Promoting Land and Water Rights
Workshop Report

With Maria Luisa Mendonça, Rede Social de Justica e Direitos Humanos (Brazil); Nikhil Aziz, Grassroots International; and Phil McManus, Appleton Foundation

Maria Luisa Mendonça began the workshop with a brief overview of the issue of access to land and water rights in Brazil, strategies to being effective and the role that funders can play.

Many rural areas are portrayed as not having opportunities, leading to urban migration, but rural areas have increasingly become an area of conflict, especially over resource rights issues. Brazil is great example. Many conflicts are linked to environmental issues, including expansion of access to timber and minerals. Government has given away vast areas of land to be exploited by corporations or for "conservation" initiatives that have privatized areas. This has led to an expansion of projects for energy, agriculture initiatives (example of the soy and sugar industry). In many cases, not only are these projects linked to large use of land but also other social issues, such as slave labor. In many areas, people and movements that are working for land and water access are being repressed.

Her organization is a grassroots and media organization working on connecting local and global issues and supporting work for social and political rights, as well as economic rights and justice issues. Their work is led by local community needs and they are active in building networks especially among local groups without a lot of access. They work with a number of national networks as well, and have been very active in the World Social Forum, the battle against the WTO, on trade issues. She stated it is important to expand our concepts of human rights to include health and economic justice issues.

She sees a strong role for funders. However, there seems to be a lot of backlash against progressive funding in the US and many progressive funders being cautious and this is really being felt in the Global South. She sees that there seems to be more interest in funding work based on individual rights vs. funding for issues based on collective rights. The only US group funding their work is Grassroots International; most of their other funders are from Europe. There seems to be growing issues of conservative funding. Funders need to be more active and take a lead on things, especially on connecting local and global issues.

Phil McManus continued the presentation

He asked the question: How do we increase our funding to international issues and even more funding to social movements?

He represents the Appleton Foundation based in Santa Cruz, CA. They are funding about a dozen groups in Colombia, Mexico on resource rights issues as well as groups working on debt and trade issues. Appleton evolved out of his interest in social justice issues in Latin America. They work a lot with colleagues from the field and groups of advisors that know this work. Their criteria focus on supporting movements working on systematic changes, especially around human rights, state-sponsored violence, as well as North-South collaboration. Some of their challenges have to do with their lack of familiarity with the groups or projects. They sometimes fund re-granters who know the country and work and who know the context from experience. They work with Latin American advisors, as well as working in collaboration with the Fund for Nonviolence. Together they recruit advisors who can help make decisions. Their good grantmaking practices include collaboration, looking at inclusion, the participation of people most affected, finding out what is the capacity or organization as a learning organization, getting references from others who know the work. Resources for them as funders have been Gw/oB as well as ForAL, which they helped found. They believe it is important for funders to dialogue with groups in the South. Appleton is happy to share experiences. Phil's main message: There are challenges. but we can do it. We just need to figure out how.

Nikhil continued the presentation

He spoke about the experiences of Grassroots International (GRI), which started 23 years ago in response of the reluctance of funders to fund in conflict zones. Examples of funding were in Eritrea, East Timor, and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. In the 90s, they found that issues of resource rights were becoming more essential. They started working in Brazil, Mexico and Haiti. GRI started asking how it could help more. Originally they had country programs but moved to a thematic focus to incorporate resource rights. They felt it was important to see what is common across areas and issues that bound countries together. Resource Rights were key to tying these issues together.

This has effected how they do their grantmaking, as they have shifted more of their grantmaking to focus on resource rights. Their categories of grantmaking have now become focused on:

1. Movement Building- supporting leadership development, capacity building, especially with youth and women
2. Learning Exchanges- including South-South exchanges
3. Communications- including independent media, web site construction, etc.
4. Seeds and Tools- concrete development initiatives; example: funding for chicken projects on land seized from land struggles
5. Human Rights- supporting political and civil rights of resource rights and movement activists

They are also funding beyond just grantmaking to their partners, such as by working on advocacy initiatives with donors and funders and groups in the Global North. One example is their partnership with Via Campesina and supporting work with National Family Farm Coalition on trade and agriculture justice.

The Q&A session which followed discusses questions such as: What are concrete examples of people being able to get land and being able to successfully begin production on it? How do women fit into the movements? Any advice for an organization working in Vietnam? Is it important for people to have a clear concept of resource to fund it and have partners influenced your definition of resource rights? One participant spoke of the dangers of funders setting up a land trust and privatizing land to "save" it for local people or the environment as an option for land rights.

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