Clinton Global Initiative: Tim Hanstad, CEO of Rural Development Institute (RDI), On Women & Land Rights

At Clinton Global Initiative in NYC, Katrina of envisionGood.tv had the good fortune to meet up with Tim Hanstad, CEO of Rural Development Institute (RDI). In this video interview, Tim explains the connection between land rights (or lack of) and poverty worldwide, and underscores the importance of land rights especially for women. Watch this video to learn about RDI’s important work, hear how RDI has helped over 100 thousand women in India (and 100 million families worldwide in 45 countries), and learn about the new Global Center for Women’s Land Rights that just opened in Seattle yesterday. Keeping in mind that women produce 50% of the world’s food and own less than 2% of the land, the actions being taken by RDI to bridge this inequality gap are fantastic and much needed. Thanks for watching!

The Full Transcript:

KATRINA: [Thanks for joining us Tim. Can you tell us about RDI?]

TIM: RDI is a non-profit that partners with developing country governments to help them design and implement laws that provide land ownership opportunties for the world’s poorest.

KATRINA: What inspired the founding of Rural Development Institute?

TIM: The organization was started because of the recognition that most poverty around the world, and security problems, are linked to land problems, and the poorest around the world need land in order to get meaningful opportunity, to bring themselves out of poverty into the middle class, to help resolve some of the underlying conflicts around the world. And, also that the solutions cannot just be one family or one community at a time, at least those could not be scaled up quickly. But there was a recognition that law is a very leverage tool, so working with governments to design and implement laws and policies would create change that’s both large-scale and lasting.

KATRINA: Why are land rights important to combat poverty

TIM: Land ownership for the poorest really means opportunity. Of the two billion people, more than two billion, [make that] three billion people, around the world who live on less than USD $2/day, two-thirds of them are in rural areas, where land is the most important source of income, of food, of wealth, status, power, credit. So, in order for them to receive meaningful opportunity, land ownership is a very important foundation.

KATRINA: RDI is working to strengthen women’s land rights. Why are land rights for women important to RDI and to the global community?

TIM: Women produce now the vast majority of the world’s food, and own only about two percent of the world’s land.

It makes no economic sense. So giving women land ownership rights helps improve economic efficiency, and perhaps even more important, it helps women’s empowerment, and we know that women are such important agents of social and economic change.

KATRINA: What is your process to secure land rights?

TIM: RDI starts with research. We will look at what the impact of the current legal and policy framework is on the poorest. We do desk research, field research particularly, talking to the poor directly, doing household surveys. And out of that we get data-driven information that helps provide or suggest new solutions and we design together with the government then specific recommendations for changes to the law, changes to government programs. And then, advocate for those within the government and if the government adopts them we help provide implementation support to the governments.

But I must say that when we have been successful, and we have had a lot of success, RDI has worked in 45 countries around the world on reforms that provide secure land ownership rights to more than 100 million families. And the real heroes of this are not only the families that get that opportunity and take advantage of that opportunity but it’s also the governments that are working hard to provide those opportunities.

KATRINA: How did you become involved in Land Rights issues?

TIM: I’m a lawyer by trade. And I grew up in a rural area and worked as an agricultural field worker when I was small. And, working side by side next to Mexican immigrants who had very very little but the clothes on their back, yet worked so hard. And, getting to know some of them, recognizing that the reason that they were working so hard, and yet still so poor, was because they had to flee the desperation of their situation in the countryside in Mexico because they didn’t have land ownership opportunities where they lived. That really stuck with me and I wanted to do something to help change the plight of people like that overseas.

And, I wasn’t sure what that was going to be but I ran across this professor, Roy Prosterman, who’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and had been working on these issues for a couple of decades, and once I met him and started working with him it was like drinking the koolaid, and I’ve been doing this now for almost twenty three years.

KATRINA: [An important part of Clinton Global Initiative is making a commitment to action: what action is RDI committing to here at Clinton Global Initiative?]

TIM: We are reporting on a commitment that we made two years ago at CGI. That commitment was a commitment to work in India and to help provide small plots of land, micro-plots, a fraction of an acre, for poor landless women in India and also to work in India on liberalizing land leasing laws to help groups of women get access to land through leasing and to provide legal aid to poor women.

Since that time two years ago, we’ve been joined by two fantastic partners, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Omidyar Network. Since RDI has initiated this work, more than 100,000 families and women have gotten secure rights to land.

KATRINA: What’s next for Rural Development Institute?

TIM: We are launching a Global Center for Women’s Land Rights in Seattle on October 15th. And this Center will be a global platform to advocate for change, for change in land-related laws that discriminate against women. It will also be an effort to create more capacity, a body of professionals. We plan to recruit and train and mentor a body of professionals that will work on this very very important topic of helping women and girls improve their rights and access to land.

Tim Hanstad, CEO of Rural Development institute (RDI)

About: RDI is an international non-profit organization working to secure land rights for the world’s poorest people, those 3.4 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than USD $2/day. Website: www.RDILand.org

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