Land rights take center stage in Asia’s fight against climate change

What follows is a compilation of accounts from rural poor women and men in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Timor-Leste illustrating the link between insecure land tenure and loss and damage resulting from the climate crisis. Their stories are similar: lack of land tenure security precludes them from making decisions and investments that would help them to adapt to the impacts of climate change; the absence of proof of land ownership disqualifies them from government support that would help them address and recover from loss and damage; their lack of options for relocation forces them to remain in hazardous areas, thereby increasing their risk of more loss and damage; women and girls who are left behind by men who abandon farming for daily paid labor find themselves saddled with the greater burdens of caring for the family. The common thread running through the lives of these rural poor women and men is enough to support policy and program changes that put land tenure security at the heart of the climate response.