Discover hidden stories and unheard voices on land governance issues from around the world. This is where the Land Portal community shares activities, experiences, challenges and successes.
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Issues
Geographical focus
This session zoomed in on the local situation and challenges faced by grassroots communities and women in some low-Income countries. It provided an overview of support provided by Civil Society organizations (and governments) facilitating communities, women in particular, to step up the efforts to strengthen their land rights and to generate resilience in face of the climate and COVID-19 challenges they are facing.
More secure land tenure provides much better opportunities to face climate and COVID-19 challenges by investing in high biodiversity local food & income systems.
Land. It is a commodity like no other. We live on it. We grow from it. We drink from it and build our futures upon it. But — increasingly and frighteningly so — we don’t share it equally.
The distribution of land has long defined the gap between rich and poor. Now new data shows clearer than ever how the way in which land is being shared and managed profoundly impacts extreme and rising inequality, and the achievement of women’s and girl’s rights.
Although land reform has been a priority area of the government, land use planning has always remained under the shadow of revenue collection and land distribution.
From 2013 to 2016, Oxfam's Behind the Brands campaign called on the 10 biggest food and beverage companies to adopt stronger land rights commitments. Now, as the coronavirus pandemic worsens inequality and food insecurity around the world, we asked the question: Are companies taking meaningful steps to implement their commitments?
In this session, we explored the linkages between Strategic Environmental Assessment and land governance. SEA often deals with land-related aspects in planning, and has the potential to ensure that they are satisfactorily dealt with in decision making. This potential could reach further if SEA would be applied more widely and, most importantly, before irreversible changes to land and land use are made. Doing SEA before ESIA for concrete investments can help avoid some of the land related challenges and conflicts currently encountered.
This session brought together colleagues from different organizations working in the broad field of land rights, discussing lessons and experiences from working in crisis mode, in fragile and conflict affected settings. The participants shared experiences, challenges they faced especially during Covid, the solutions they found and critically reflected on shortcomings and unsolved issues.
This session focussed on the transition towards more sustainable food systems in light of the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit. Four presenters shared their work, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, and their recommendations towards more fair and sustainable production of food, as well as recommendation to change the way we think about food.
Key Takeaways
The LANDac Conference 2021 was opened by the Co-Chairs of LANDac, Dr. Gemma van der Haar from Wageningen University and Dr. Guus van Westen from Utrecht University. Dr. Guus van Westen noted that theirs is the 11th consecutive LANDac conference, and that last year, labeling the conference an Online Encounter, we were not yet ready to accept the new reality of COVID-19. This shift has enabled LANDac to reach new audiences that were not previously part of the LANDac crowd.
Across much of Africa, land is not allocated and inherited under statutory law but through customary practices rooted in kinship. In patrilineal systems, land belongs to men’s families and is inherited through the paternal line.
In Zambia, many ethnic groups follow a matrilineal system, where women own land and pass it down the maternal line.
Metadata is at the heart of what we do at the Land Portal. What an odd statement to make for an organization in the land sector! But remember our mission, and you'll understand why creating, curating, and enriching metadata is important to us, and should be to any organization with data at its core.
From Europe to the U.S., migration issues are highly politicized, divisive, and complex. When U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Central America a few weeks ago to better understand the root causes of migration, she recognized the driving force of poverty that leads people to leave their homes.
Access to and control of land is one of the challenges that young people face in Zambia. Land is a valued resource which youth are often expected to access through adults, or wait until they are adults to acquire.