In a blog series from IIED and the Land Portal, rights defenders and practitioners in the global South reflect on their strategies to push for more responsible and sustainable land-based investments. Here, guest blogger Jesinta Kunda describes how civil society organizations were key to improving Zambia’s first ever National Lands Policy.

OVERVIEW

Under the umbrella of the Land Dialogues series, the first webinar of this year’s series “Taking Data Back: Women’s Sovereignty Over Land Data” took place on March 30th, 2023. The webinar drew in a little over 220 participants and featured panelists from Indigenous women leaders to programme officers.  The series is organized by a consortium of organizations, including the Land Portal Foundation, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Tenure Facility.  

OVERVIEW

Under the umbrella of the Advancing Land-based Investment Governance (ALIGN) series, the second webinar of the series “The Maledu Judgement: The power of tenure rights recognition” took place on March 22nd, 2023.  The webinar drew in a little over 230 participants and featured panelists from the private sector, members of mining-affected communities and practitioners.   The series is organized by a consortium of organizations, including the Land Portal Foundation, CCSI, IIED and Namati.  

CALPI received information that the community of Wilú has been attacked by settlers on March 11, 2023 and that on March 10, 2023, three Mayangna community members and two children members of the Mískitu indigenous people were kidnapped; the kidnapped people were on their way from the community of Musawás to the community of Betlehem in the Mayangna Sauni As territory, in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, within the Autonomous Region of the Northern Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua.

Over the past decade, the gender gap in land rights and therewith the importance of women’s tenure security has gained increasing awareness and momentum in many parts of the world. Despite numerous measures to support gender equality in land rights,  rural and urban women continue to face numerous obstacles in accessing land whether through inheritance, transfers, or leases.

But what are the other factors - in their daily lives and particularly under customary law - affecting women's tenure security? 

During the Annual Conference hosted by the Knowledge Platform Security and Rule of Law (KPSRL), the LAND-at-scale knowledge management organised a session exploring how land registration might impact relations between local governments and the populations they are expected to serve. Land registration interventions today often follow a path of decentralisation in which local land offices are tasked with additional responsibilities, or new entities are being created.

Land Ownership and the State of Open Data

This article was first published on the Data for Development website as part of their advance update on the State of Open Data 2nd Edition. 

One of our main goals and missions at the Land Portal is to help democratize the information landscape on land. More specfifically, the Land Portal Foundation was established to create, curate and disseminate land governance information by fostering an inclusive and accessible data landscape. This International Open Data Day, set to take place on March 4th, we invite you to read more  of our latest content on our open data related!

Photo Credit: JustGrimes

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”.  The day aims to celebrate women and girls who are championing the advancement of transformative technology and digital education.

This blog post is part of the series What to Read. 

After the “land rush” in 2007/08, researchers and civil society investigated the speed and scale of this phenomenon or highlighted single case studies. 15 years on, communities who lost their homes in the land rush continue to fight for their rights and get support from civil society, international organizations, and the media. 

Today, I am on board the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise ship, as we confront the fossil fuel company, Shell, for its role in causing climate devastation around the world - while paying nothing for this destruction. It is now a  trend almost everywhere in the world, fossil fuel and oil extraction are becoming the new trend and a real treasure, to a chosen few. True, governments do need money, and it seems easier and quicker for them  to have it through the exploitation of fossil fuels.