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Access to land is one of the
most important – perhaps the most important
– factor in achieving sustainable rural
livelihoods.
In Iran, several
attempts were made to change the system of
land tenure in the years after the
Constitutional Revolution. Yet the joint
policies of Agrarian Reform and
Nationalisation of Natural Resources that
were formed within the framework of the 1960
“White Revolution” of the Shah, had one of
the greatest impacts on agriculture and
natural resources in terms of the
socio-cultural, economic and environmental
structures of the country. In fact, these
policies count among the most important
events in modern Iranian history. They
fundamentally changed the social lives and
income of the population and led to a
collapse in the traditional system of
managing natural resources and collective
cultivation. Despite the Agrarian Reform
programme (and in some cases because o fit)
, the distribution and management of land
continue to be a major issue for the
country. Most of Cenesta’s work has focused
on working to achieve access to land and
territories for nomadic pastoralists.
Cenesta joins other civil
society organizations worldwide in calling
for genuine redistributive agrarian reform
in the context of food sovereignty policies.
Such programs must be designed through
processes in which local communities take
leadership, and which address the needs and
demands of diverse constituencies, including
but not limited to indigenous peoples,
traditional fisherfolk, nomadic
pastoralists, migrants, peasant and family
farm cultivators, forest peoples, rural
workers, and others.
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