Christopher Tanner Email & Phone Number

40 years of experience in rural development, specialising in land policy and legislation, and sustainable and equitable development, beginning with PhD research in Northeastern Brazil on childhood malnutrition, land access, and household reproduction. In the mid to late 90s, I was FAO Senior Consultant supporting the development of the widely-regarded 1997 Land Law, which recognized and secured customary rights within a new statutory framework and required investors and the State to engage with communities to find participatory, negotiated solutions to third-party use of local land. After eleven years as a FAO Senior Advisor in Mozambique overseeing a series of land law implementation projects, in 2012 I returned to the UK to become an independent consultant based in Wales, UK, and in 2013 joined Mokoro Ltd., in Oxord, England as a Principal Consultant in Land, Livelihoods and Natural Resources (www.mokoro.co.uk). My land work has considered land policy and legislation within the sociological, and political economy context of developing countries, and has long had a strong and evolving focus on gender issues. It has embraced community level legal empowerment and access to justice, exercising and using customary rights in practice as well as their recognition and protection in law (including linking land rights to community enagement with REDD+ initiatives); inclusive business models bringing communities, investors and governments together through benefit-sharing and partnerships; and most recently, the rights of indigenous peoples and their key role in global environmental and climate change strategies. My work with Mokoro since 2013 has included the evaluation of nutrition and upstream policy work in education, land governance in Ethiopia, and the land titling programme in Rwanda. Since 2019 I have been leading land governance assessments and policy analyses for Mokoro and FAO in South and Southeast Asia, including customary tenure and gender (Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand and Timor Leste). I am fluent in Portuguese, have strong fieldwork skills and expertise in participatory training and developing accessible and practical manuals and training materials. Country experience summary: Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Indonesia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Sao Tome Principe, Thailand, Timor Leste, and Zambia. I am a member of the IWGIA ( International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs), and of Calon Cymru, a sustainable rural development advisory NGO in Carmarthenshire, Wales.

Listed skills include Policy, Portuguese, Un System, Government, and 19 others.