area, legal recognition extends to only one-fifth of their collective land (approximately 10% of global land area). Almost 80% of this legally recognised land is concentrated in China, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and Canada. 

In 2025, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Fiji, Ghana, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, with support from countries in Europe, made a joint pledge to recognise 160 million hectares of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ lands in tropical forest countries by 2030. 

Impacts

Ecological benefits: Lands under collective governance often house more species and experience lower deforestation and degradation rates than lands managed by public or private entities. They often incur lower establishment and maintenance costs. These biodiverse lands provide vital global planetary services, from carbon sequestration to water regulation.

Social benefits:  Recognising and enforcing land rights can significantly improve communities' income, food security, and long-term resilience. For example, community-managed pastures in Mongolia have increased participating communities' incomes by up to 50% while comprehensive analysis by the International Food Policy Research Institute found strong correlations between secure land rights and absence of hunger. 

Challenges 

• Restricted use rights: Existing laws often restrict how Indigenous Peoples and local communities can use their land. This often fails to account for cultural and spiritual connections or the benefits of traditional practices like sustainable harvesting of forest resources, shifting cultivation, or hunting.
• Implementation gaps, conflicting policies and power imbalances: Even where legal recognition exists, enforcement is often weak — especially in the face of commercial and political interests. For example, new energy policies or commercial land deals can contravene laws and encroach on customary lands. 
• Risks to defenders: Securing and protecting these rights requires sustained collective organising, often against considerable resistance. Global Witness has documented more than 2,000 murders of land rights activists and environmentalists between 2012 and 2023.
• Contested definitions: Who can be identified as Indigenous Peoples and local communities can be contested in some parts of the world. 

Reference and further reading

• Common Ground: Securing land rights and safeguarding the earth (2016) calls for action across society, including by governments. Published by Oxfam, the International Land Coalition, and the Rights and Resources Initiative.

• Landportal summaries key international laws, regional and national policies on Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ rights (2023). 

• Landmark maps the extent and legal recognition status of Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ lands and territories (2024). Key insights are further summaries in this post. 

• Rights+ Resources Initiative’s report Seeds for Reform (2025) tracks international obligations and changes in national laws of collective forest tenure.

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