Long Summary
What is this summary about?
This summary explores how land tenure reforms address gender inequality in land ownership and their impact on women’s ability to adapt to climate change in agriculture.
What evidence is this summary based on?
This summary is based on two systematic reviews:
Murken, L., & Gornott, C. (2022). The importance of different land tenure systems for farmers’ response to climate change: A systematic review. Climate Risk Management, 35, 100419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2022.100419
Tantoh HB, McKay TTJM, Donkor FE, Simatele MD (2021). Gender Roles, Implications for Water, Land, and Food Security in a Changing Climate: A Systematic Review. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 5:707835. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2021.707835
Main findings
Gender inequality in land tenure
Women face significant barriers to land ownership due to patriarchal norms, customary practices, and institutional biases. These challenges limit their ability to secure tenure and access financial and technical resources necessary for climate adaptation. Customary systems often exclude women from decision-making processes, while legal frameworks fail to provide adequate protections to ensure equitable land rights.
Role of land tenure reforms
Land tenure reforms play a crucial role in reducing gender inequality by securing women’s rights to land and addressing systemic barriers. Both Tantoh (2021) and Murken (2022) emphasize that reforms promoting formal land ownership for women enable them to make long-term investments in climate-resilient strategies, such as agroforestry and irrigation systems. Secure tenure enhances access to credit and government resources, further facilitating adaptation measures. These reforms also address vulnerabilities caused by land tenure insecurity, which disproportionately affect women and other marginalized groups. The integration of gender-sensitive approaches into policy and governance structures, as highlighted by Tantoh, ensures that women’s perspectives are included in land management and adaptation strategies.
Challenges in implementation
Despite their potential, land tenure reforms often fail to overcome deep-rooted cultural and institutional obstacles. Tantoh (2021) identifies patriarchal norms and systemic exclusion as key impediments, while Murken (2022) highlights how tenure insecurity, particularly under customary systems, limits women’s capacity to engage in adaptive farming. Weak enforcement mechanisms, fragmented policy frameworks, and lack of resources further undermine the effectiveness of reforms. The exclusion of women from governance and decision-making structures exacerbates these challenges, hindering equitable access to land and associated adaptation benefits.
Impact on climate resilience
Secure land rights have a transformative impact on women’s climate resilience. Reforms that recognize and formalize women’s land ownership enable them to adopt sustainable practices, access financial support, and contribute to community-wide adaptation efforts. Murken (2022) underscores that secure tenure enhances confidence in long-term investments, while Tantoh (2021) highlights how participatory governance structures can amplify women’s roles in resource management. However, the reviews also caution that without addressing systemic inequalities, such as limited access to financial services and education, the benefits of land tenure reforms remain unevenly distributed. Context-specific, inclusive, and well-enforced reforms are essential for ensuring that women can fully leverage land ownership to adapt to climate change.
1. Key finding
Overall
The water-land-food (WLF) security nexus significantly impacts rural livelihoods, with women disproportionately affected due to systemic barriers in access to resources and decision-making. Integrated and gender-sensitive approaches are essential to address these inequities and improve climate resilience.
Women and girls-related
Women face systemic marginalization in natural resource governance, driven by entrenched discriminatory land tenure frameworks, culturally entrenched patriarchal norms, and their systematic exclusion from policy formulation and decision-making processes. Bridging these structural inequities through targeted gender mainstreaming initiatives and comprehensive institutional reforms has the potential to enhance women’s agency. Such measures can facilitate their active participation in sustainable resource management and bolster community-level adaptive capacity, thereby contributing to resilience-building and equitable development.
2. Short summary
This systematic review examines gender dynamics in the Water-Land-Food (WLF) security nexus under climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women, as primary providers of water, fuel, and food, face barriers to resource access due to patriarchal norms, inequitable land tenure systems, and exclusion from decision-making. These structural constraints increase their vulnerability to climate change impacts, given their reliance on these resources for livelihoods.
Top-down resource management and climate adaptation approaches often fail to address women’s needs and contributions. Gender-sensitive, participatory strategies are essential to addressing these gaps. Recommended interventions include gender mainstreaming and reforms in land tenure systems to reduce inequalities in resource governance. Incorporating women’s perspectives and expertise into decision-making is critical for achieving food security, climate resilience, and sustainable development in the region.
3. Long summary
3.1 PICOS
Population: Rural women in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in vulnerable communities reliant on natural resources.
Intervention: Gender-sensitive participatory approaches and policy reforms aimed at addressing inequities in resource access and management, particularly focusing on empowering women within the Water-Land-Food (WLF) security nexus under the pressures of climate change.
Outcome: Enhanced understanding of gender roles, highlighting inequities and advocating for reforms to improve women’s participation and resilience.
Study design: Systematic review based on purposive sampling of 47 studies across relevant disciplines.
3.2 Risk of bias – Not assessed
3.3 Publication bias – Not assessed
3.4 Findings
Gender disparities
Women in Sub-Saharan Africa face significant structural barriers in accessing and managing critical natural resources such as land, water, and food. Patriarchal cultural norms and institutionalized gender biases in land tenure systems disproportionately restrict women’s access to ownership, decision-making, and benefits from resource management. These inequities limit women’s ability to contribute to sustainable development and compromise the efficiency and inclusivity of natural resource governance. Women’s roles as primary providers of household resources, including water and food, often go unrecognized, further entrenching their marginalization in policy and practice.
Impact of climate change
Climate change exacerbates existing gender inequities by intensifying resource scarcity and increasing the vulnerabilities of resource-dependent populations. Women, whose livelihoods are closely tied to natural resources, are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation, erratic weather patterns, and diminished agricultural productivity. These challenges heighten the economic and social burdens on women, often forcing them to adapt through informal and labor-intensive strategies that are rarely supported by formal adaptation frameworks. This underlines the urgent need for gender-responsive climate adaptation measures.
Policy gaps
Top-down management approaches to resource governance and climate adaptation often fail to incorporate the lived experiences, needs, and contributions of women. Policies are frequently designed with limited input from women, leading to interventions that are misaligned with local realities and perpetuate systemic inequalities. Sectoral approaches further silo the management of water, land, and food, neglecting their interconnected nature and the integrated strategies needed to address gendered challenges in these systems.
Recommendations
Gender mainstreaming in policies and programs
Integrate gender considerations into all stages of policy development, planning, and implementation. This includes recognizing women’s roles and addressing barriers to their participation to ensure equitable resource governance and climate adaptation outcomes.
Land tenure reforms
Reform land tenure policies to enhance women’s access to and ownership of land. Legal protections should be strengthened to safeguard women’s rights and reduce cultural and institutional barriers that inhibit their ability to secure tenure.
Inclusion in decision-making processes
Establish frameworks to ensure women’s meaningful participation in governance structures at local, national, and regional levels. Women’s involvement in decision-making will enable more equitable and effective resource management, better aligning policy responses with ground-level realities.
Capacity building and support
Invest in programs that build women’s technical capacity and access to financial resources, enabling them to engage more effectively in resource management and adaptation strategies.
3.5 Sensitivity analysis – Not assessed
4. AMSTAR 2 assessment of the review
| 1. | Did the the review state clearly the components of PICOS (or appropriate equivalent)? | Yes | |
| 2. | Did the report of the review contain an explicit statement that the review methods were established prior to the conduct of the review and did the report justify any significant deviations from the protocol? (i.e. was there a protocol) | No | |
| 3. | Did the review authors use a comprehensive literature search strategy? | Yes | |
| 4. | Did the review authors perform study selection in duplicate? | No | |
| 5. | Did the review authors perform data extraction in duplicate? | No | |
| 6. | Did the review authors provide a list of excluded studies and justify the exclusions? | No | |
| 7. | Did the review authors describe the included studies in adequate detail? (Yes if table of included studies, partially if other descriptive overview) | No | |
| 8. | Did the review authors use a satisfactory technique for assessing the risk of bias (RoB) in individual studies that were included in the review? | N.A | |
| 9. | Did the review authors report on the sources of funding for the studies included in the review? | No | |
| 10. | If meta-analysis was performed did the review authors use appropriate methods for statistical combination of results? | N.A | |
| 11. | Did the review authors provide a satisfactory explanation for, and discussion of, any heterogeneity observed in the results of the review? | N.A | |
| 12. | If they performed quantitative synthesis did the review authors carry out an adequate investigation of publication bias (small study bias) and discuss its likely impact on the results of the review? | N.A | |
| 13. | Did the review authors report any potential sources of conflict of interest, including any funding they received for conducting the review? | Yes | |
| Overall (lowest rating on any critical item) | Low |
5. Count of references to the following words
| Sex | 0 |
| Gender | 8 |
| Women | 8 |
| Intra-household | 0 |
1. Key finding
Overall
Land tenure systems significantly influence farmers’ adaptation strategies, resilience, and vulnerability to climate change. Three major linkages were identified: (1) tenure characteristics impact the adoption of climate adaptation measures, (2) tenure settings shape socio-demographic vulnerabilities, and (3) climate change affects perceived tenure security. However, gaps in robust empirical analysis and simplistic operationalization of concepts hinder comprehensive understanding.
Women and girls-related
Vulnerabilities due to tenure insecurity disproportionately affect women, particularly in patriarchal and customary tenure systems, limiting their access to adaptation resources and decision-making power.
Short summary
This systematic review explores how land tenure systems influence farmers’ responses to climate change, drawing on 106 studies. It highlights three key connections: how tenure systems affect farmers’ adoption of adaptation strategies, how tenure impacts vulnerability to climate change, and how climate change influences perceptions of tenure security. Tenure security plays a critical role in enabling long-term investments and sustainable land use. However, the review finds that many studies simplify tenure dynamics, often equating ownership with security. Women, migrants, and indigenous groups are particularly vulnerable due to inequities in land tenure systems. Methodological issues, such as limited empirical evidence and inadequate integration of climate data, reduce the strength of existing research. The review recommends context-specific tenure reforms to enhance resilience and support equitable adaptation efforts.
3. Long summary
3.1 PICOS
Population: Smallholder farmers globally, with focus on vulnerable demographic groups such as women and indigenous populations.
Interventions: Various land tenure arrangements including private, customary, and communal systems.
Comparators: Not explicitly defined; studies varied by geography and tenure type.
Outcomes: Adoption of climate adaptation measures, vulnerability levels, perceived tenure security.
Study design: Predominantly case studies, with qualitative and some econometric approaches.
3.2 Risk of bias – Not assessed
3.3 Publication bias – Not assessed
3.4 Findings
Adaptation uptake
Secure land tenure is associated with higher adoption rates of long-term adaptation strategies, including agroforestry, soil conservation, and irrigation systems. Farmers with secure tenure have greater confidence in their ability to retain access to their land, which makes investments with delayed returns more viable. Secure tenure also facilitates access to credit by providing collateral, enabling farmers to finance adaptation measures. In some cases, formal land titles are necessary for certain adaptation actions, such as participating in insurance schemes or securing funding for infrastructure. However, some studies indicate that informal or communal tenure systems can also support collective adaptation efforts, such as shared irrigation infrastructure.
Vulnerability
Tenure insecurity increases vulnerability to climate change by reducing farmers’ capacity to invest in adaptation or resilience measures. Groups such as women, migrants, and indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected due to systemic inequities in land access and tenure arrangements. Women often face barriers to land ownership due to customary practices and legal frameworks, restricting their ability to implement adaptation measures. Migrants frequently rely on informal agreements, which lack permanence and stability, preventing long-term planning. Indigenous communities are particularly at risk from external pressures like land grabbing or large-scale acquisitions, leading to displacement or reduced access to resources. These vulnerabilities limit access to financial and technical resources, further weakening resilience.
Impact of climate change
Climate change impacts perceived tenure security through physical and socio-economic effects. Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods can displace communities and create difficulties in reclaiming land, particularly in the absence of formal documentation. Gradual processes, such as land degradation and sea-level rise, reduce land productivity, leading to disputes and potential land loss. These challenges are more pronounced in regions with weak land governance systems, where climate-induced shifts in land use patterns can exacerbate conflicts. Repeated climate shocks can erode confidence in tenure arrangements, discouraging investment in adaptation. Additionally, the migration pressures caused by climate change can strain existing tenure systems, further destabilizing land access and security.
3.5 Sensitivity analysis – Not assessed
4. AMSTAR 2 assessment of the review
| 1. | Did the the review state clearly the components of PICOS (or appropriate equivalent)? | yes | |
| 2. | Did the report of the review contain an explicit statement that the review methods were established prior to the conduct of the review and did the report justify any significant deviations from the protocol? (i.e. was there a protocol) | No | |
| 3. | Did the review authors use a comprehensive literature search strategy? | Yes | |
| 4. | Did the review authors perform study selection in duplicate? | No | |
| 5. | Did the review authors perform data extraction in duplicate? | No | |
| 6. | Did the review authors provide a list of excluded studies and justify the exclusions? | No | |
| 7. | Did the review authors describe the included studies in adequate detail? (Yes if table of included studies, partially if other descriptive overview) | Partially | |
| 8. | Did the review authors use a satisfactory technique for assessing the risk of bias (RoB) in individual studies that were included in the review? | n.a | |
| 9. | Did the review authors report on the sources of funding for the studies included in the review? | No | |
| 10. | If meta-analysis was performed did the review authors use appropriate methods for statistical combination of results? | n.a | |
| 11. | Did the review authors provide a satisfactory explanation for, and discussion of, any heterogeneity observed in the results of the review? | n.a | |
| 12. | If they performed quantitative synthesis did the review authors carry out an adequate investigation of publication bias (small study bias) and discuss its likely impact on the results of the review? | n.a | |
| 13. | Did the review authors report any potential sources of conflict of interest, including any funding they received for conducting the review? | Yes | |
| Overall (lowest rating on any critical item) | Medium |
5. Count of references to the following words
| Sex | 0 |
| Gender | 2 |
| Women | 6 |
| Intra-household | 0 |
