We believe in the inherent dignity of all people. But around the world, too many people are excluded from the political, economic, and social institutions that shape their lives.
The vision of the Land Portal Foundation is to improve land governance to benefit those with the most insecure land rights and the greatest vulnerability to landlessness through information and knowledge sharing.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation was created to advance and promote the highest standards in journalism worldwide through media training and humanitarian reporting.
For over three decades, we have been informing, connecting and empowering people around the world through our free programmes and services.
We support our work through a combination of core annual donation from Thomson Reuters , other donations and sponsorships, through external funding from other organisations as well as grants specifically dedicated to supporting our core programmes.
The International Land and Forest Tenure Facility is focused on securing land and forest rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. We are the first financial mechanism to exclusively fund projects working towards this goal while reducing conflict, driving development, improving global human rights, and mitigating the impacts of climate change.
One of the main aims of the Land Dialogues series is to highlight Indigenous knowledge and wisdom as solutions to pressing global challenges. The series achieved this by creating a virtual space that bridged the gap, where the term “expert” wasn't limited to academics or researchers, in an effort to both decolonize and democratize knowledge. In particular, the Land Portal’s role was to highlight Indigenous Peoples’ need for agency and control over the data concerning them, recognizing that data could either amplify equality or exacerbate unequal power structures.
The Land Dialogues 2023 series, therefore, shed light on a variety of important issues regarding the agency of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ land rights; from the power differentials that existed concerning Indigenous land data, to Indigenous Peoples and Local communities taking back control of the dialogues and discussions with donors regarding climate funds. With this in mind, a series of four webinars were held in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish, Portuguese, and French. The Land Dialogues were co-organized by the Land Portal Foundation, the Tenure Facility, the Ford Foundation, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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. It will also explore the impact of the digital gender gap on widening economic and social inequalities.
After two weeks of tense talks, the recent UN Biodiversity Conference COP15 ended with a landmark agreement to guide global action on nature through to 2030. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), includes concrete measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.
While talk of carbon markets has been prominent of late, offsetting using forest carbon has long been controversial. Carbon markets are trading systems through which countries, businesses, individuals or other entities buy or sell units of greenhouse gas emissions. A newly launched report by the Rainforest Foundation UK, looks at both sides of the coin.
The UN’s past two global climate summits have been big on promises for Indigenous Peoples. At COP26 in 2021 governments and private philanthropies pledged nearly $2 billion for Indigenous Peoples and local communities to fight deforestation. Last year’s COP27 led to the creation of a new “loss and damage” fund to help vulnerable communities respond to climate disasters.
The Land Dialogues webinar series promotes the centrality of Indigenous and community land rights in advancing global efforts to halt the climate crisis, achieving a healthy planet and forwarding the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It focuses on the importance of formally recognising and securing the customary lands of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as a crucial contribution to the overall climate health of the planet.
In 2022 we remain in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, increasingly violent weather events connected to the changing climate, and global security tensions due to war and conflict. Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are among the most vulnerable and are both directly and indirectly hard-hit by these events.
The Land Portal Foundation, the Tenure Facility, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the Ford Foundation proposed a series of Land Dialogues promoting the centrality of Indigenous and community land rights in advancing global efforts to halt the climate crisis, achieving a healthy planet and forwarding the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.