The second LAND-at-scale (LAS) exchange took place from June 26^th to June 28^th, 2023. Sixty partners came together in Utrecht, the Netherlands to exchange lessons learned and explore common challenges. As of 2023, ten country projects are currently being implemented under the LAS program, namely Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Mali, Mozambique, the Palestinian Territories, Somalia, Rwanda and Uganda. All countries were represented and almost all implementing partners were present at the Exchange.

On 27-28 June 2022, RVO organized the first annual LAND-at-scale exchange, bringing together over fifty LAND-at-scale project partners, knowledge management partners, Committee members as well as representatives from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an in-depth introduction of all LAND-at-scale stakeholders and facilitate a learning exchange.

Many expert vocabularies have emerged from specific and limited scientific fields such as medicine and botany. They have aimed to achieve precise understanding between experts in these fields based on exact definitions of the terms used and originally, in their early examples, through the widespread use of Arabic or Latin as international scientific languages. 

There is some irony in that many of the terms – ‘thesaurus’, ‘taxonomy’, ‘controlled vocabulary’ ‘ontology’ – that are intended to bring order and clarity to our use of language in professional settings are themselves subject to diverse interpretations and application. This is in large part because they are used by a range of people working in different contexts with different purposes.

The main objective of the LAND-at-scale program is to directly strengthen essential land governance components for men, women and youth that have the potential to contribute to structural, just, sustainable and inclusive change at scale. An ambitious objective, that cannot be achieved in isolation. Alignment is, therefore, a key factor in all LAND-at-scale activities - be it at project level for our country interventions or through our collaborative approach to knowledge management.

Knowledge management and learning are at the heart of the LAND-at-scale program. On June 29^th at a pre-event of the LANDac conference, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), LANDac and the International Land Coalition (ILC) officially announced their collaboration to implement the knowledge management (KM) component of the program.

We’re delighted to share the draft of our Land Governance module for a public review stage (until 15th March 2020). We are inviting feedback on our selection of indicators, and our draft research guidance, as we explore how the Global Data Barometer can track governance, availability and use of data related to land governance in our upcoming survey.

Over 60 percent of Africans are under the age of 35 – a well-documented “youth bulge” representing both an enormous challenge and a tantalizing opportunity for the continent. 

I write this blog as our project team embarks on a fifth year of work on women’s land tenure security (WOLTS) with pastoral communities in mining-affected areas of Mongolia and Tanzania. Just before Christmas 2019, we were in Mundarara village in northern Tanzania. Exceptionally heavy rains made getting around much more challenging than usual. Locals travelling on foot had to make wide detours to avoid getting bogged down in waterlogged grazing land, and it took everyone much longer to get to the village primary school for our long-planned training day.