Profiles in giving: Roy Prosterman, Founder of Seattle-based Landesa

As Roy Prosterman turns 80-years-old, the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Landesa, a global non-profit that focuses on land rights for the rural poor, shows no signs of slowing down.

On Friday March 13, 2015, more than 500 people will gather at Landesas annual luncheon in Seattle to celebrate Prosterman entering his 80th year. And a couple of weeks later, Prosterman will board a plane to Myanmar to continue the work he has dedicated his life to addressing one of the root causes of poverty, hunger, and conflict: insecure rights to land.

Prosterman first became aware of the issue of generational global poverty when he was working for the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in the early 1960s and was posted to Liberia. In those days, the West African nation did not have a functioning currency, road system or telephone service.

This violated my sense of justice and fairness, said Prosterman. This just should not be.

But it was.

So he left private practice for a teaching post at the University of Washington, School of Law.

In 1966, Prosterman came upon a law review article that promoted land confiscation as a tool for land reform and development in Latin America. Prosterman responded with his own law review article, Land Reform in Latin America: How to Have a Revolution without a Revolution, in which he urged democratic and market-friendly land reform which included full compensation for land acquisitions.

Prostermans article garnered the attention of US government officials and others who saw the potential of his ideas particularly for the escalating conflict in Vietnam. Prosterman was recruited to carry out his ideas in Vietnam.

His land to the tiller program in Vietnam from 1970 to 1973 gave land rights to 1 million tenant farmers. Rice production increased by 30 percent while Viet Cong recruitment decreased by 80 percent. A New York Times article called the land reform law that Prosterman had authored probably the most ambitious and progressive non-Communist land reform of the 20th century.

Eventually, Prosterman and his small following of law students who assisted him in his work, became the Rural Development Institute. The organization, now called Landesa, has worked in more than 50 countries advising governments on how they can change land-related laws, policies, and program to provide the rural poor with the opportunity and security they need to make the sort of long-term investments in land that boost agricultural yields and incomes.

The foundation of their approach is the understanding that most of the worlds poor share three traits: they live in rural areas, they rely on the land to survive, they dont have secure rights to the land upon which they depend.

One particular focus of Landesa is womens land rights because research shows that when women have secure rights to the land they rely on, nutrition and income improve, domestic violence is reduced, and educational outcomes improve.

Prosterman has been nominated repeatedly for the Nobel Peace Prize, the World Food Prize, and received the Schwab Foundations Outstanding Global Social Entrepreneur Award, the World Affairs Council World Citizen Award, and the inaugural Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership.

As the issue of land rights gains recognition as a key lever for sustainably addressing global poverty and reducing conflict, Landesa has grown. The organization now has 115 staff globally with offices in Seattle, India, China as well as a focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Asked why he doesnt slow down and perhaps retire, Prosterman said, There is so much left to do. And besides, I dont golf.