Conference Agenda

Portucel Mozambique (PMZ) is a private company owned by The Navigator Company and subsidiary of IFC which holds the right to use an area of 356,000 hectares, assigned by the Government of Mozambique for the implementation of a forest-based industry for pulp production.

Based on the resulting characterization of the environmental and social impact study, which revealed the presence of more than 24000 low-income households in the areas of DUAT attributed to the company, innovative tools were created, mainly in the social and environmental domains. Examples of these innovative mechanisms are the Portucel Development Community Programme (PDCP), land access procedure, relationship with the communities, grievance mechanism or the mosaic model.

At the stakeholder engagement and land access levels a participatory methodology is being tested with PMZ support that is expected to have an important role in the progress of the project, promoting greater transparency and community engagement solutions.

The paper addresses the implementation of an approach to securing and documenting community and family land rights in Mozambique in the context of a large-scale forestry plantation investment. This approach places emphasis upon building institutional capacity within local community groups, and the mapping and certification of household land holdings, as pre-cursors to land access negotiations between them and the investment proponents. The strengthening of institutional capacity is achieved through the formal delimitation and certification of the collective land holdings, and the establishment of communal property associations to represent the communities as corporate, rights-holding entities. Community land use plans are then developed to identify areas for conservation and preservation, as well as potential sites for public or private investments. The approach represents a shift from the vague, nebulous and unenforceable community-investor agreements that characterise the ceding of community land in Mozambique towards specific, detailed agreements that are rights-based and enforceable.

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