Land conflict in resettlement is not case-by-case bad luck: it follows three recurring, predictable drivers rooted in baselines that change faster than project governance accounts for.
Involuntary resettlement standards treat the cut-off date as a fixed technical milestone, yet land access conflict rarely follows that discipline in practice. Drawing on over a decade of resettlement and land access work across mining, water infrastructure, and urban river-rehabilitation projects in Latin America, this poster examines land conflict not as an exception to be managed case by case, but as a recurring, structural risk with three consistent drivers: (1) the erosion of cut-off dates through prolonged implementation timelines, which opens space for speculation, unauthorized occupation, and contested claims; (2) the natural fragmentation of eligible households over multi-year programs (separations, inheritance, internal disputes) that outpaces static eligibility registries; and (3) a persistent gap between formal grievance and monitoring systems and the informal, on-the-ground dynamics that actually drive disputes over land. Each driver reflects a baseline assumed stable at appraisal that in fact changes faster than project governance typically accounts for. The poster argues that land conflict management should be reframed from a compliance exercise executed once, at resettlement planning, into a continuous monitoring function, one that revisits cut-off assumptions, eligibility boundaries, and community risk perception throughout implementation. This responds directly to IAIA27's call to examine changing baselines and to revisit past practice for lessons the field should not keep relearning.
Daniel Cárdenas Calderón is a Senior Social Performance Consultant with 15+ years in involuntary resettlement and land access across Latin America.