Since last year, 35,000 people in Uganda’s Kiryandongo district were forced from their lands to make way for large-scale farming, including at gunpoint and by a sugar firm with international backing.

Reports suggest the COVID-19 fallout is providing opportunities for elites to seize lands and rewrite regulations. We need effective responses to secure land rights and lay the foundations for a just recovery. 

The fallout from COVID-19 has triggered narratives about profound changes to economic ordering. A closer look provides a more complex picture, particularly for countries in the global South. 

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. 

Today we are pleased to mark the official launch of PlaceFund, an independent US nonprofit organization focused on addressing issues of insecure property rights, unsustainable land use, and climate change. Built off a decade as the Property Rights initiative at Omidyar Network, PlaceFund will operate under the leadership of Peter Rabley and Amy Regas, who will be leaving Omidyar Network to run this venture, and they will take our shared commitment to property rights and geospatial technology into the new decade.

Last week the World Cocoa Foundation, a membership organization of more than 100 cocoa companies, held its annual partnership meeting in Berlin, Germany. The aim of the meeting is for governments, cocoa companies and farmers to identify and tackle the sector’s largest sustainability challenges. A 90-minute session was devoted to the topic of land tenure. The prominence of the session, as well as the seniority of the presenters – the Head of Sustainable Sourcing for Hershey’s and the Deputy Director General of Cote d’Ivoire’s Land Agency among them – is a powerful signaling effect.

Over the past year, during my work in western Uganda, I have had the opportunity to get to know Paolyel Onencan. Paolyel is the Executive Director of Buliisa Initiative for Rural Development Organisation (BIRUDO). Paolyel and his BIRUDO colleagues are doing good work around Uganda’s oil and gas development in the Albertine Graben, by helping families get better deals on compensation from the oil companies (Total and China National Offshore Oil Company) working in the region.

Banks must stand with Indigenous and local communities in respecting their land rights

In 2018, every week more than three people were murdered, defending their land and environment from destructive industries like mining, logging and agribusiness. These killings represent the extreme end of a spectrum of violence and threats directed at land rights defenders.

I think the engagement with Illovo is a good start. … [the Project] has provided a platform for Illovo to engage with [us], which is not only a benefit to Illovo, but to the community. It opens up dialogue. In the future…, we’d love for Illovo to come to (us) and ask us to get involved.

UNLIKELY PARTNERS: BLOCKCHAIN & LAND SURVEYING INDUSTRY

OUTLINE

I. Introduction to Blockchain Technology

II. Overview of the Surveying Industry

III. Surveying and Blockchain

IV. Types of Blockchains  

V. The Case for Blockchain in the Real Estate Industry

VI. Blockchain, Surveying, Land Registry and Cadastre 

VII. Blockchain Registry Integration Levels

VIII. The Future of Blockchain for Real Estate

IX. Conclusion

APPENDIX 

Glossary — Blockchain Terminology