As part of a scoping study titled Land Governance for Climate Resilience: A review and case studies from LAND-at-scale projects headed by Richard Sliuzas, Emeritus Professor, University of Twente, Tropenbos Colombia dove into the links between climate and land governance in their project.

In the wake of global climate action, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) for renewable energy and carbon offset projects will increase the pressure on land. In addition, deforestation-free value chains that are also intended to reduce carbon emissions will require changes in the conduct of LSLAs. This session assessed the scope of these investments and policies and reviewed their livelihood and environmental impacts in the Global South.

Key takeaways

This data story investigates the challenges to align action on land degradation and tenure security based on the screening of available datasets in both domains.

The Land Portal published a new country portfolio for Argentina as part of our Country Insights initiative.  The initiative seeks to expand knowledge about how countries govern their land, the challenges they face, and the innovative solutions they find to manage land tenure issues. Each portfolio comes with a detailed description of the land governance context and a collection of related blogs, news, publications, statistical datasets and more.

Studies in forestry have predominantly focused on the degradation of forests, with significant policy attention across the global and national levels. Despite reported increases in deforestation in tropical forests (Wimberly et al. 2022) , there is scattered evidence of forest resurgence around the world (Chazdon et al. 2020) . Yet, there are limited empirical studies to explain the governance factors influencing such forms of transition.

The Land Portal advocates for more and better open land data, but more and better have never been our end objectives. Data must be used; it needs a purpose. One of the ways we practice what we preach is through our data stories. 

This Land Portal data story looks at the increase of maize production in and around Thailand, and its relation to a poultry value chain as an ingredient in animal feed. 

International Day of Forests: 21 March

A new study, published ahead of the International Day of Forests, warns that the Amazon is now nearing its tipping point; its ability to recover from disruption, such as droughts or fires, is rapidly reducing, increasing the risk of dieback of the Amazon rainforest and potentially releasing up to 90 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  

World leaders are failing ordinary people on climate change. From Fairbourne in Wales to China and Japan; the Amazon and Congo rainforests to the Pacific Islands – here are some of the people our leaders should be listening to at the COP26 global climate talks.

World leaders are meeting this week at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow to agree stronger pledges to stop the world warming to dangerous levels.

Since the turn of the century, 27,000 km2 of land in Cambodia has been deforested. This is 14.8% of total land area in the country. It also represents 26.4% of forest cover as existed in 2000.

An acceleration in deforestaton is seen from the early 2000s to 2010. For the land‐grab aficionado, the trend runs parallel to the ‘global land rush’ and mirrors the evolution of agricultural commodites prices.

Addressing the land and conservation communities’ discomfort in discussing the relationships between migrants, Indigenous peoples, and tropical forests in the fight against climate change.