Observes that agricultural investment policies mostly focus on large-scale land acquisitions and on export-oriented agriculture that is usually unrelated to local economies; notes that the development of extensive irrigation in the targeted geographical investment areas of NAFSN may reduce water availability for other users, such as small-scale farmers or pastoralists; stresses that under those circumstances the ability of mega-PPPs to contribute to poverty reduction and food security must be critically assessed and improved; emphasises that agricultural investment policies should be linked to and should support the development of the local economy, including smallholders and family farming; recalls that the FA ...[+++]O Tenure Guidelines recommend secure access to land in order to allow families to produce food for household consumption and to increase household income; stresses the need to base large-scale land-based investment in Africa on these guidelines, ensuring smallholders’ and local communities’ access to land, promoting local SME investment. and ensuring that PPPs contribute to food security and to reducing poverty and inequality.

whereas different forms of land tenure exist (customary, public and private), but NAFSN almost exclusively refers to land titling to address tenure rights.

Stresses that private companies involved in multilateral development initiatives should be accountable for their actions; calls on the parties to NAFSN, to this end, to submit annual reports on the action taken under NAFSN and to make those reports public and accessible to local people and communities, and to set up an independent accountability mechanism, including an appeal mechanism for local people and communities; stresses equally that New Alliance investment affecting land rights must be subject to an independent prior impact study on land rights and must be in line with the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible governanc ...[+++]e of tenure of land, fisheries and forests.

monitor land titling and certification schemes to ensure that they are transparent and do not concentrate land ownership or dispossess communities of the resources they rely upon.

When Squamish entered into the property taxation regime in 1994, I had to come to Ottawa and sit with the Minister of Indian Affairs and the largest tenant in our reserve, the owners of the Park Royal Shopping Centre, to have a discussion about how we would enter property taxation.

The bulk of the bill relates to the Governor in Council’s power to make regulations, at the request of a First Nation, to permit the registration of project lands in a land registry system that replicates provincial land title or registry systems.