Discover hidden stories and unheard voices on land governance issues from around the world. This is where the Land Portal community shares activities, experiences, challenges and successes.
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The Land Portal and Both Ends capped the popular Whose Land? webinar series with a final webinar on inclusive financing that drew over 300 participants on 2 March 2023. "Inclusive finance for land governance: A conversation with donors” featured donors from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, Both ENDS, Global Fund for Community Foundations, and Tenure Facility, as well as a diversity, equity, and inclusion expert.
One of our main goals and missions at the Land Portal is to help democratize the information landscape on land. This International Open Data Day, set to take place on March 4th, we invite you to read more of our latest content on our open data related content!
- The links between the open data and land communities have matured over the last four years alongside a recognition of the centrality of land governance for sustainable development.
- Benchmarking and measuring open land data is a key area of progress since 2018, but more needs to be done to refine the global benchmarks such as the Global Data Barometer.
- Open data initiatives need to carefully consider their social, political, and economic objectives due to the different needs and interests of land data producers and users.
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”. The day aims to celebrate women and girls who are championing the advancement of transformative technology and digital education. It will also explore the impact of the digital gender gap on widening economic and social inequalities.
A review of four recent articles about an underexplored issue: the reasons for large-scale land deals to fail and what that means for communities and society
Today, I am on board the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise ship, as we confront the fossil fuel company, Shell, for its role in causing climate devastation around the world - while paying nothing for this destruction. It is now a trend almost everywhere in the world, fossil fuel and oil extraction are becoming the new trend and a real treasure, to a chosen few. True, governments do need money, and it seems easier and quicker for them to have it through the exploitation of fossil fuels.
Interview with Tim Fella, departing chair and member of the Land Portal board of directors
The Land Portal Foundation is pleased to welcome Dr. Cynthia Caron and Dr. Richard Baldwin to our Board of Directors for a three-year term. We thank our departing board members, chair Timothy Fella and Dr. Ritu Verma, for their longstanding commitment to and support of the Land Portal. They helped guide the Land Portal through major growth and transition during the last six years, and their counsel has been invaluable in shaping our work. Dr. Elizabeth Daley, current secretary of the board, will assume the chairship.
Two months ago, the Land Rights Standard was launched alongside the UN Climate Change Conference (CoP27) in Egypt—a first-of-its-kind document developed over the course of three years with more than 70 Indigenous, local, and Afro-descendant groups, elegantly but firmly laying out pathways for “taking into account and respecting their distinct and differentiated rights, including their autonomy, priorities, and cosmovision,” as is stated in its preamble.
One year ago, thanks to a Solutions Journalism Network LEDE Fellowship and in collaboration with the Land Portal, I started a project to find stories of responses to the damage caused to the land and environment. During this time, I affirmed that communities and people around the world are working to protect and heal the environment, even if those stories hardly make it to the mainstream media.
Along with GIZ and the National Agency for Spatial Planning, known as ANAT, in Senegal, we co-hosted a webinar, “Uncovering Land Data Opportunities in Senegal,” on 31 January 2023. The panel brought together open data and land governance experts to discuss the state of land information in Senegal – focusing on the findings from the SONI Senegal Report – and the way forward to a more inclusive, open and transparent land data ecosystem in Senegal.
Mark Duffield and Nicholas Stockton write how the ecologically sustainable, communally managed subsistence pastoralism in Somalia has been displaced by militarised extractive ranching. Challenging mainstream accounts of the “drought” Duffield and Stockton argue the current crisis is the result of decades of bad development and relief interventions that have promoted impoverishment and hunger.