In the Three Rivers gazetted forest of northern Benin, the start of the agricultural season is a frequent hotspot of conflict between local communities and forest officials. 

It is at this moment when demands are made for forest fees giving permission for residents to cultivate fields or graze their livestock. Yet this is exactly when farmers experience a financial squeeze in preparing their land and obtaining inputs to start the new season.

The Land Portal advocates for more and better open land data, but more and better have never been our end objectives. Data must be used; it needs a purpose. One of the ways we practice what we preach is through our data stories. 

Maize is a key global cash crop, produced in every continent except Antarctica. As a flex crop, it has multiple uses including for direct human consumption, as an ingredient for animal feed, as a key component in processed foods, or in ethanol production. According to figures from FAOSTAT, global production increased from 0.2 to 1.2 billion tons between 1961 and 2020.

Curating land information is part of our daily work in the Land Portal. It includes selecting, categorizing, and enriching information with analysis and/or additional data, graphic visualizations, etc. In times with so much information available to choose from, people are increasingly seeking sources that offer selections of high-quality knowledge and provide analysis that make sense of it. Understanding how partners in the land community are meeting this demand is a great source for us to improve our work of curating, and providing meaning to land data.

Summaries and selected replays from the 3rd Mekong Regional Land Forum are available below. Full replays of the plenary sessions will be posted shortly -- check back soon!

During Session 3 of the  3rd Mekong Regional Land Forum, we will talk about free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) standards, with the intention to address common concerns of government agencies and private investors about perceived challenges and risks in relation to FPIC application. The session will highlight why FPIC is actually in the best interest of all stakeholders.

How many good land reports go unnoticed because there is too much information to choose from in the first place?

Bearing this in mind, Land Portal developed the Country Insights digest* - a reflection on some of the most important new articles and reports that aims to identify the most current points of discussion around land in different countries, distil key messages and points of debate, and offer you an entry point to learn more.

This article was originally published through CSDS (Center for Social Development Studies) at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. It can be found at: https://www.csds-chula.org/publications/2020/4/28/critical-nature-are-chinas-dams-on-the-mekong-causing-downstream-drought-the-importance-of-scientific-debate

This blog was written as a contribution to the Mekong Regional Land Forum taking place from June 21-23 in Hanoi, Vietnam. Philip Hirsch is a keynote speaker at this event.

By Philip Hirsch, Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney