With thanks from the Land Portal | Land Portal
Language of the news reported: 
English

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

As we embark on the holiday season, I want to thank you and the rest of our Land Portal community for your ongoing support. It is only through your engagement and commitment that we can continue to provide outstanding programming, information, and data about land governance around the world. In 2022, the Land Portal was one of the most visited websites for land information with ~74K monthly visits. With origins as a start-up project aggregating land articles, we are doubly gratified that the Portal has become a valuable online destination with rich, original content. 

All of our efforts are in support of our mission to INFORM people, OPEN critical information, and DEBATE perspectives on land. We believe that access to information is crucial for achieving good land governance and securing land rights for landless and vulnerable people, and we measure our work continuously against this goal. 

From all of us at the Land Portal, we thank you for your continued support and wish you and your loved ones a healthy and happy holiday season. We look forward to connecting with you in 2023.

Sincerely,

Laura Meggiolaro
Team Leader

 

A few 2022 highlights…

WE INFORM | In 2022, we substantially increased the number of country portfolios from 33 to 68, covering countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. As part of our commitment to inclusivity, we also published them in FrenchPortuguese and SpanishWE OPEN | We began implementation of the Open Up Guide for Land Governance in Senegal and Madagascar, working with those governments to start opening up their land data. We examined the availability of open land data through our State of Land Information reports on SenegalNamibia, and Malawi, with others coming down the pipeline. WE DEBATE | We went deeper into important topics through our new podcast, LandUP!. We designed and co-hosted more than 20 of our signature online events that brought together thousands of voices and perspectives. Stayed turned for our full 2022 Annual Report in the new year. 
 
 

Welcome, new board members!

We are thrilled to announce that Richard Baldwin and Cynthia Caron are joining the Board, and look forward to working together to guide the next several years.  
 
Dr. Cynthia Caron
Cynthia is Associate Professor of International Development, Community and Environment at Clark University, USA.  Her research focuses on gender and agricultural labor, the gendered nature of land and natural resource access, and land tenure in the context of resettlement planning. She regularly undertakes short-term consultancies. In 2021, she worked with IOM on women's land rights programming in South Sudan. 
 
Dr. Richard Baldwin
Richard is a land administration specialist with almost three decades of experience working in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Richard has worked with many  international development partners. Recently, his work has focussed on sustainable financing for land registration and administration, and linkages of land markets with land governance. Richard holds Masters and PhD degrees in Geomatics as well as an MBA and is a Visiting Professor at University of the West of England.
Q&A with Richard
 
What do you look forward to as a board member for the Land Portal?

I very much look forward to being part of such an exciting and dynamic initiative. Over the last 10-12 years, the Land Portal has established itself as the “go to” place for  land related  information providing a truly international platform and fostering an information ecosystem that is able to support evidence based research and provide access to timely country and thematic based data analysis and reporting. There is a huge international community drawing on Land Portal resources and its networking capability. I look forward to being part of that initiative and hopefully playing a small role in helping its further development, especially in bridging academia, practice and innovation.
 
What is your first impression of the Land Portal? 

I like the way that open data is placed centre stage, opening up and facilitating access to resources that allow practitioners and academics to draw on these materials and both inform and support their own work. I also appreciate the diverse skills and experience of the group, it’s not just land sector professionals, but a wider team focussed on understanding information content, communications and fostering knowledge. The land sector itself has diverse needs, from those of forest ecosystems and indigenous peoples to rural and urban communities. Finding sustainable solutions that support livelihoods while protecting resources is surely one of our greatest challenges today. I think the Land Portal is trying to address that challenge.

 

Annual Meeting in Rome

The Land Portal team met in Rome for the first in-person annual meeting since 2019. Team members and board members traveled from Pakistan, United States, Australia, Bhutan, and many other countries to join the dialogues. We discussed the Land Portal's thought leadership, our strategy for engaging the open data sector in land issues, and how to sharpen our focus and continue to innovate. Thank you to the International Land Coalition for hosting us at IFAD headquarters! 
 
Below, the team enjoys a cooking class in the Roman country side. 

 

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! 

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