Landesa

For more than four decades, Landesa has championed the power of land ownership and secure land rights as the key to a better, safer future for the world’s poorest people, those 3.4 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than $2 a day.

Founded in 1967 by former University of Washington Law Professor Roy Prosterman, and originally named the Rural Development Institute, we continue to be guided by the radically simple notion that secure property rights bring opportunity. While we recognize that land rights are not a panacea to poverty, we believe that they provide quite possibly the best first step. They are the foundation required for other development tools – education, public health, microfinance, sanitation, nutrition, among others – to take root.

We envision a world free of extreme poverty. We see a future in which all who depend on land for their well-being have secure land rights – one of the most basic and powerful tools for lifting themselves and their families out of poverty.

With the help of Landesa’s global team of land tenure experts, and in partnership with governments around the world, more than 100 million families in 40 countries have obtained secure land rights.