(Photo: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED ILRI)

Land Portal and partners welcomed a virtual full house on 17 November for the inaugural webinar of a new series exploring strategies and approaches to address common challenges surrounding large-scale land-based investments.  

Anyone working in the field of land tenure and land governance will be aware of the existence of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGTs). Similarly, many will know that 2022 is the ten-year anniversary of their endorsement. 

There have already been various online forums to mark this occasion and consider the impacts of the VGGT, with a further high-level event planned on 6th-7th October this year in Rome. 

It was good land. Before the company’s arrival in 2011, the people of Ngovokpahun village had used it to grow cocoa and other cash crops to help them pay for their children’s education. But when Italian Agriculture offered to build them a school, health center, and roads, provide them with employment, and pay rent, leasing out the land seemed like the wiser option. The company drafted the agreement and the landowners signed.

In a recent episode of the podcast Uncharted Ground, host Jonathan Levine spoke with Namati about building a global environmental justice movement. You can find it on any major podcast platform or listen to the episode (and access the full transcript)  on Stanford Social Innovation Review's website. A  recap of the episode, written by SSIR, is below.

As part of the launch of the Responsible Land-Based Investment Navigator 2.0, the Land Portal spoke with Nathaniah Jacobs, Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, to hear more about the Advancing Land-based Investment Governance (ALIGN) project. The Navigator is positioned to be a valuable tool and resource for ALIGN stakeholders. 

When Namati's Community Land Protection project in Sierra Leone's Paki Massabong Chiefdom came to a close, a 'handing over' ceremony was held. Along with village chiefs and local officials, a number of female community members stood to speak. Here are excerpts from what a few of these women shared.  

Interview with Christiana Ellie, M&E officer in Land for Life Initiative

1) Can you tell us a bit more about the Land for Life Consortium- Sierra Leone?

Land for Life initiative Sierra Leone, is an endeavour of five legally established  civil society organizations that are working together as a consortium to roll out the initiative in  five districts of the country. These organizations have their own specific objectives around land governance.

Under the British colonial rule, Sierra Leone’s land mass was divided into two areas, the colony area and protectorate area. The British government, under the Crown Queen, had direct rule over the land within the capital of Freetown, which was the colony, leaving the provincial lands under the customary rule of chiefs and tribal heads, naming that area as the protectorate region.

The Namati team in Sierra Leone is engaged in an ongoing effort to discover sustainable measures for community ownership, management, and administration of land and natural resources throughout the country. To this end, we have taken on a new project: the application of a legal empowerment approach to community land protection.