Legal empowerment for local resource control

state, local resource users can “make representations” to the Land
Commissioner (section 4(5) of the Village Land Act 1999). In Mozambique,
both the Land Act 1997 and the Forest Act 1999 provide for mandatory
community consultation processes before investors are allocated land use
rights (“DUAT”) and forest concessions (articles 13 and 24 of the Land Act,
and article 17 of the Forest Act). While under the Forest Act the mandatory
consultation process only applies to forest concessions, the implementing
regulations adopted under the Act extend consultation requirements to the
issuance of forest permits.
In Ghana, while there is no general legal requirement for investors to consult
local resource users, the Timber Resources Management Act 1997 requires
the “authorization” of the “individual, group or owner concerned” for the
issuance of Timber Utilisation Contracts in land areas that are already in use.
Local consultation procedures raise a range of legal issues and differ widely
in the way they tackle them. The sections below explore these issues.
Who is consulted?
The first element of any mandatory consultation process is clarifying who is
to be consulted. All too often, consultation processes only concern a
restricted number of people, usually local elites who may act to their own
advantage and to the detriment of other local stakeholders. Legal
requirements on who is to be consulted vary substantially across countries,
for instance depending on whether consultation is limited to land “owners”
and holders of other legally registered land rights, or whether it is extended
to all resource users.
In Ghana, the consent requirement for the issuance of timber utilisation
contracts in land areas currently in use refers to the “individual, group or
owner concerned”, suggesting that it applies to holders of rights not
amounting to full ownership (section 4 of the Timber Resources Management
Act). In Mozambique, all land is owned by the state; locals and foreigners
alike enjoy use rights on state-owned land. Here, local consultation of local
holders of use rights is mandatory irrespective of whether such rights have
been registered or not (articles 13(2) and 14(2) of the Land Act).
Generally, restricting consultation requirements to owners or other
registered right holders alone substantially limits the applicability of this
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