This Expert Group Meeting (EGM1 ) was convened with the purpose of examining land indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and promoting meaningful and harmonised approaches to monitoring women’s land rights (WLR)2 . It was convened by the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII) of the GLTN, UN Habitat, and Oxfam with inputs and assistance from Landesa, UN Women and Huairou Commission as part of a process of work on the development of methodologies for the land related SDG indicator monitoring.

This publication features the key provisions on land (governance) in recent relevant international frameworks including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs), the New Urban Agenda (Habitat III), the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT), the Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa (F&G) and the Guiding Principles on Large- Scale Land-Based Investment in Africa (LSLBI Principles).

This working paper was commissioned by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), in order to explore how land tenure systems in different ecosystems and bio-cultural regions around the world are linked to land degradation or sustainable land management. It is against this backdrop that five major issues surrounding land tenure, and rights for improved land management and sustainable development, are addressed; these are:

• Problems associated with land ownership (titling, tenure and customary rights);

The document details the agreements of the Expert Group meeting on a set of defined questions that need to be asked in order to properly measure 1.4.2.  

The Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project, MLIKE (Mekong Land Information and Knowledge Exchange),  and the Land Portal co-facilitated an online dialogue on “Responsible Large Scale Agricultural Investments in the Mekong Region” on 09-27 October 2017. The full dialogue can be read here. This report delineates the key messages emerging from the dialogue.

This publication is the second part to the highlights of the regional workshop on “Land Rights as Human Rights: An Imperative towards the Realization of the Sustainable Development Goals” held on 24-25 November in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The hill areas of the country especially the Himalayan and the Western Ghats Regions, were recognised as areas which required to be given special attention for restoration of ecological balance. In pursuance of the policy of accelerating the development of hill areas in the country and at the suggestion of the National Development Council (1972) the centrally sponsored Western Ghats Development Programme (WGDP) was introduced in 1974-75 for integrated developoment of Western Ghats Region.

Land degradation is accelerating and drought is escalating worldwide. At the Rio+20 Conference, world leaders clearly acknowledged that desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD) are challenges of a global dimension affecting the sustainable development of all countries, in particular developing countries. In view of this, they committed to strive to achieve a land-degradation neutral world in the context of sustainable development and to monitor land degradation globally (paragraphs 205–207 of “The future we want”).

La degradación de la tierra se está acelerando, y las sequías van en aumento en todo el mundo. En la conferencia Río+20, los dirigentes mundiales reconocieron sin ambages que la desertificación, la degradación de la tierra y la sequía son problemas de dimensión mundial que afectan al desarrollo sostenible de todos los países, en particular los que están en desarrollo.

Desertification/land degradation is rarely accounted for as an economic issue, and drought barely accounted for as a disaster. Because desertification, land degradation and drought are slow and silent phenomena, they have a way of creeping up on us and thereby leading us to underestimate their socio-economic impacts.

La désertification et la dégradation des terres sont rarement considérées comme un problème économique et la sécheresse est à peine considérée comme une catastrophe. Du fait que la désertification, la dégradation des terres et la sécheresse sont des phénomènes lents et muets, ils progressent peu à peu, nous conduisant à sous-estimer leurs incidences socio-économiques