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Introduction
For more than two decades, the Lincoln Institute’s Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been working at the intersection of urban land markets, land-based financing, and affordable housing to address the rise in informal settlements and urban poverty in the region. The Institute has also focused on community land trusts (CLTs)—in which land is owned by the community and dwellings are owned individually—but primarily as they apply to housing issues affecting lower-income communities in the United States. These lines of work have converged as the idea of adapting CLTs to address informality in Latin America has gained currency among housing advocates and land policy experts.
We have seen that CLTs can work in informal settlements, thanks in no small part to the creativity, organizational skills, and commitment of the residents and supporters of the El Caño Martín Peña CLT in San Juan, Puerto Rico (see p. 19). The San Juan example is novel not only because it uses the CLT to ensure collective and long-term stewardship of land and affordable housing, but also because it regularizes, or provides titles to, several hundred informal, or illegal, households, which are also known as squatters. The state’s willingness to grant property titles to the community was critical.
The appeal of CLTs in Latin America stems from their ability to offer residents the security of title to the property they occupy, which addresses a major dimension of informality, and to provide long-term housing affordability. Thus, as Theresa Williamson discusses in this issue of Land Lines, she is directing an effort to consider CLTs as a means to provide tenure security and preserve affordability in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. The LAC program is documenting the El Caño CLT and exploring the legal and political feasibility of the CLT model in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America.
LAC research, courses, and projects in Latin America have reinforced the argument that regularization programs are a solution that paradoxically contributes to the informality problem. Regularizing existing settlements demonstrates a city’s commitment to social equity and inclusion, but also attracts new occupations and necessitates remedial policies that would provide titles for existing settlements. The ideal approach would be preventative, whereby public authorities deploy a set of planning and financial tools to ensure that land markets produce serviced, affordable, and well-located plots of land to house most of their populations—in particular low-income households. This would include land value capture to fund infrastructure or inclusionary housing.
A preemptive approach is challenging, and abandoning regularization programs may be politically nonnegotiable. This is why CLTs are exciting. As Williamson explains, the community-based aspect of CLTs offers the potential to reduce the speculation and displacement that can accompany titling programs that target individual plots.
As we explore CLTs for informal settlements, we should keep a few questions in mind. First, can a model designed to promote affordable and secure housing in the United States be transferred to Latin America? Second, what would the successful implementation of CLTs in places like Rio de Janeiro look like? Third, what other land policy tools would be needed to tackle informality in LAC and, in particular, prevent future informal settlements?
—Enrique Silva, fellow and associate director, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean
Land Rights in Brazil: Recognition and Threats to the Role of Favelas in the City
In Latin America, “regularization” laws, which grant formal, legal property title to residents of unofficial settlements, typically have the stated goals of providing a secure hold on the land, giving access to the services and infrastructure of the official municipality, and opening access to credit. Public policies attending such laws have varied from simply issuing title to bolstering that property transfer with infrastructure improvements, social services, and employment opportunities. The costs and results of these efforts have varied across the region, with little consensus on their effectiveness. A recent titling law in Brazil has raised concern among housing activists that, instead of offering stability, transferring property outright may produce the opposite effect and push people out of communities they’ve been a part of for generations.
With the signing of Law 13,465 in July 2017, Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer created the potential for a flood of real estate speculation and gentrification in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. The controversial legislation encourages the full regularization of federal lands historically occupied by squatters. Some early settlers eventually received leases on the public land they occupied, but the regularization measure grants favela occupants full legal land titles. In Brazil, 50 to 75 percent of public land is irregularly occupied, and backers argued that this justified the law. Much of this is land in the Amazon region that has been deemed “ungovernable,” but informal settlements on urban federal lands are also in the mix. The law breaks both with the Brazilian constitution’s provision that land should fulfill a social function (i.e., to house people) and with Law 11,977 of 2009, which states that public land must remain in public ownership. Instead, under the new law, federal land—whether in the Amazon or Rio’s favelas—is to be regularized by transferring ownership to its occupants, who can dispose of it as they see fit. And the establishment of this federal legislation has the automatic effect of encouraging states and municipalities to follow suit.
Favelas
The first informal settlement labeled a “favela,” today known as Morro da Providência, was established in Rio by ex-soldiers in 1897. They called the settlement “Favela Hill,” after a resilient spiny plant that grew on the hills where they’d fought in Brazil’s arid northeast. Though the word “favela” is seen as a translation of “slum” or “shantytown,” there is no etymological basis for this. In recent years, a growing body of young leaders in Rio’s favelas have shifted to using the term favelado (favela resident) as a point of pride that underscores their resistance and resilience, and strengthens a shared identity around these core attributes.
Comprehensive land titling in favelas is therefore likely to speed up in the coming years. What will this mean for the city’s affordable housing stock? What will happen to Rio’s favelas, particularly given that so many are on land with high speculative potential, built on hillsides above the city’s most valuable real estate and offering stunning views? Will this law make them more, or less, secure?
With the impending mass titling of favelas across Brazil, a Favela-Community Land Trust (F-CLT) model could provide a better solution. Traditional CLTs are set up as nonprofits, which own and maintain the land. Residents own their respective buildings and, in effect, co-own the associated land, guiding and governing the nonprofit landowner as members of the CLT. Since land is normally the primary cost in urban housing, the CLT keeps home prices affordable. In keeping with Law 13,465, the CLT model transfers public land to private ownership, but the collective ownership of land inherent to the CLT model is more in keeping with the constitution’s provision that land serve a social function. Implementing such a model could offer a beacon of hope for housing activists working to regularize informal urban settlements in an increasingly expensive urban world—a model for providing secure access to land and preserving the affordability of housing in perpetuity.
In the context of informal settlements, the CLT approach recognizes—and even welcomes and builds on—the inherent complexity and dynamism of these neighborhoods without compromising their existing characteristics.
Shelter is a Basic Need
Arguably, the biggest urban issue of our time is what to do with our informal settlements.
The fastest-growing cities in the world are in developing countries, mainly in Africa and Asia. Due to this rapid, unplanned growth, somewhere between a quarter and a third of people in cities today live in informal settlements, unfortunately and unhelpfully still referred to as slums or shanties by news reporters and international organizations.
By 2050, nearly one-third of all humanity is projected to live in informal settlements, as population growth is greatest in urbanizing developing countries, where governments can’t address the needs of new urban migrants.
According to researcher Justin McGuirk, “85 percent of all housing worldwide is built ‘illegally,’ . . . mak[ing] residents of informal settlements the primary developers of urban space worldwide, dictating the design and use of more square miles than architects and governments.” And yet, broadly speaking, societies pay little attention to them, until and unless those settlements are seen as “getting in the way” of real estate development. Conflicts around gentrification and development worldwide are a direct consequence of policies that treat housing as property and an investment rather than recognizing shelter as a fundamental human need.
The status quo is to dismiss such communities or evict residents, at best pushing them into inhumane public housing. These approaches are unsustainable and socially unjust. They have not worked because they do not address the underlying reasons why such settlements exist and often leave residents worse off.
At the very least, 20 percent of the population of a typical city cannot afford market-rate housing and thus must access housing outside this market, either through government or civil society.
It is therefore no surprise or coincidence that Rio de Janeiro—a city that, since it urbanized in the late 1800s, has not seriously addressed the need for shelter—today houses 24 percent of its population in informal settlements.
Rethinking Rio’s Favelas
Rio’s favelas boast a rich 120-year history and may be some of the most consolidated informal settlements in the world today because during much of that history they have been left to their own devices and have put down roots. Consolidated favelas are those where, due to community investment over time, residents generally see value in staying and making improvements in their dwellings, which often represent the life savings of several generations.
Rio was the largest slave port in world history. Slaves constituted 20 to 50 percent of the city’s population during the 19th century before Brazil, in 1888, became the last nation in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery. Generations of post-abolition politicians have been intent on preserving the status quo of severe inequality, maintaining an accessible servant class while not recognizing the need to provide services to those same people. Favelas are the territorial manifestation of this neglect. By failing to provide favelas with quality public services, including sufficient educational opportunities, and by criminalizing poverty, the city’s power structure renders the status of these communities sufficiently ambiguous and tenuous to keep them submissive. Consequently, this history has been punctuated by periodic forced evictions and occasional investments in infrastructure improvements and basic services.
Conditions
Rio de Janeiro has approximately 1,000 favelas, ranging in size from tens to 200,000 people. Most favela residents live in communities that are over 50 years old and receive low-quality basic public services. The majority of investment has been made in private homes where residents exert the greatest control and have rebuilt repeatedly over generations. Illegal construction is widespread in Brazil, whether posh villas in national parks, unauthorized ranches in the Amazon, or houses in the favelas. While they do not own the land, somewhere between two thirds and all of favela residents own their homes. Today, over 90 percent of those homes are made of brick, concrete, and reinforced steel.
Neither temporary nor precarious like slums and shanties, Rio’s favelas can be defined by four conditions. They are neighborhoods that develop out of an unmet need for housing. They receive no significant outside regulation. They are established by residents, not by outside developers or speculators. And they evolve, highly influenced by many factors including culture, access to jobs, and the availability of resources.
Rio’s favelas exhibit a huge variety of conditions that have resulted in an equal number of outcomes, ranging from highly innovative to entirely dysfunctional. Decisions about the future of these communities are therefore best made by residents, who are the only people capable of evaluating the true value of their settlements, which is often noneconomic and thus hard to quantify.
Nonetheless, the data capture some of the strengths of this type of community. In A Country Called Favela, researchers relate that between 2004 and 2014, when Brazil was experiencing rapid economic growth, the average wage in favelas grew more than the average wage across society. Favela residents considered themselves happier than the national average (94 percent versus 93 percent). And 81 percent liked favelas, 66 percent wouldn’t leave their community, and 62 percent were proud to live there.
None of this is to deny the very real challenges facing favelas; it is simply to question the narrow view that informal settlements are bad and that by consequence they should be removed. Removing consolidated favelas only compounds the policy failures that make favelas inevitable. In addition, it is important to note that there is nothing inherent in favelas that produces criminal activity. A combination of other factors produces circumstances conducive to organized crime. These factors are the criminalization and stigmatization of poverty; public-sector neglect of education, infrastructure, and other amenities; and lack of economic opportunity.
As a result of this panorama of good and bad, and despite oftentimes paralyzing stigma, lack of investment, and counterproductive security policies, average favela residents would rather see their community improve than seek alternative housing.
Occupation Rights 1988–2010
When Brazil re-democratized following the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985 and passed its “People’s Constitution” in 1988, housing movements successfully demanded the inclusion of adverse possession rights, opening a legal path to property ownership for residents of informal settlements. Adverse possession, commonly known as “squatter’s rights,” refers to housing rights given to occupants of land or housing if they are not convicted of trespassing during a given period. In some cities in the United States, such as in New York, that period is ten years. Brazil’s five-year urban eligibility period is brief by global standards, and rightly so, given the urgent need to legalize homes built in favelas before the constitution was signed.
In 2001, Brazil passed its Cities Statute, which included a provision for favelas and other Zones of Special Social Interest (Zonas de Especial Interesse Social, or ZEIS) to be preserved as affordable housing. This built on a collective awareness among Brazil’s architecture and engineering establishments that this was the best course of action on favelas. Yet, squatter’s rights and ZEIS, like many progressive policies in Brazil, fall into the category of policies pra inglês ver, or “for the English to see.” This dates back to the slave trade and the practice of establishing laws and policies intended not for implementation, but for the benefit of outsiders or domestic advocates of the policy.
Thus, very rarely have favela residents in Rio de Janeiro been given titles. In cases where they squatted on private land and can prove uninterrupted occupation, it may be relatively straightforward to obtain titles through the courts. But the majority of favela housing is on public land, where authorities could ignore title requests. Legally, public officials in Brazil could be expected to provide leaseholds or possession rights, as opposed to titles, since public land was considered nontransferable, while squatters’ rights were constitutionally recognized. However, very few leaseholds have been issued, despite the provisions of the law.
Tenure 2010 to Today
The official approach toward informal settlements shifted in the buildup to Rio’s hosting of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Beginning in 2010, when investment flooded the city in advance of these global events, titling became a hot issue. Titles were announced primarily for South Zone favelas, such as Rocinha, Vidigal, and Morro Dona Marta, which were often the most consolidated communities and certainly those in the wealthiest and most speculative districts. It was a matter of months before some residents of these communities—which had successfully fought off eviction during the nation’s military regime in the 1970s—connected public authorities’ sudden interest in titling with those prior struggles. Using the term remoção branca, or “white eviction” (favela residents’ initial, endemic term for gentrification), to reflect the unfolding phenomenon, community organizers lamented the arrival of titles, just as real estate speculators were descending on Rio during the biggest boom in the city’s history. And they didn’t see it as a coincidence.
In 2013, the media were abuzz with news of gentrification in Vidigal, a favela situated above Ipanema Beach, on what may be the most valuable land in Brazil. Fancy hotels and bars were opening, as were bed and breakfasts and sushi shops. At one point, the residents’ association estimated that some 1,000 foreigners were living in the community of roughly 20,000.
Nearby, in the Babilônia favela, at a community meeting to discuss the threat of gentrification, Residents’ Association President André Constantine declared, “Because we were born here, we have the right to raise our kids here, and to watch our grandchildren grow up here! . . . How do we see this situation? This [granting of titles and utility privatization] is a project [by the government] to keep us from remaining here. . . . They’re not going to change the characteristics of the place [through improvements]. No, first they’re going to sanitize poverty . . . [by] expelling those who built the place.”
Informal settlements often function as a city’s affordable housing stock. When they are individually titled, especially if they are well situated, those homes take on the full land value associated with their location. As a result, they cease to be affordable. The bottom 20 percent of the economic pyramid is forced out. This is a severe blow to people who have built a community over generations; who have grown to depend on its social fabric, location, and safety net; and who have been perpetually underinvested and excluded from the city despite having built it. It also undermines efforts to reduce Rio’s epic inequality and maintain the city’s cultural riches.
Not surprisingly, by spring 2018, Babilônia’s leaders have made little progress in discussions with the city over land titles. They, along with Vidigal and other favelas, did, in a sense, benefit from the recent economic downturn, which halted rent increases and the threat of remoção branca. At the same time, gang and police violence increased, leading long-term residents to leave. The pressures on community health in favelas come in diverse forms during booms and busts, and the current military intervention in Rio poses the latest challenge.
Do Favela Community Land Trusts (F-CLTs) Offer an Opportunity?
For most of the past decade, I have explored the potential for implementing a community land trust model in Rio’s favelas. Witnessing the impacts of the pre-Olympics “boom” market on favelas in the South Zone, where relatively few residents benefited while many found themselves struggling, our organization supported diverse groups in Vidigal through gentrification awareness workshops and a debate series on real estate speculation in the community. The first debate in 2014 was packed with residents sharing their stories and concerns. Some had been forced out of their homes by utility hikes or rent spikes; in other cases, sellers underestimated the value of their homes and ended up moving to significantly worse circumstances; and then there were the young adults who, for the first time in generations, would not be able to purchase a home in their family’s traditional community.
We began to inform favela organizers about land stewardship strategies, including the community land trust. CLTs are well suited to both periods of economic decline and speculative growth. Although formalized, the basic logic of CLT governance is not much different from favela governance today. Residents own and sell their homes at affordable prices through an active parallel affordable housing market. Meanwhile, they do not own the land on which they live, which is, in a sense, owned collectively because it is publicly owned. Finally, residents’ associations and other neighborhood institutions engage in and advocate for infrastructure improvements in the community, and maintain records of home sales.
The major difference between the two is that favelas are kept precarious through tenuous governance by the authorities, whereas CLTs are sanctioned to manage land, represent the community, and take action to improve that land, and their mandate is unequivocally recognized by residents and authorities.
But the concept, as practiced traditionally in the United States and Europe, didn’t precisely match the reality in the favelas. CLTs are associated with their American and European varieties, where they function as real estate developers—nonprofit and affordable, but developers nonetheless. Favelas, however, do not require property development, but rather a formalization of their existing housing and community stock. This begs the question: can favelas be retrofitted as CLTs?
It turns out that the answer is a resounding yes. Starting in 2001, the Caño Martín informal settlements of San Juan, Puerto Rico, fought the gentrification of their communities. Today, the Caño is a widely studied example and shows that CLTs can effectively provide formal, titled ownership without the risk of gentrification, while building on the community’s existing social attributes. (See page 19.)
CLT Pioneers: Puerto Rico’s Historic Caño Martín PEñA Community Land Trust and Boston’s Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative
In Puerto Rico, the Caño Martín Peña communities adapted the community land trust (CLT) model to support existing informal settlements. The eight Martín Peña communities’ struggles were reminiscent of the experience in many Rio favelas and similar communities around the world. In the 1930s, a devastating hurricane forced rural workers to migrate to San Juan. They eventually built 5,000 homes informally along the Martín Peña Canal, an important artery through the capital. Today, 26,000 residents occupy the area, which is the most densely populated community in Puerto Rico.
Lack of proper sewerage and canal maintenance left the historically underserved area extremely prone to flooding. In 2001, the US Army Corps of Engineers committed to dredging the canal, but residents told city officials they were deeply concerned that improvements to the canal would lead to the gentrification of their neighborhood, given its proximity to the heart of San Juan.
Recognizing this legitimate concern, city officials held 700 community meetings between 2002 and 2004 to explore ways to preserve affordable housing and formalize landholdings. Eventually, they decided a CLT model was the best way forward, but there was no legal precedent for it in Puerto Rico.
In September 2004, San Juan passed Law 489/2004, creating the Martín Peña Canal Special Planning District and ENLACE, a special public corporation, to manage the dredging and other infrastructure improvements. The law also provided for the future incorporation of the CLT.
Also in 2004, residents established the Group of Eight Communities, or G-8, a nonprofit to promote economic, social, and community development and to maintain the CLT. The G-8 facilitates communication between ENLACE and the CLT and ensures compliance with the project’s Comprehensive Development Plan.
Prior to transferring title to the CLT, ENLACE worked to regularize property rights. Residents were granted surface right deeds with the right to inherit and maintain ownership of their home, while ENLACE retained title to the land beneath. This separation insulates residents from rising real estate values—they can capitalize on the rising values of the home itself, but not the land underneath.
The General Regulations were enacted on October 21, 2008. They stress the CLT’s role as a “mechanism of collective possession in order to solve the problem of the lack of ownership titles” and to “avoid involuntary displacement” of canal residents.
The CLT has now been operating successfully under the General Regulations for 10 years. In partnership with ENLACE, it has made significant progress toward self-maintenance and has relocated residents humanely and only when necessary to dredge the canal. In 2015, it won a Building and Social Housing Foundation World Habitat Award recognizing it as a model for other informal communities.
The Caño Martín Peña case is helping inspire initiatives around the world, including those in Rio de Janeiro. Much of the San Juan model can be inspiring, including the stories of why people chose the CLT over individual full titles and how they organized the community to decide the best model for itself, crafted legislation, and ultimately succeeded in developing the community affordably. The example also demonstrates that when households are a part of an F-CLT, they continue building on the collective assets of the community, rather than lapsing into the more self-interested thinking associated with full individual titles. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the Caño was globally linked and within months was able to galvanize supporters including other CLTs around the world to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to aid their rebuilding efforts. The Caño Martín Peña case demonstrates that collective development allows communities to harness more resources in inevitable times of need—even amid the effects of climate change.
And beyond the Caño, CLTs’ experiences all over the world can offer lessons. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston, which in 1989 created the Dudley Neighbors Inc., CLT, teaches us that these institutions’ contributions go far beyond land management. They can be economic engines coordinated by collective community priorities. This could be very inspiring to favelas that have developed their own commercial activity or that would like to but have had to do so informally. They now can, through the CLT, develop this formally, but in a way that curtails the expenses associated with formalization through traditional channels.
A CLT form of ownership in the favelas would provide residents with security from eviction and real estate speculation. It would also provide public, legal recognition, along with a greater likelihood of improved infrastructure and services. Establishing the legal and institutional frameworks necessary to manage the F-CLT is a daunting task.US and European CLTs require new residents to accept the ownership model and community organization as they enter the CLT’s waiting list for housing. F-CLTs would need to inform existing residents of their options (F-CLT and house titles versus individually held full land title) and allow families to opt in or out. Fortunately, the Caño in Puerto Rico offers a successful model: 2,000 of approximately 6,500 families opted for inclusion in the CLT in the eight participating communities. If a pilot project in Rio yielded only a subset of homes committed to the F-CLT, one can nonetheless assume that a mix of CLT and full-titled households would curtail major speculation, because large developers would be uninterested in smaller plots surrounded by affordable housing.
If so legislated, households that opt into the F-CLT would be entitled to pay a lower property tax, which is appropriate given they are forgoing their right to speculate in order to guarantee permanently affordable housing (i.e., a public good). They also could benefit from other affordability guarantees such as subsidized utilities (which, similar to shelter, address basic needs) with the same justification. Ensuring a permanently affordable housing stock via F-CLTs would be a boon to the public sector, which would be meeting its obligation to guarantee shelter without massive expenditures in public housing and rent subsidies. Cities could consider lower property taxes for F-CLTs as a flip side of the coin that often causes them to tax vacant land at higher rates, leading to greater inequality and inefficiency. A community-managed permanent affordable housing market would instead lead to greater equality and efficiency for the city as a whole.
There are three main reasons a household might choose to participate in a F-CLT rather than seek individual title to the land:
Embracing F-CLTs could be deeply transformative. Communities would ensure their tenure security through cycles of economic growth and decline, amid gentrification and eviction. They would also build on the legacies of resilience and resistance in favelas, preserving the unique characteristics of individual neighborhoods and their residents. They would use their collective, formal status to lobby for cultural recognition, subsidized utilities, and other amenities, and material improvements.
What Now for Rio?
Brazil is at a crossroads. The federal government is actively promoting mass full-titling of land and structures under regularization law 13,465. However, communities are increasingly concerned about the resulting speculative pressures, and this law must coexist with the now-established norm of recognizing favelas as Zones of Special Social Interest that should be upgraded and preserved as affordable neighborhoods.
In this context, F-CLTs represent a middle ground where the best of these two laws can coexist. The national regularization law could be complemented by an opt-in F-CLT law. Such a law could establish the framework for individual community members to choose between two options. They could choose the individual full titles currently established in the law, which will allow owners to sell their homes at market value but require them to pay full property taxes and utility bills. This option would also drive a significant cultural shift away from collective management of favelas. Or, they could choose a favela community land trust framework, whereby residents who opted in would receive titles to their structures while forming a local institution recognized by the state and run by the community to manage the land and overall neighborhood.
Residents who opted into the first scenario would depend on the public sector for all zoning decisions, upgrades, and maintenance of their public spaces, as is typical for the formal city at large. Residents who opt into the second scenario would be able to request that public resources, which would otherwise have been spent on them by the government, be allocated to the F-CLT to undertake community improvements. This second option would be legislated to guarantee permanence, affordability, and community management. The result of such a law would guarantee a large network of permanently affordable housing nationwide, offering a market through which low-income wage earners could transition as jobs and other opportunities shift locations.
In the absence of a F-CLT law, however, groups within communities could still act to establish an affordable framework. As federal law 13,465 goes into effect, a group within a community may self-select to form a F-CLT with their newly granted titles. Even if only a quarter of the community forms a F-CLT, the fact they have done so will limit the speculative potential of their community’s real estate permanently, because there will not be large tracts of land available for speculation.
Both of these scenarios are currently being investigated and developed by a coalition of partners including our Rio-based NGO Catalytic Communities, the Caño Martín Peña CLT, Rio de Janeiro’s Laboratory for Studies of Transformations in Brazilian Urban Law (LEDUB), and the Center for CLT Innovation of the Global Land Alliance, with support from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
The group is creating a series of tools and materials for favela organizers to assess the value of a CLT model to their community, developing a legislative understanding of how this is possible under current law, and envisioning what a new CLT-promoting legislation might look like. All of this will be discussed in workshops with favela community leaders, housing organizers, legal advocates, technical advisors to favelas, and researchers in Rio this August. Communities interested in mobilizing for a F-CLT in their community will receive ongoing technical support from this broader network.
It is clear that ultimately, a successful F-CLT scenario will depend on heavy investments in existing community organizing efforts, to inform residents about the risks and opportunities they face under diverse titling schemes, help them settle on the F-CLT as their solution of choice, and support what will inevitably be a long-term, permanent effort to develop and manage the CLT. The F-CLT will need to thoroughly document community assets in order to ensure that their approach builds on those assets rather than undermining them. As has always been the case, the future of Rio’s informal settlements continues to lie in their residents’ own hands.
Theresa Williamson, Ph.D., urban planner and executive director of Catalytic Communities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has been working with hundreds of leaders from Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities since 2000. Catalytic Communities is a nonprofit organization that provides networking, communications, advocacy, and training support to favela organizers. Williamson is chief editor of the organization’s favela reporting website RioOnWatch. Williamson has a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
Photograph: Robert Harding Picture Library
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World Habitat, producer. 2016. “Caño Martín Peña CLT/Fideicomiso de la Tierra – Puerto Rico.” YouTube video, 7:23. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNbjXzgnR88.
Paradójicamente, China surge como un líder global innovador en iniciativas ecológicas, cuando acaba de superar a Estados Unidos como fuente principal de emisiones de dióxido de carbono en todo el mundo (Global Carbon Atlas, 2016). La agencia oficial de noticias Xinhua destaca: “Luego de la llegada del esmog y los suelos contaminados gracias a varias décadas de expansión veloz, China se aleja invariablemente de la obsesión con el PIB y se acerca una filosofía de crecimiento equilibrado que enfatiza más el medio ambiente” (Xiang, 2017).
China fue el país que creó más energía solar en 2016. En enero de 2017, el gobierno anunció planes para invertir RMB 2,39 billones (US$ 361.000 millones) en generación de energías renovables para 2020, según la Administración Nacional de Energía. En septiembre, el gobierno también prometió prohibir la venta de autos a combustible y diésel, pero no especificó la fecha (Bradsher, 2017). Además, para lograr lo prometido en el Acuerdo climático de París, en noviembre de 2017 lanzará el mercado de “derechos de emisión” de carbón más grande del mundo, cuyo objetivo será la generación de energía por carbón y otros cinco sectores industriales que emiten carbono (Fialka, 2016; Zhu, 2017).
Una de las iniciativas ecológicas terrestres son las “ciudades esponja”, diseñadas para gestionar la filtración de agua de tormentas y evitar las inundaciones urbanas; otra, son los trabajos de conservación para proteger la calidad del agua y preservar el hábitat de la vida silvestre. El Centro de desarrollo urbano y políticas de suelo de la Universidad de Pekín y el Instituto Lincoln (PLC) colabora con el programa de The Nature Conservancy China (TNC China): ofrece asistencia técnica para un proyecto piloto de ciudad esponja en Shenzhen y para explorar mecanismos de financiación para conservaciones innovadoras en el país.
Ambos organismos se complementan en lo que respecta a la experiencia: TNC China realizó muchos trabajos preliminares para llevar las ciencias y las tecnologías a la práctica. Con el aporte de una base internacional de conocimientos por parte del Instituto Lincoln, el PLC se puede concentrar en la estrategia de conservación de China, las políticas y las finanzas. “El Instituto Lincoln realizó muchas investigaciones sobre la conservación del suelo en Estados Unidos y otros lugares del mundo, y los conocimientos internacionales obtenidos de estos trabajos ayuda a China a afrontar sus enormes desafíos en materia de conservación”, dice Zhi Liu, director del PLC y del programa de Lincoln en China.
“Durante algunos años, buscamos una forma de involucrarnos con la conservación del suelo de China. El trabajo en conjunto con TNC China comienza con el desarrollo de las ciudades esponja o, en un sentido más amplio, con la conservación en las ciudades; para nosotros, es un punto de acceso perfecto. Como una de las contrapartes en el proyecto piloto de Shenzhen, nos concentramos en los marcos estratégicos e institucionales, y en las finanzas a largo plazo. Esperamos que el trabajo de Shenzhen ayude también a establecer una base de investigación para formular políticas a nivel nacional”, explica Liu.
Ciudades esponja
El crecimiento urbano sin precedentes que presenta China cobró un precio alto en los paisajes. En 1960, el país no poseía áreas metropolitanas con más de diez millones de personas. Hoy tiene 15. En 50 años la población urbana se sextuplicó: en 1966 eran 131 millones de residentes, o el 17,9 por ciento de la población total, y en 2016 eran 781 millones, o el 56,7 por ciento (Banco Mundial, 2017). Para 2030, se espera que mil millones de personas o el 70 por ciento de la población total del país vivan en ciudades (Myers, 2016). Como resultado, proliferaron los caminos construidos y los sitios de construcción; a su vez, estos generaron una gran expansión de superficies impermeables que impiden que el agua de las tormentas llegue a la tierra para rellenar las fuentes de agua subterráneas y mitigar la amenaza de inundaciones importantes. En los últimos años hubo tormentas cada vez más fuertes y otros tipos de agua superficial que corría sobre las calles de las ciudades de China; estas presentaron un peligro de muerte para los residentes urbanos, como la inundación de 2012 en Beijing que mató a 79 personas y causó daños por RMB 11.640 millones (US$ 1.760 millones), según la agencia de noticias Xinhua.
Este evento de tormenta y otras inundaciones recientes incitaron al gobierno chino a anunciar un programa nacional que desarrollará una serie de “ciudades esponja”. Shenzhen, en el delta del río Perla, y otras 29 ciudades, desde Wuhan, en el centro, hasta Baotou, en Mongolia Interior (Leach, 2016), recibieron instrucciones e incentivos para desarrollar infraestructura ecológica, como jardines de biofiltración, tecnologías de pavimentación permeable y jardines de lluvia, para que el suelo pueda absorber el agua de las tormentas. El gobierno evaluará los resultados de los proyectos piloto con la intención de replicar a nivel nacional las prácticas que resultaron efectivas.
Según la definición del gobierno, una ciudad alcanzará su estado de “esponja” cuando el suelo llegue a absorber un 70 por ciento de la lluvia, lo que reducirá las inundaciones y la carga de los sistemas de drenaje de construcción tradicional. El objetivo es que el 20 por ciento de las zonas urbanas construidas en las ciudades piloto lleguen a la categoría de esponja en cinco años.
TNC China es la contraparte esencial y asesor técnico en el proyecto de ciudad esponja de Shenzhen. TNC invitó al PLC y otras instituciones a unirse al trabajo y ofreció conocimientos en políticas, estrategias y finanzas. El proyecto piloto de demostración de Shenzhen incluye cuatro componentes: subproyectos piloto de demostración para plantas industriales, edificios de oficinas, escuelas, barrios urbanos, etc.; divulgación y mejoras de los experimentos anteriores; una campaña de capacitación y promoción, y estudios sobre mecanismos de estrategia, políticas, y financiación.
Liu indica: “Nuestro trabajo sobre la estrategia, políticas y finanzas de la ciudad esponja se está desarrollando. Hemos estudiado en profundidad experiencias internacionales relevantes en Estados Unidos, Alemania, Países Bajos, Singapur y otros países. Los subproyectos de la demostración piloto de Shenzhen nos dan una idea muy clara sobre cuáles son las tecnologías más viables, además de los beneficios y los costos”.
El desafío más importante es cómo crear mecanismos financieros a largo plazo para desarrollar la ciudad esponja. Dicha infraestructura es costosa, se estima en más de RMB 100 millones (US$ 15,08 millones) por kilómetro cuadrado de área urbana construida. Por naturaleza, es un bien común. El problema es quién lo pagará. Hoy, el proyecto de ciudad esponja de Shenzhen se financia con subsidios del gobierno central, el presupuesto municipal y las empresas que se ofrecen como voluntarias para construir la infraestructura necesaria, como jardines y techos de lluvia en sus propios edificios. Pero los recursos financieros disponibles están muy lejos de ser suficientes para alcanzar el objetivo.
Liu explica: “Estamos investigando las experiencias de otros países en lo que respecta a financiar la gestión de tormentas. Por ejemplo, la ciudad de Filadelfia impone tarifas de agua de tormenta según la superficie impermeable de una parcela. Además, la ciudad ofrece varios programas que ayudan a los clientes no residenciales a reducir las tarifas de agua de tormenta mediante proyectos ecológicos que reducen la cantidad de superficie impermeable en su propiedad. En el contexto de China, creemos que las soluciones financieras a largo plazo requerirán estudios prudentes sobre reformas de políticas fiscales a nivel local”.
Santuarios naturales y reservas de fideicomiso territorial
TNC China también realiza actividades de conservación de recursos más allá de las ciudades. En los últimos años adaptó el modelo de fideicomiso territorial de Estados Unidos a las condiciones locales para proteger los territorios, el hábitat con biodiversidad y servicios de ecosistemas, desde purificación de aire y agua hasta mitigación de inundaciones y sequías. “Hemos estado probando este modelo localizado de fideicomiso territorial como una forma de expandir la capacidad de la sociedad de proteger y gestionar de forma sustentable las tierras y las aguas más importantes del país, y al mismo tiempo ofrecer soluciones de subsistencia ecológica en las comunidades locales y crear un mecanismo para financiar la gestión de reservas a largo plazo mediante aportes privados. Creemos que este modelo nuevo podría convertirse en un suplemento importante para el sistema actual de áreas protegidas”, dice el Dr. Jin Tong, director de ciencias en TNC China. El PLC construye sobre la base de esta experiencia exitosa y aprovecha el acceso a los conocimientos internacionales mediante la Red Internacional de Conservación del Suelo (ILCN, por su sigla en inglés), un proyecto del Instituto Lincoln, con el objetivo de explorar más sobre la financiación de la conservación del suelo en China.
Los fideicomisos territoriales son una innovación de Estados Unidos. Dado que son organizaciones benéficas, utilizan el poder del sector privado y el de organizaciones sin fines de lucro para conservar las tierras mediante la adquisición completa y la posesión del título o el derecho de propiedad; la adquisición de usufructos conservacionales, conocida como restricciones o servidumbres de conservación; o como representantes o gestores de tierras protegidas que pertenecen a terceros. De hecho, para fines de 2015 en Estados Unidos había unas 23 millones de hectáreas protegidas por fideicomisos territoriales locales, regionales y nacionales, según el Censo de fideicomisos territoriales de 2015, compilado por Land Trust Alliance junto con el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo. Se cree que Estados Unidos es el líder global en conservación territorial privada y pública; sin embargo, no hay cifras totales que comparen países de todo el mundo en lo que respecta a la conservación territorial privada y cívica. Las tierras conservadas por ONG y otros actores cívicos y privados se suman a las 3.200 millones de hectáreas protegidas principalmente por gobiernos de todo el mundo (UNDP-WCMC, 2014).
El primer fideicomiso territorial regional del mundo fue establecido en Massachusetts en 1891. Hoy, ese grupo se conoce como The Trustees of Reservations y sigue protegiendo propiedades de belleza excepcional e importancia natural e histórica de Massachusetts mediante derechos de propiedad y usufructos conservacionales. Desde ese comienzo pequeño, hoy hay más de 1.000 organizaciones de fideicomiso territorial esparcidas por todo Estados Unidos. Existen en todos los estados de la unión y siguen mejorando el ritmo, la calidad y la permanencia de los territorios protegidos en todo el país, lo que genera varios beneficios públicos. Este trabajo se beneficia mucho de los créditos impositivos federales estadounidenses para usufructos conservacionales en fideicomisos territoriales.
La práctica de conservación territorial por parte de individuos privados y organizaciones cívicas también se esparció en todo el mundo. Según indica una encuesta realizada por el ILCN, existen grupos privados y cívicos de conservación territorial en más de 130 países y territorios de América del Norte y del Sur, Europa, África, Asia y Oceanía (ILCN, 2017). Si bien el contexto legal y los incentivos económicos para la conservación territorial en los sectores privado y cívico difieren entre los distintos países, la motivación para proteger y administrar la tierra con cuidado para el bien de las generaciones presentes y futuras es una constante en todo el mundo.
Hoy, en su nueva forma, los fideicomisos territoriales pueden tener el potencial de ayudar a moldear de otra manera el modo en que China encara la creación y la gestión de las áreas protegidas. Más del 15 por ciento del territorio chino fue designado área protegida, y hay más de 2.700 reservas naturales con el nivel más alto de protección legal. Sin embargo, todavía hay desafíos importantes que arredran a la red china de territorios protegidos. Muchas áreas protegidas carecen de los recursos financieros, los mecanismos de aplicación y gobernación y el personal gerencial necesarios. Para poder fortalecer y expandir la red de áreas protegidas existente, TNC China y sus contrapartes trabajan para desarrollar analogías a los fideicomisos territoriales que funcionen en el contexto de China.
En 2008, entró en vigor una política china que permite que los individuos y organizaciones privadas asuman derechos de administración sobre territorios forestados de propiedad colectiva; gracias a ella, se abrió la puerta para comenzar las conversaciones sobre fideicomisos territoriales. En 2011, TNC China empezó a trabajar en conjunto con el gobierno local del condado de Pingwu, en la provincia de Sichuan, para estudiar la fundación de la primera reserva de fideicomiso territorial del condado. De acuerdo con la naturaleza local de este movimiento, en ese momento TNC China catalizó el nacimiento de una nueva entidad local, la Fundación de Conservación de la Naturaleza Sichuan (SNCF), que luego cambió el nombre a Fundación Paradise. En 2013, la SNCF firmó el primer contrato de conservación del país, que le permite administrar la parcela durante los próximos 50 años.
Enseguida, el gobierno local, TNC China y la fundación declararon al territorio como reserva natural a nivel del condado, lo llamaron Reserva Laohegou de fideicomiso territorial y así lograron conservar unas 11.000 hectáreas de hábitat importante para los pandas gigantes. La ubicación estratégica de la reserva conecta áreas protegidas existentes para especies en peligro de extinción, como el panda gigante y el mono de hocico chato de Sichuan; así, se estableció un gran corredor de conservación. El corredor interconectado crea de forma efectiva un amplio territorio dentro del cual se pueden aplicar rigurosas normativas contra la caza furtiva. De modo similar, los arroyos locales que corren en libertad dentro del corredor se pueden proteger para que no se desvíen y se utilicen para energía hidráulica.
Además, la reserva es importante desde el punto de vista de las investigaciones. Los científicos realizaron un inventario de referencia de la vida silvestre y colocaron decenas de cámaras-trampa para aprender más sobre la gran cantidad de especies importantes del lugar. Estas cámaras ya filmaron un hecho poco frecuente: un panda gigante comiendo los restos de un takín (un antílope-cabra de las montañas y las mesetas asiáticas), lo que refuerza el descubrimiento relativamente nuevo de que los pandas son omnívoros y de vez en cuando comen carne.
Para las tareas cotidianas de administración de la reserva, la fundación financió la creación de una entidad local, el Centro de conservación de la naturaleza Laohegou, que a su vez contrató residentes cercanos para que administren y ejecuten los planes de trabajo de administración, aplicación y monitoreo ecológico.
Hay otras entidades que apoyan y administran la reserva y están poniendo en práctica mecanismos piloto que aumentarán los ingresos de las comunidades cercanas a las reservas y financiarán su administración. Por ejemplo, fuera de la reserva Laohegou, la Fundación Paradise estableció un sistema mediante el cual venden los productos agrícolas ecológicos e hidromiel de la comunidad a mercados de lujo. Los ingresos de estas ventas aumentan la renta de la comunidad y reducen la presión de los residentes locales que quieren cazar y buscar comida dentro de la reserva. Además, la Fundación Paradise y otras exploran el potencial del ecoturismo limitado dentro de las reservas y una colecta de fondos en línea para proyectos individuales. Por último, los gerentes del proyecto también ven con optimismo que el sector de caridad, que está creciendo en China, se interesará en estas actividades y las apoyará. Queda por determinar si estas técnicas generarán ganancias repartidas entre las comunidades cercanas a la reserva u ofrecerán la financiación constante y a largo plazo que se necesita para las actividades de administración.
El objetivo de la conservación es crear diez reservas de fideicomiso territorial en China para 2020 junto con contrapartes; cada una de las reservas debería adoptar un modelo un poco diferente para demostrar la flexibilidad del enfoque; por ejemplo, alquilar un terreno y convertirlo en una reserva, como en la provincia de Sichuan, o encargarse de las responsabilidades de administración de una reserva existente. Más allá de Laohegou, TNC y sus contrapartes también exploran otros modelos para demostrar la flexibilidad del enfoque, como sociedades civiles que se encargan de las responsabilidades de administración de una reserva existente. Hasta el día de hoy se crearon cuatro reservas de fideicomiso territorial en todo el país, entre ellas Laohegou, en conjunto con varias entidades locales. El interés sigue creciendo.
La Fundación Paradise y TNC China tomaron prestada la idea de Land Trust Alliance, de Estados Unidos, se unieron a otras 11 ONG medioambientales nacionales e internacionales, y en 2017 lanzaron la Alianza cívica de conservación territorial de China, que pretende catalizar el “movimiento de fideicomisos territoriales en China” mediante una plataforma de comunicación, financiación, estándares, políticas y construcción de capacidades. La visión a largo plazo de la Alianza es proteger de forma colaborativa el uno por ciento del suelo de China mediante individuos y organismos cívicos y privados.
“Pronto, TNC cumplirá veinte años en China”, indica Jin Tong. “Hemos completado muchos trabajos de campo que utilizan nuestro enfoque científico y la experiencia internacional para encontrar soluciones viables a los desafíos medioambientales más urgentes del país, como el proyecto piloto de ciudades esponja y las reservas de fideicomiso territorial. Junto con el PLC, podemos amplificar el éxito de los proyectos de demostración para producir impactos a mayor escala y crear condiciones propensas para lanzar cambios sistemáticos en las estrategias de conservación, las políticas y las finanzas mediante la investigación”.
James N. Levitt es gerente de los programas de conservación territorial en el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo y director del Programa sobre innovaciones de conservación en el bosque de Harvard, de la Universidad de Harvard. Emily Myron es gerente de proyecto en la Red Internacional de Conservación del Suelo del Instituto Lincoln.
Fotografía: Oktay Ortakcioglu
Referencias
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Paradoxically, China is emerging as an innovative global leader in green initiatives, just as it has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions (Global Carbon Atlas 2016). “After decades of rapid expansion brought smog and contaminated soil,” noted the official Xinhua News Agency, “China is steadily shifting from GDP obsession to a balanced growth philosophy that puts more emphasis on the environment” (Xiang 2017).
China generated more solar power in 2016 than any other nation. In January 2017, the government announced plans to invest RMB 2.39 trillion (US$361 billion) in renewable energy generation by 2020, according to China’s National Energy Administration. This September, the government also promised to ban the sale of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars at an unspecified date (Bradsher 2017). And to help meet its commitments to the Paris Climate Accords, China will launch the world’s largest carbon “cap and trade” market in November 2017, targeting coal-fired power generation and five other large carbon-emitting industrial sectors (Fialka 2016, Zhu 2017).
Land-based green initiatives include “sponge cities,” designed to manage storm water runoff and prevent urban flooding, and conservation efforts to protect water quality and preserve wildlife habitat. The Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy (PLC) is collaborating with The Nature Conservancy’s China program (TNC China), providing technical support for a sponge city pilot in Shenzhen and exploring innovative conservation finance mechanisms for China.
The two organizations are complementary in terms of expertise: TNC China has done a lot of ground work to turn sciences and technologies into practice. With the Lincoln Institute providing an international knowledge base, the PLC can focus on China’s conservation strategy, policy, and finance. “The Lincoln Institute has done a lot of research on land conservation in the United States and elsewhere around the world, and the international knowledge developed from this work helps China to address its enormous conservation challenges,” says Zhi Liu, director of the PLC and Lincoln’s China program.
“For a few years, we have been looking for a way to engage ourselves in China’s land conservation. The partnership with TNC China—starting with sponge city development or, more broadly, conservation for cities—provides us a perfect entry point. As one of the partnering institutes in the sponge city pilot project in Shenzhen, we are focusing on strategic and institutional frameworks and long-term finance. We hope that the work in Shenzhen will also help lay a research foundation for national policy making,” says Liu.
Sponge Cities
China’s unprecedented urban growth has taken a hard toll on the landscape. In 1960, it had no metropolitan areas with populations over 10 million. Now it has 15. In 50 years, the urban population multiplied by a factor of six: from 131 million residents or 17.9 percent of total population in 1966, to 781 million or 56.7 percent by 2016 (World Bank 2017). And by 2030, one billion people, or 70 percent of China’s total population, are expected to live in cities (Myers 2016). Resulting proliferation of hardscaped roads and building sites have created a vast expansion of impervious surfaces that prevent storm water from seeping into the earth to replenish ground water sources and mitigate the threat of major flooding. In recent years, increasingly severe storms and other surface water running at street level in Chinese cities have presented life-threatening peril to urban residents, such as the 2012 flood in Beijing that killed 79 and caused RMB 11.64 billion (US$1.76 billion) in damages, according to Xinhua News Agency.
This storm event and other recent floods spurred the Chinese government to announce a national program to develop a series of “sponge cities.” Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta and 29 other cities, from Wuhan in Central China to Baotou in Inner Mongolia (Leach 2016), received instructions and incentives to develop green infrastructure—including bioswales, pervious paving technologies, and rain gardens to absorb storm water into the ground. The government will test the results of the pilot projects with the intention of replicating proven-effective practices on a nationwide basis.
By the government’s definition, a city will reach the “sponge” standard when 70 percent of rainfall is absorbed into the ground, relieving strain on traditionally constructed drainage systems and minimizing floods. The goal is that 20 percent of urban built-up areas in pilot cities will reach sponge standard over the course of five years.
TNC China is the key partner and technical adviser to Shenzhen’s sponge city project. TNC invited the PLC and several other institutions to join the effort, providing insight on policy, strategy, and finance. The pilot demonstration project in Shenzhen includes four components: pilot demonstration sub-projects for industrial plants, office buildings, schools, urban neighborhoods, etc.; dissemination and upgrading of past experiments; an education and promotion campaign; and studies of strategy, policy, and financing mechanisms.
“Our work on the sponge city strategy, policy, and finance is currently underway,” says Liu. “We have looked extensively into relevant international experiences from the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, and other countries. The sub-projects of the Shenzhen pilot demonstration give us a great sense of which technologies are most feasible, as well as their benefits and costs,” he adds.
The major challenge is how to develop long-term financial mechanisms for sponge city development. Sponge infrastructure is costly, estimated at over RMB 100 million (US$15.08 million) per square kilometer of built-up urban area. It is a public good in nature. The question is who will pay for it. Today, Shenzhen’s sponge city project is supported by central government subsidies, the municipal budget, and businesses volunteering to build sponge infrastructure facilities, such as rain gardens and rain roofs on their own properties. But the available financial resources are far from adequate to meet the target.
“We are investigating other countries’ experiences with financing rainstorm management,” says Liu. “For example, the city of Philadelphia imposes storm water fees based on the amount of impervious surface that a parcel contains. The city also offers several programs to assist nonresidential customers to lower their storm water fees through green projects that reduce the amount of impervious surface on their properties. In the context of China, we believe that the long-term financial solutions will require some careful consideration of fiscal policy reform at the local level,” he says.
Nature Sanctuaries and Land Trust Reserves
TNC China is also active in the conservation of resources beyond China’s cities. In the past several years, TNC China has adapted the American land trust model to local conditions to protect land, biodiversity habitat, and ecosystem services, from air and water purification to flood and drought mitigation. “We’ve been testing this localized land trust model as a way to expand society’s ability to protect and sustainably manage China’s most important lands and waters, while providing green livelihood solutions for local communities and creating a mechanism to finance long-term reserve management through private contributions. We believe that this new model could become an important supplement to China’s current protected area system,” says Science Director of TNC China, Dr. Jin Tong. Building on this successful experience and taking advantage of access to international knowledge through the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN), a project of the Lincoln Institute, the PLC is exploring land conservation finance for China more broadly.
Land trusts are an American innovation. As chaitable organizations, land trusts leverage the power of the private and nonprofit sectors to conserve land by acquiring it outright, and owning title or fee ownership to it; by acquiring conservation easements, also known as conservation restrictions or conservation servitudes; or by serving as the stewards or managers of protected lands owned by others. Indeed, about 56 million U.S. acres (about 23 million hectares) have been protected in the United States by local, regional, and national land trusts as of year-end 2015, according to the 2015 Land Trust Census compiled by the Land Trust Alliance in cooperation with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The United States is believed to be the global leader in private and civic land conservation, though no comprehensive figures compare nations around the world in terms of private and civic land conservation. Land conserved by NGOs and other private and civic actors complement the 7.9 billion acres (3.2 billion hectares) protected, principally, by governments around the world (UNDP-WCMC 2014).
The world’s first regional land trust was established in Massachusetts in 1891. Known today as The Trustees of Reservations, that group continues to protect exceptionally beautiful, naturally important, and historically significant properties in Massachusetts through fee ownership and conservation easements. From that small beginning, more than 1,000 land trust organizations are now spread across the United States. They exist in every state of the union and continue to improve the pace, quality, and permanence of protected lands across the nation, providing multiple public benefits. This work greatly benefits from U.S. federal tax credits for conservation easements to land trusts.
The practice of land conservation by private individuals and civic organizations has also spread across the world. Private and civic land conservation groups exist in more than 130 countries and territories in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, according to a recent survey conducted by the ILCN (ILCN 2017). While the legal context and financial incentives for land conservation in the private and civic sectors differ from country to country, the motivation to protect and carefully steward land for the good of present and future generations is a constant across the globe.
Now land trusts, in a new form, may have the potential to help reshape the way that China approaches the creation and management of protected areas. Currently, more than 15 percent of China’s land is designated as a protected area, and more than 2,700 nature reserves have the highest level of legal protection in that nation. However, significant challenges continue to daunt the Chinese network of protected lands. Many protected areas lack adequate financial resources, enforcement and governance mechanisms, and management staff. In order to strengthen and expand the existing network of protected areas, TNC China and its partners are working to develop land trust analogues that work in the Chinese context.
A 2008 Chinese policy that allows private individuals and organizations to assume management rights on collectively owned forest land opened the door for a conversation about land trusts. In 2011, TNC China initiated a collaboration with the local government of Sichuan Province’s Pingwu County to explore the establishment of the country’s first land trust reserve. In keeping with the local nature of the land trust movement, TNC China then catalyzed the birth of a new local entity—the Sichuan Nature Conservation Foundation (SNCF)—which was later renamed the Paradise Foundation. In 2013, the SNCF signed the nation’s first conservation lease, allowing it to manage the parcel for the next 50 years.
The local government, TNC China, and the foundation promptly designated the leased land a county-level nature reserve, named Laohegou Land Trust Reserve, thereby conserving over 27,000 acres (about 11,000 hectares) of important giant panda habitat. This reserve’s strategic location connects existing protected areas for endangered species, such as the giant panda and the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey, thereby establishing a large conservation corridor. The interconnected corridor effectively creates a large territory within which anti-poaching regulations can be rigorously enforced. Similarly, within the corridor, local streams that run free can be protected from diversion into hydropower.
The reserve is also important from a research perspective. Scientists have carried out a baseline inventory of wildlife and set up dozens of camera traps to learn more about the numerous important species present. Already, the cameras have captured rare footage of a giant panda eating the remains of a takin (a goat-antelope found in Asian mountain ranges and highlands), reinforcing the relatively new discovery that pandas are omnivores, occasionally consuming meat.
For day-to-day management of the reserve, the foundation sponsored the creation of a local entity, the Laohegou Nature Conservation Center, which has in turn hired nearby residents to administer and execute management, enforcement, and ecological monitoring workplans.
Several entities supporting and managing the reserve are also piloting mechanisms to increase income in communities bordering the reserves and to fund the reserve’s ongoing management. For example, outside Laohegou Reserve, the Paradise Foundation has set up a system in which they sell the community’s eco-friendly agricultural products and honey wine to high-end markets. Revenues from these sales augment community income and reduce the pressure from local residents who want to hunt and forage within the reserve. The Paradise Foundation and others are also exploring the potential for limited ecotourism into the reserves, as well as online fundraising for individual projects. Finally, project managers are also optimistic that China’s growing philanthropic sector will take interest and support these efforts. It remains to be seen whether these techniques will yield profits that are widely dispersed through the communities near the reserve or provide consistent, long-term funding needed for management activities.
The conservancy’s goal is to create 10 land trust reserves in China by 2020 with partners, each employing a slightly different model to demonstrate the flexibility of this approach, such as leasing land and turning it into a reserve, like in Sichuan Province, or assuming management responsibilities of an existing reserve.
Beyond Laohegou, the Conservancy and its partners are also exploring other models to demonstrate the flexibility of this approach, such as civil societies assuming complete or partial management responsibilities of an existing reserve. To date, four land trust reserves, including Laohegou, have been created around the country in partnership with various local entities, and interest continues to grow.
Borrowing the idea of the Land Trust Alliance in the United States, the Paradise Foundation and TNC China aligned 11 other international and domestic environmental NGOs to launch the China Civic Land Conservation Alliance in 2017, aiming to catalyze the “China land trust movement” by providing a platform for communications, funding, standards, policies, and capacity building. The long-term vision of the Alliance is to collaboratively protect 1 percent of China’s terrestrial land by civic and private organizations and individuals.
“The Conservancy will soon enter its twentieth year in China,” says Jin Tong. “We’ve completed a lot of work on the ground that draws on our science-based approach and international expertise to find viable solutions to China’s most pressing environmental challenges, such as the sponge city pilot project and the land trust reserves. In collaboration with PLC, we could amplify the success of demonstration projects to make larger-scale impacts and create enabling conditions to trigger systematic changes through research on China’s conservation strategies, policy, and finance,” she says.
James N. Levitt is the manager of land conservation programs at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest of Harvard University. Emily Myron is project manager of the International Land Conservation Network at the Lincoln Institute.
Photograph: Oktay Ortakcioglu
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