From Achieving Climate Commitments to Ensuring Just Tenure Transitions
The Paris Agreement, successive COP commitments, and national net-zero pledges are collectively driving a transformation in land use patterns. The energy system transition, agriculture and land use transition, and the rapid scaling of renewable energy infrastructure all share a common dependence on land. As these transitions unfold simultaneously, multiple and often competing demands are converging on the same parcels of land, many of which are already in use for livelihoods and food production. This growing pressure cuts across tenure systems and land use categories, including private land, commons, customary lands, and so-called wastelands.
To this, India’s land governance context adds further complexity. It is characterised by legal pluralism, institutional siloes, a dominant state role, yet low state capacity and poor citizen and stakeholder participation. In India, land is not just an economic asset or commodity but also a source of identity, livelihood, and power. Digitised yet unupdated records, overlapping claims, misinterpretation of land categories, and gaps between de facto and de jure tenures often exacerbate disputes. Land valuation challenges, compensation and competing claims make land procurement for just transitions difficult. At the same time, the lack of mandatory SEIA limits a grounded understanding and localised engagement, critical for land tenure understanding and risk mitigation.
In contexts where land is repurposed for climate-related interventions, existing land use practices and tenure arrangements may not always be fully recognised, leading to disputes and project delays, with implications for communities as well as project developers and investors. The track invites sessions that cover:
How climate driven land demand from renewable energy siting, agriculture and land use transition are reshaping land use, triggering tenure conflicts, and affecting communities with informal, unrecorded or customary rights?
How risks are assessed, how different forms of land access are accounted for, and how potential impacts on livelihoods are managed?
The particular challenge of projects sited on government-classified lands such as commons, wastelands, and forest lands, where existing community rights are invisible to the state but very real on the ground
Innovative tools, frameworks, and tenure due diligence approaches developed by governments, developers, civil society, and communities to identify, assess, and mitigate land and tenure risks before, during and on completion of projects.
What meaningful community participation, free prior informed consent, and equitable benefit sharing actually look like in practice and the gap between policy commitments and ground reality?