Burundi has the world’s highest hunger score and around 45 percent of the population is affected by food insecurity. The country copes with increasing scarcity of land as a result of increasing population size, returnees and IDPs and climate change. With the majority of Burundians depending on agriculture for their food and livelihoods, land scarcity makes this reliance on agriculture precarious. This pressure on land causes elevated levels of land disputes with over 55% of all court cases being related to conflicts over land. The results of these disputes are often highly uncertain, as land is commonly not registered and no good documentation of ownership or use rights exists.

Scaling is at the heart of both the name as well as the strategy of LAND-at-scale. Scaling and scaling potential are key in the way the program was designed and is reflected in the three pillars chosen to realize the aim of the program. The first pillar is about scaling successful initiatives and projects; the second pillar focuses on land governance innovations with scaling potential; and the third pillar covers knowledge management, with a focus on gaining a deeper understanding on the conditions required to make scaling successful.

Nowadays when it comes to land, many transitions are ongoing, and many organizations target processes of change to improve livelihoods while defining their target groups. In this roundtable we aimed to critically engage about who is targeted, who is left out and why, and how to deal with non-beneficiaries in the proximity of interventions to make these processes of transition fairer and more inclusive.

Scaling is at the heart of both the name as well as the strategy of LAND-at-scale (LAS). Scaling and scaling potential are key in the way the program was designed and is reflected in the three pillars chosen to realize the aim of the program.

PhD research provides key inputs to strengthen our knowledge base on land access, land governance and challenges related to development, crisis and resilience. This is why LANDac reserves a special place in the programme to discuss their contributions.