When the Land Portal was founded in 2014, we were part of conferences that spent vast sums of money bringing hundreds of people together to discuss land-related subjects. Yet the powerful speeches that were made, the insightful presentations and the moments of epiphany were largely getting stuck in the conference venue. 

Metadata is at the heart of what we do at the Land Portal. What an odd statement to make for an organization in the land sector! But remember our mission, and you'll understand why creating, curating, and enriching metadata is important to us, and should be to any organization with data at its core.

The ‘age of ignorance’

For a long time land governance, land tenure and land rights remained in the ‘age of ignorance’.  We have known for some time that land governance is a key ingredient for social, economic and environmental development; what was missing, however, was the data.  With the little information available to us at the time, we set priorities and crafted interventions for our course of work. Relying on a few rough figures meant that we were often repeating mantras and slogans based on loose, rather than on hard and reliable facts.  Most notable among these was the often repeated and now widely disputed, “women own 2% of the world’s land”.