Legal empowerment for local resource control

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1.2. DEFINITIONS, SCOPE AND RATIONALE
Legal empowerment is defined here as “the use of legal services and other
development activities to increase disadvantaged populations’ control over
their lives” (Golub, 2005:304). The concept has recently gained currency
partly as a result of the establishment of the UN-hosted Commission on the
Legal Empowerment of the Poor. Different people have used this concept in
different ways, however. The meaning of legal empowerment as used in
this study is further discussed below (section 2.1).
This study focuses on one area of legal empowerment – on using legal
processes to increase local users’ control over the resources on which they
depend, particularly land but also subsoil and surface resources. This focus
reflects the importance of access to land and natural resources for the
livelihoods of much of the rural population in sub-Saharan Africa.
Increasing local resource control entails improving security of resource
rights and strengthening leverage in decision-making affecting those rights.
Security of rights refers to the extent to which resource users can be
confident that they will not be arbitrarily deprived of their resource rights
and/or the benefits deriving from these. This confidence includes both
objective elements (nature, content, clarity, duration and enforceability of
rights) and subjective elements (the resource users’ perception of the
security of their rights). Leverage in decision-making refers to the extent to
which resource users can influence decision-making processes that affect
their resource rights – ranging from no say to consultation through to veto
power.
The study analyses the legal and para-legal tools that can be used to
increase local resource control. Legal tools are institutional arrangements
that are designed to respond to specific needs or problems (hence “tools”),
and that draw legitimacy from their being anchored to the legal system (e.g.
legislation or case law; hence “legal”). Relevant tools examined here include
for instance community land registration, mandatory community
consultation, negotiated benefit-sharing agreements, social impact
assessment, compensation for takings and remedies for damage to property
(injunctions, restoration and compensation). Para-legal tools are materials
and activities to build local capacity in order to enable poorer and more
marginalised groups to use those legal tools more effectively; and, more