Making the invisible visible within national data systems was an important area of discussion at the United Nations World Data Forum. Invisible population groups in data are commonly the most vulnerable populations — women and girls, people with disability, refugee and migrants, and the elderly.
The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) launched an Alumni Profile Series in which alumni of CCSI’s Executive Training on Sustainable Investments in Agriculture are interviewed about their career paths.
Droughts, floods, hurricanes, and other disasters displaced over 24 million people in 2016. When people leave their homes behind, land records offer critical protection of their property rights. This is crucial, as land and homes are usually
With the inclusion of several land-related indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), land data collection and monitoring has reached an unprecedented momentum. There is a palpable positive drive within both global and local civil society to contribute to the official process through advocacy, data collection and international monitoring efforts. The broad consensus is that data and information are building blocks that support better informed decision and policy making at all levels.
“Land for me is life.”
“It is everything, it is health, food security, and dignity.”
“It is life, overcoming adversity, and land security.”
“[Land for me is…] achievement and sustainability.”
“It is our home, where we raise our children, and where we preserve our culture.” – What does land mean for you? (2015)
Until today, the world had no internationally comparable data on citizens’ perceptions of the security their property rights; no way of tracking how people evaluated the likelihood of their home or other land being taken from them.
Heat waves, floods, hurricanes, starvation these are the ‘rewards’ Mother Earth has for years of neglect, overuse, misuse, and abuse. The earth’s natural resources support life. Trees, soil, natural gas, coal, fresh water, and oil- life wouldn’t exist without oxygen, without food, medicine, and power. However, if natural catastrophes are anything to go by, we have gone way past the red natural these resources, creating a life-sucking ecological debt.
What will be our fate if natural resources run dry?
In 2015 the UN agreed a new tranche of global sustainable development goals, signed up to by all member states and due to be achieved by 2030. Among them was a target to increase not only the proportion of adults with legally documented property rights, but also the proportion of adults who perceived their property rights to be secure, whether legally documented or not.
Soumya Chattopadhyay takes a look at Prindex’s 2017 trial data from India, and raises questions to drive future research.
In October, Prindex will publish our first full tranche of data from 15 countries worldwide, and a total of 33 by the year’s end. While preparing our final survey, we conducted two trial runs, including one in India, Colombia and Tanzania in 2017. That data provides an insight into some of the questions that our full survey data – eventually to cover around 140 countries – may help answer.
This July is the first time the United Nations will review the progress made towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal 15, which is about Life on Land. Each goal will be reviewed about every 4 years until 2030.
The reviews will be based on the 10 indicators countries agreed on, that assess change in each country over time. Two important developments relating to the indicator on land degradation neutrality (15.3.1) have occurred, since its adoption in 2015.
