Landesa works to secure land rights for the world’s poorest people. Landesa partners with progressive governments and civil society to develop pro-poor and gender-sensitive laws, policies, and programs that strengthen land rights for the poorest people.
More than a billion people, women in particular, have little or no legal control over the land on which they depend.
Landesa works with governments to implement policies to assure land tenure to disadvantaged families.
Tim Hanstad knows that families can pull themselves out of poverty with the power of land ownership.
More than 2.2 million men and women gained secure rights to their land in the 2014 fiscal year.
Landesa works to secure land rights for the world’s poorest, mostly rural women and men, to provide opportunity and promote social justice. Landesa works to improve the status of women and environmental sustainability. Long-term impacts include reduced poverty, more inclusive economic growth, and increased agricultural productivity and food security.
Land rights are an economic engine that powers sustainable growth for families, communities, and countries. Landesa’s path to scale identifies and delivers practical recommendations and solutions to governments and civil society partners so rural women and men can benefit economically and socially from more secure land rights.
CEO, Chandler Foundation
Inspired by his mentor and professor, Roy Prosterman founded Landesa to secure long-lasting land rights for rural communities worldwide. Tim Hanstad joined the organization in 1986. He grew up in an agricultural community in the US Pacific Northwest. As a child and the grandson of Norwegian immigrant laborers, he worked on farms alongside Mexican immigrant families and became acutely aware of rural poverty and the importance of land and landownership. At the beginning of his legal career, he started working with his University of Washington law professor and international land reform expert, Roy Prosterman, on moonlighting efforts to legally secure land rights for rural communities worldwide. Tim later joined the law faculty and continued to team with Professor Prosterman, working with developing country governments to change laws and policies in order to provide land rights for poor families. In 1992, Tim initiated taking this work out of the law school into an independent non-profit. That nonprofit, now known as Landesa, has grown from Hanstad and Prosterman working out of a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle to 150+ professionals working out of more than 20 offices around the globe. Humbled by the legacy created by Prosterman and armed with the tools and experience to strategically scale Landesa’s impact globally, Tim transformed Landesa from a small, university project into the world’s leading land rights organization.
In 2015, Tim moved into a senior advisor role to act as a global ambassador for land rights and build the capacity of Landesa’s growing global team. After two years as senior advisor to Landesa, Tim became CEO of the Chandler Foundation and serves as a Landesa Board Member. To succeed Tim, Landesa hired Chris Jochnick, an international development leader who came from Oxfam America, where he led Oxfam’s work with the business sector, including the successful “Behind the Brands” campaign. Prior to Oxfam, Chris was a corporate attorney on Wall Street and a social entrepreneur in Latin America where he co-founded and led a non-profit organization that addressed threats to indigenous people’s land rights. Chris is a former fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and Echoing Green.
In 2019, Landesa’s activities played a considerable role in the adoption of five national or sub-national land laws, policies, or regulations relating to rural land rights in China, India, Liberia, and Myanmar. As a result, over 550 million women and men have had their land rights strengthened.In India, Landesa designed training curricula and legal literacy land programs that helped over 480,000 rural women and men, and provided resources and training to government officials and service providers that helped strengthen the land rights of over 3.8 million rural women and men. In China, Landesa worked with government officials to offer policy recommendations. Now, for the first time, women’s names now appear on rural land certificates, guaranteeing them equal rights to family land, and China has also repealed an earlier law that required farmers to give up their land rights if they migrated to the city. These amendments have equipped 500 million people with stronger land rights.
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