“We, the poor.” This is how Francisco Chicompa introduces the peasant families who live in Napai II, a village in the district of Mecuburi, Nampula province in Mozambique. The label stuck like glue: poor is what they were called, and so poor is what they were.  Despite this, the land in the region has provided food for him, his wife and his eleven children. The land has provided money to buy clothes and sent the children to school. The land has held memories of his ancestors, which he was of course obliged to pass on, intact, to future generations.

Online mapping platform MapHubs has recently launched a new service, MapHubs Forest, which combines automated forest change visualization and alerts with tools for making maps online, analyzing spatial data, producing reports and storing information in a secure online portal.

How do we make land-based agricultural investments more inclusive, particularly regarding land rights? This was the focus of the agenda as LEGEND held the 6^th UK Land Policy Forum on July 11 2018, with lively discussions from all involved – including government, DFIs, academics and land-related CSOs.

Few people dispute the transformational impact of the “green revolution” in agriculture that eradicated famine in countries from Mexico to India just over 50 years ago. But as gains in agricultural production have again begun to slow, there are calls for a second green revolution to meet the growing food security needs of the planet.

As more than 1,000 global leaders in land rights gather in Washington, D.C., next week for the annual World Bank Land and Poverty conference, there will, no doubt, be much discussion focused on gathering data to measure global progress toward documenting and strengthening land rights for all women and men.

Organized by the Mekong Regional Land Governance (MRLG) project and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the Second Regional Land Forum will take place in Bangkok, Thailand from the 28-30 May.

Much of the world’s rural landscapes are technically managed by national governments with limited recognition of, or support for, the rights and management responsibilities of the rural poor who live in these areas. In an era of large-scale land acquisitions for global commodity production, this has led, in some cases, to governments allocating vast tracts of land and resources to companies with limited or no consultation of the people affected.

There is broad global agreement that secure property rights help eradicate poverty and that securing women’s land rights reduces gender inequality. But our understanding remains strikingly limited when it comes to the extent to which women’s land rights are – or are not – secure and the impact of women’s tenure security (or lack thereof) on women’s empowerment.

This is true even in Africa, where the most studies have been published, due to shortcomings in both the quality and quantity of research on these questions.

In the effort to address global sustainability challenges affecting people, prosperity, and planet, in 2015, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the global community to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). SDGs have recognized women’s land rights as opposed to its predecessor, MDGs. Of over 230 indicators, three are on women’s land rights and seven are generally on land rights.

By Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Chairman of the Advisory Board of CCSI, University Professor at Columbia University, and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

Source: The Guardian Global Development

Written by Oliver Balch

As part of the recent peace accords, Colombia is returning land to the victims of a 50-year internal armed conflict. This includes the protection of women's fundamental rights, which is especially important because the violence and forced displacement had a higher impact on rural women.