Transparency is often seen as a means of improving governance and accountability of investment, but its potential to do so is hindered by vague definitions and failures to focus on the needs of key local actors.

New research by CCSI and the Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED) on transparency of land-based investment in Cameroon. 

In the report, CCSI and CED find that:

• Communities continue to be excluded from decision-making around investments.
• The government pursues a top-down approach to concession allocation and remains reluctant to recognize all legitimate tenure rights.

Bien que des informations sur certains projets d’investissements soient rendues publiques, et malgré une loi récente sur la transparence, la gestion des investissements fonciers au Cameroun n’est, de toute évidence, pas véritablement transparente dans l’ensemble.

Dans un nouveau rapport se concentrant sur les projets d’agrobusiness au Cameroun, le Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) et le Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED) constatent que :

This independent evaluation by Emerald Network focuses on land rights, access and sustainable use, through an assessment of five companies: the Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever and Associated British Foods’ (ABF) subsidiary Illovo Sugar Africa. As a result of the Behind the Brands campaign, these companies have publicly recognized the risk of people being dispossessed of their land to make way for agricultural commodities and have pledged to respect the rights of women, communities and smallholder farmers.

According to the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency, there were 79.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide by the end of 2019. Evictions from homes and land are often linked to protracted violent conflict. Land administration (LA) can be a small part of UN peace-building programs addressing these conflicts. Through the lens of the UN and seven country cases, the problem being addressed is: what are the key features of fit-for-purpose land administration (FFP LA) in violent conflict contexts?

This is the presentation of Dr.  Marcello De Maria, Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Agriculture Policy and Development at the University of Reading during the webinar on the Role of Open Data in the Fight against Land Corruption on January 28th, 2021. 

The analysis revealed overwhelming support for the use of open data as an anticorruption tool in the land sector, but it also found strong evidence for the existence of a high degree of untapped potential.

The Annual Country Reviews reflect upon current land relations in the Mekong Region, and has been produced for researchers, practitioners and policy advocates operating in the field. Specialists have been selected from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to briefly answer the following two questions:

This crucial report demonstrates how states and other actors are using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to roll back social and environmental safeguards. In doing so, they are eroding the rights of indigenous peoples in the five most tropically forested countries of the world

Fit-for-purpose land administration (FFPLA) concept is widely applied in the emerging land administration systems (LASs). This paper aims to contribute to the development of evaluation of the spatial aspect of FFPLA. A review of evaluation models for LASs is made in relation with rationale of FFPLA to identify gaps related to evaluation of a FFPLA and to build up milestones and measurement criteria.

This paper presents how the active use and contextualisation of the principles of the
Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and
Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) by national stakeholders in
Mauritania and Tunisia contributed to changing the approach to tackling tenure challenges
in the two member countries of the Maghreb Arab Union.
In Mauritania, we see how the model of establishing multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs)

A FIAN study reveals how digital technologies have become new tools for land grabs and sources of profits. Based on research in Brazil;Indonesia;Georgia;India and Rwanda;the study shows that the use of digital tools in land governance exacerbates existing forms of exclusion.