Potential Risks to Women’s Land Rights From Climate Actions: Exploring Matrilineal Communities in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama

This Working Paper is part of Gender Equity Practice within Equity & Governance. Reach out to Celine Salcedo-La Viña for more information.

This paper examines three Indigenous matrilineal communities-or those in which kinship or lineage and inheritance systems are based on the maternal line-to identify potential risks to tenure security faced by women from climate actions, broadly defined as actions to combat climate change and its impacts. The communities are the Wayuu in Colombia, where wind parks are being developed; the Bribri in Costa Rica, where REDD+ negotiations with Indigenous Peoples are ongoing; and the Guna in Panama, where climate-induced relocation is pending. The research reveals that the women in the three communities face land tenure risks from the way climate actions are being implemented. Potential risks include the loss of their land entitlements, disruption of land-based livelihoods, and the erosion of matrilineal culture. A key contributory factor to heightened risks for women is inadequate consultation processes characterized by information and power asymmetries that fail to consider the community's traditional land tenure, governance systems, and culture. The paper ends with some recommendations on how to mitigate risks and ensure more equitable outcomes.

Highlights

• Global action to combat climate change often relies on Indigenous Peoples and local communities' (IP&LC) lands, such as the Global Biodiversity Framework's 30x30 Target, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+), among others.
• Land tenure systems are gendered, hence the opportunities and risks of climate action will be borne differently by women and men. In matrilineal communities where women's land rights have strong social legitimacy, potential risks faced by women make for a compelling study of the intersection of land tenure, gender, and climate action.
• This paper explores how the failure to account for differential tenure systems and the gender context, combined with inadequate consultation processes, can risk eroding the traditional land entitlements and important social support structures enjoyed by women in matrilineal tenure systems.
• The essential roles played by Indigenous women in their communities and the centrality of secure land tenure to these roles require climate action to mitigate risks and ensure land rights for women.