Dynamic thematic portfolios combine detailed narratives with Linked Open Data to provide comprehensive global overview
GRONINGEN (11 November, 2016) — Forest tenure, gender and land rights, and indigenous and community land rights are all key thematic areas related to land governance. For this reason, the Land Portal is launching the first three comprehensive thematic portfolios focused on these issues.
From large land acquisitions that displace communities without adequate compensation, to the encroachment of mining on indigenous lands, to the brunt of climate change and natural disasters, to everyday land and property deprivation by kin or state, women are typically more harshly impacted by land tenure insecurity due to discriminatory laws, institutions, and social norms.
Indigenous & Community Land Rights
For centuries, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) have used, managed and depended on collectively-held land for food supplies, cultural and spiritual traditions, and other livelihood needs. Historically governed through customary tenure systems rooted in community norms and practices that often go back centuries, governments often consider such community land as vacant, idle, or state-owned property. Statutory recognition and protection of indigenous and community land rights continues to be a major challenge.
Forests are sources of multiple products and services of importance to a wide array of stakeholders, from local communities to urban citizens. In addition to contributing to human wellbeing and livelihoods, forests are important for people’s spiritual and cultural traditions. For many of the world’s poor, land and forests are important economic, social and cultural assets. In large parts of the world however, local people’s use and ownership rights to resources are insecure which undermines not only their livelihoods and sustainable resource management but also many development outcomes, such as biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction, improved food security and climate change mitigation.
A wealth of diverse information
The Thematic Portfolios bring together comprehensive narratives together with selected indicators from datasets specific to the theme, mapping for targeted global indicators, global rankings of countries with regard to related indicators, the latest news, events, blogs and debates focused on the theme, publications focused on the theme, as well as links to partners working in the field.
For example, the Land & Gender thematic portfolio presents indicators from the OECD's Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), the FAO Land and Gender Database, and Demographic Indicators and the Land Governance Assessment Framework Scorecards from the World Bank. The Forest Tenure portfolio includes indicators from the FAO Land Use Database, The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) Forest Tenure Data, and the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) from the World Bank, while the Indigenous and Community Land Rights portfolio includes all of these indicators along with indicators from the Land Matrix database on large-scale land acquisitions.
The Land Portal is grateful for the support of Landesa for authoring the narrative on Land & Gender, to Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) for authoring the narrative on Forest Tenure, and to the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) authoring the narrative on Indigenous & Community Land Rights together with the Land Portal Team.
For more information, read the new blog entitled “Land Portal’s New Thematic Portfolios are a “Go-To” Destination for Information on Land” by Nicholas Tagliarino, Research Analyst at the Land Portal Foundation.
Stay Tuned: In the coming weeks, the Land Portal will launch additional thematic portfolios focused on Land Investments and Urban Tenure.
Join Our Webinar on the Thematic Portfolios
On Thursday, November 17, 2016 at 4 PM PM CET, the Land Portal will be hosting a webinar focused on these Thematic Portfolios. This webinar will provide participants with an interactive tutorial to Land Portal users on how to use the Land Book Thematic Portfolios. Sign up via Eventbrite to register for the Webinar. The live webinar will take place on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuZRO2Nthfg
This work is supported by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) as part of the Land: Enhancing Governance for Economic Development (LEGEND) program, which is a DFID global program designed to mobilize knowledge and capacity for design and delivery of new country programs, improve land governance as an essential and inclusive basis for economic development, and strengthen land and property rights at scale.
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The Land Portal aims 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 Land Portal values multi-stakeholderism and partnership and works across stakeholder groups to promote participation in land governance. The Land Portal is based on open sources, open data and open content, and promotes open approaches with partners, seeking to catalyze and support greater sharing, collaboration and innovation in the land governance community. The Land Portal believes local ownership and encourages content creation and dissemination to take place through local partners, groups and networks, supported and facilitated by the Land Portal team.
For more information, visit the Land Portal at www.landportal.info