Community-led development and collective land tenure for environmental justice: the case of the Caño Martín Peña community land trust, Puerto Rico

ABSTRACT

Community-led land ownership can contribute to environmental justice in disaster-prone areas, particularly as it protects vulnerable communities from market-driven displacement often occurring after natural disasters. The article reviews literature linking the climate emergency with disaster resilience and collective land-based models. It brings into focus the case of the Caño Martín Peña communities in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where residents started a Community Land Trust (CLT) in Latin America and the Caribbean, resulting from an extensive process of community participation. We highlight the importance of this case as still one of the only CLT’s in the Global South, a mechanism not yet sufficiently understood as a highly developed instrument for secure land tenure and adaptation to climate change in the Global South. We analyse the mechanisms by which the CLT’s collective tenure model effectively ensures greater environmental justice – both regarding ongoing flooding issues, and specific extreme natural events such as hurricanes. Collective land ownership allows residents to remain in the area despite forces of gentrification and displacement after disasters induced by global warming. We conclude with a reflection on the need for similar land-based solutions, and summon public authorities to consider these as a route to effective environmental management.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective land tenure
• community-led development
• disaster resilience
• disaster displacement
• community displacement
• environmental justice
• community land trust

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña is the legal name in Spanish.

2. The San Juan Bay Estuary Program is a non-profit that works to improve water quality and ecosystems within the Estuario de la Bahía de San Juan and its basin.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mariangela Veronesi

Mariangela Veronesi is Programme Lead for Global Community-led Housing at World Habitat, a UK-based charity focused rights-based and sustainable solutions to housing issues around the globe. She specialises in international knowledge exchange around community-led housing solutions, and has a background on community-driven management of environmental resources. She forms part of the Advisory Board for the Center for CLT Innovation, and is also a Community-led Housing facilitator in her local area through East Midlands Community-led Housing. In the past, she has been involved in community-led upgrading processes for informal settlements in Manila, Philippines with the Technical Assistant Movement for People and the Environment, Inc. (TAMPEI), and has supported the dissemination of participatory methodologies for working with urban communities through her Associate role with Architecture Sans Frontières – UK.

Line Algoed

Line Algoed is a PhD researcher at Cosmopolis, Center for Urban Research at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels. She works closely with the Caño Martín Peña CLT in Puerto Rico on international exchanges among communities involved in land struggles. She is also Vice President at the Center for CLT Innovation. She is co-editor of the book “On Common Ground: International Perspectives on the Community Land Trust”, published by Terra Nostra Press. Previously, she was a World Habitat Awards Programme Manager at the Building and Social Housing Foundation (now World Habitat). She holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Leiden and an MA in Sociology from the London School of Economics.

María E. Hernández Torrales

María E. Hernández Torrales holds an LLM in environmental law from the Vermont Law School and an MA in Business Education from New York University. She studied for her undergraduate and Juris Doctor degrees at the University of Puerto Rico. Since 2005 she has been doing pro bono legal work for Proyecto ENLACE and the Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña. Since 2008, Hernández Torrales has worked as an attorney and clinical professor at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law where she teaches at the Community Economic Development Clinic.