--- title: community land rights come first canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/community-land-rights-come-first markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/community-land-rights-come-first.md subtitle: "a payment to people on land they can lose does not last. securing the land is the first job, and the community decides how" category: nature-finance --- # community land rights come first *a payment to people on land they can lose does not last. securing the land is the first job, and the community decides how* **Community land rights** are the rights of a community, rather than a single owner, to hold, use, manage and decide over land and what grows and flows on it: forest, water, grazing land, fishing grounds. They can rest on a collective title the state recognizes, on customary tenure, or on both. Where they are secure, the people who live on a place have a say in what happens to it. Where they are not, someone else decides. That is why land rights come before almost everything else in conservation. A payment to the people who keep a forest helps. A payment to people who can lose that forest to a debt, a concession or a competing claim does not last. ## why land rights matter for conservation A clear recent statement of the case comes from a policy brief by the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), *Beyond markets*, written from the Enjust conference on environmental justice held in Bonn in December 2025. Its second key message is **land rights-based conservation**: "Land rights reconfigure power relations and are a key prerequisite for environmental justice." The brief explains why. Land rights are often what lets a community benefit from conservation money at all, and what gives it a seat when rules and compensation are negotiated. Without them, the record is harsh. Indigenous peoples and local communities, "particularly peasants and rural migrants without land titles or customary rights to land and resources, have often been criminalised and evicted in the context of implementing protected areas." So IDOS recommends that historical ownership of land in conservation areas be recognized and, where possible, restored, with the direct involvement of the communities and other land users. It adds a caution worth keeping: restoration should avoid new land concentration and the displacement of peasant migrants. Every other conservation tool works on top of one answer: who holds the land. ### colombia's peasant reserve zones The brief's example is Colombia's **Peasant Reserve Zones** (Zonas de Reserva Campesina, ZRCs), a territorial and legal figure introduced in 1993. They were designed to limit land concentration in agrarian frontier regions and secure access to land for peasants. Communities have since used them to govern land, water and forests together and to resist top-down management. In the Upper Venecia ZRC in the Andean highlands, IDOS reports, earlier community-led struggles for land redistribution turned a large hacienda into an agro-biodiverse landscape of subsistence farming and sustainable forest management. That transformation and the consolidation of the ZRC "facilitated forest recovery and enabled the return of endemic species." The order matters. The land came first. The forest followed. ## where the money falls short IDOS also argues that money should reach Indigenous peoples and local communities more directly, and that they should have a say in how it is spent. Proposals for a basic income for nature and climate go further: regular, unconditional payments to people living near places that matter for conservation. On both points, the people who keep a place should be paid, and they should decide. That still leaves two things unfunded. The first is the land. Income paid to people on land they can lose is income on borrowed time. The second is money that lasts. A payment that depends on next year's budget is not a basic income. It is a grant with a longer name. ## what makes community land insecure Insecure tenure usually has a name and often a balance owed: - **Debt.** A loan secured on the land, arrears, or a mortgage taken in a bad year. - **Concessions.** Logging, mining or oil rights granted over land a community uses. - **Competing claims.** Overlapping titles, private claims and disputes left unresolved for decades. - **Unpaid purchase.** Land bought back in installments, or a redistribution never fully paid. - **Recognition pending.** Land used and cared for under custom, with no title the state recognizes. Some of these are money problems. Some are legal and political problems that money only helps with. Being honest about which is which is most of the work. ## three cases, three jobs In [*ensurance*](/specific?from=guide), land moves in stages. **Ensured** is the stage where proceeds pay off the land: acquisition by the community or its chosen holder, retiring its debt and clearing its claims. **Entrust** is the land held free of debt, rent and claim, for good. Where a community stands today decides which job comes first. | where the community stands | what ensured pays | what it does not do | |---|---|---| | **Already titled** (an ejido, a titled territory) | Retires debts on the land and clears claims against it, if the community chooses to use it at all | Change the title or the community's own rules | | **Recoverable by purchase** (lost land, a willing seller) | The purchase by the community or its chosen holder, then any acquisition debt | Buy land the community did not ask to recover | | **Recognition pending** (customary use, no title) | Surveys, mapping, legal costs, and the debts and claims that block recognition | Grant title: recognition is an act of the state | All three end in the same place. Entrust is land with no debt left to foreclose and no claim left that could sell it out from under the people who keep it. How the purchase, the protective documents and the release of claims fit together on a real parcel is covered in [buy the land-use decision](/guide/buy-the-land-use-decision?from=guide). ## the state's role, stated straight A certificate does not create a legal right. Recognizing a collective title, a Peasant Reserve Zone or an Indigenous territory is an act of the state, under its own law and politics. No payment replaces that. What money can do is pay for the work around recognition and pay off the land once it is held. Ensured clears financial claims; entrust is what is left once they are gone. Neither overrides land law, taxes, protective restrictions or a community's own governance. ## consent is the floor Nothing here funds the acquisition or titling of land over a community's objection. Wherever Indigenous peoples are involved, free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is the floor, not a step to manage. IDOS names FPIC, self-determination and customary governance as fundamental, and the same standard applies here. Communities that already hold title choose whether to use ensurance at all. When land is acquired in this model, it is acquired by the community or a holder it chooses, for land it keeps or recovers. Outside buyers do not acquire community land through it. And following IDOS's caution, a purchase has to be checked against everyone else who lives and works there, so that securing one group's land does not displace another. The community decides who gets paid. The land decides how long. ## after the land is paid off Once the land is secure, its **species and flows** are what the funding keeps: the forest, the water, the soil, the habitat. Then the people who keep them get paid. With the land's cost out of the picture, every dollar that arrives can go to care, paid to the group the community governs. Splits route proceeds to a group's account today. Automatic batch payment to every certificate holder is designed, not live. This is not a basic income. Payments go to the named stewards and their group, not to every resident by eligibility, and how the group shares its stream is the group's decision. The money comes from those who already pay when a place fails, such as the utility downstream, the insurer, the supply chain and the town, paying before the failure instead of after. Land law, public social protection and basic income programs stay where they are; this can sit beside them. IDOS warns that valuing ecosystems in money "is deeply contested." The price of a certificate here does not claim to be what the forest is worth. It pays a cost the land carries, and then the care. :::johnson **land rights decide who decides.** Secure the land first, with the community's consent, and every dollar that follows can go to the people who keep it. [see how land is secured and recovered →](/solutions/tribes?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land) ::: ## where to start For a community or tribal land office, start by naming which of the three cases you are in, and which debts and claims stand between the land and entrust. The [tribes page](/solutions/tribes?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land) describes funding the purchase, debt payoff and claim clearing of land a tribe chooses to secure or recover. Groups that steward land they do not hold can start from [land stewards](/solutions/land-stewards?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land). For a foundation with a tenure portfolio, the reportable unit is hectares brought to entrust, followed by a stewardship stream to the holder's group. [Foundations](/solutions/foundations?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land) shows how that is structured, or [talk to someone about a specific place](/contact?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land). The forest, the river and the grazing land exist whether or not anyone buys a certificate, and so do the people who have kept them. Ensurance is how the land gets secured and the keeping gets funded. It is not the land, and it is not the community. Read next: [permanent protection has to survive us](/guide/permanent-protection-has-to-survive-us?from=guide), on what keeps protection in place after a change of hands. ## frequently asked questions ### what are community land rights? They are the rights of a community to hold, use, manage and decide over land and its resources together, through a collective title, customary tenure or both. They decide who has a say in what happens to a place. ### why do land rights matter for conservation? Because tenure decides who decides. IDOS calls land rights "a key prerequisite for environmental justice" and notes that people without titles have often been criminalized and evicted when protected areas were created. In Colombia's Upper Venecia, land redistribution and a Peasant Reserve Zone came before forest recovery. ### can land rights be bought? Land can be bought; recognition cannot. A community or its chosen holder can buy back land from a willing seller, and debts and claims can be paid off. Recognition of a collective title is an act of the state. Money can pay the costs around it, such as surveys and legal work, but it does not grant the right. ### what happens to land after it is paid off? In ensurance, it reaches entrust: held free of debt, rent and claim, for good. The funding then keeps its forest, water and habitat, and pays the people who keep it through the group they govern, on terms the group decides. ## sources [IDOS Policy Brief 25/2026, *Beyond markets: how to achieve just and transformative biodiversity conservation*](https://www.idos-research.de/en/policy-brief/article/beyond-markets-how-to-achieve-just-and-transformative-biodiversity-conservation/) — Hein, Figueroa, Loft, Ramutsindela et al., German Institute of Development and Sustainability, doi:10.23661/ipb25.2026. Land rights-based conservation, Box 1 on Peasant Reserve Zones, criminalisation and eviction around protected areas, FPIC. ## the series 1. [what a conservation basic income leaves unfunded](/guide/what-a-conservation-basic-income-leaves-unfunded?from=guide) 2. [community land rights come first](/guide/community-land-rights-come-first?from=guide) 3. [what cash transfers for conservation showed in the peruvian amazon](/guide/what-cash-transfers-for-conservation-showed-in-peru?from=guide) 4. [the alternative to fortress conservation is not a market](/guide/the-alternative-to-fortress-conservation-is-not-a-market?from=guide) 5. [community-led conservation needs an account it controls](/guide/community-led-conservation-needs-an-account-it-controls?from=guide) 6. [how to fund indigenous land rights that last](/guide/how-to-fund-indigenous-land-rights-that-last?from=guide)