Neil Sorensen joined the Land Portal as its Communications Specialist in October 2015. He has extensive experience leading communications for international organizations and developing relationships with civil society, donors, intergovernmental agencies, the media and the private sector. Previously, Neil worked for the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) as a Governing Bodies Officer and Strategic Adviser to the Secretary of IFAD. He has also led communications for three international organizations, including the International Land Coalition, the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). He holds a Master’s degree in Global Diplomacy from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) as well as a Bachelor’s degree with a double major in German and Sociology from St. Cloud State University.
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Fostering Suitable Frameworks for Responsible Land Investments
Secure land tenure rights, particularly of local communities and families, indigenous peoples and women, are essential for inclusive and responsible investments. This session series at the Knowledge Exchange Workshop (KEW) will focus on suitable frameworks supporting responsible land investment approaches as part of development cooperation and will provide a space for reflection on the conditions that shape land investments and their potential impacts. Based on positive and negative examples, the series of sessions will provide recommendations on how to make land investments more responsible and based on international guidelines and standards.
Objective
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Share and discuss lessons-learned, challenges, opportunities and experiences (including risks) of partner institutions and GIZ in implementing responsible investment approaches and tools.
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Exchange of experiences regarding the promotion and uptake of responsible investment approaches and tools into policies, national strategies, and governance systems as well as for upscaling.
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Identify opportunities and success factors for responsible investment projects and formulate strategic recommendations for upscaling successful approaches.
Session Overview
Session 1: Overview of approaches on responsible investments with case studies from Laos and Uganda.
Session 2: In cooperation with the gender workstream, a discussion on private sector cooperation and gender, women land rights.
Session 3: Country perspectives from Ivory Coast to Ethiopia on responsible land investment.
Session 4: Analysis of trends and outlook regarding investments in view of current global challenges.
It is expected that the series of sessions provided bespoke, technical but practical direction to help embed and implement responsible land investments principles to ensure that land tenure and rights remain secure and protected.
From Reach to Benefit and Empower – Gender Transformative Approaches in Theory and Praxis
Across the Global South, rural women are among the most disadvantaged people. Widespread gender-based discrimination in laws, customs and practices causes inequalities in the ability to access and control land and other natural resources and limits their participation in decision-making in land governance, from the household to local and national institutions.
Gender justice in land governance and women’s land rights are fundamental pillars in promoting and protecting women’s human rights in rural areas. However, land-related projects and policies must include women as a target group or participants and ensure that women benefit efficiently from interventions. This contributes to female empowerment and the transformation of gendered power imbalances in societies. These aspects are fundamental goals of Gender Transformative Approaches, which are increasingly gaining importance in rural development programmes -for instance, they play an essential role in the Feminist Development Policy, whose adoption was recently declared by the Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Notwithstanding, a variety of challenges still accompany the successful integration and implementation of Gender Transformative Approaches.
The Knowledge Exchange Workshop (KEW) provides the opportunity to hold a series of sessions to highlight, discuss and reflect on how these approaches, as identified above, can be successfully applied in different fields of action such as international guidelines and policies, land investments, and development cooperation projects to contribute to the transformation of gender power imbalances in the land space. The questions are the following: How can gender-related elements in these fields of action be transformed into more women’s empowerment oriented? How can capacity development and research contribute to this objective?
Objective
The objectives of this series of sessions are:
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Discuss and compare international guidelines, national frameworks, and policies on women’s access to land and gender equality in view of Gender Transformative Approaches.
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Identify opportunities and success factors for responsible agricultural investments that promote gender equality.
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Collect and discuss lessons-learned, challenges and experiences of partner institutions and GIZ in implementing gender-related activities.
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Formulate recommendations for the successful integration of Gender Transformative Approaches into land-related policies, programmes, and investments.
Session Overview
Session 1: Conceptual framing of the Gender Transformative approaches with reflection on international guidelines, frameworks and policies.
Session 2: Gender Transformative Approaches in Practice, with perspectives on land investments and private sector cooperation.
Session 3: Gender Transformative Approaches within the Global Programmes: From Theory to Praxis.
Session 4: Thinking ahead Gender Transformative Approaches. Bringing it all together while reflecting on findings and recommendations.
It is expected that participants will develop new ideas on how to conceptualize and implement gender-related policies, programmes, and activities in land governance and the securing of women’s land rights. The participants learn to differentiate between projects and policies that are only gender-sensitive or gender-positive and those that aim to transform gendered power imbalances. Moreover, concrete examples and experiences regarding the application of Gender Transformative Approaches will be discussed and recommendations for its successful implementation in different areas of action will be formulated.
Bridging gaps: demand-driven research for informed policy-making
With the Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGTs), the AU Declaration on Land Tenure Issues and Challenges in Africa, and other global/continental frameworks, land tenure in Africa has received much attention in the last decade. Despite a strong will, the land agenda of some countries and the impetus for reform tend to run against institutional and human capacity gaps. GIZ, through its programmes "Strengthening Advisory Capacity on Land Governance in Africa" (SLGA) and "Responsible Land Policy", is addressing these capacity issues by exploring - among other things - research as a response to land tenure security. Therefore, the Knowledge Exchange Workshop (KEW) is an opportunity to further reflect on strengthening policy-research linkages.
Objective
One of the objectives of these series of sessions is to demonstrate the usefulness of research as a tool to support formulation and implementation of land policies in various contexts and at different levels (national and continental). The purpose is also to further the reflection on the approaches for setting up platforms for political-scientific dialogues and better understand how the continental frameworks (and institutions) surrounding the land question influence research and political movements at national levels. And finally, another objective is to identify (and document) good practices for strengthening policy-research linkages.
Session Overview
Session 1: Research at the service of the implementation of land policies
This discussion will highlight the relevance of research as a tool to support implementation of land policies and reflect on approaches to establishing policy-science dialogue platforms at national levels. The session will feature case studies from Benin and Burkina Faso, elaborating an implementation model of the government policy on the sedentarisation of agro-pastoralist communities.
Session 2: Cooperation between research and parliamentarian bodies
This session will focus on cooperation between research and parliamentarian bodies and explore linkages in formulating land related-laws. The session will highlight landscapes in Senegal and Cameroon.
Session 3: Knowledge-to-policy uptake – From the continental to the national level
The 3rd session examines knowledge-to-policy-uptake, from the continental to the national level. It outlines how such uptakes on land governance issues can be improved on a continental level and how this level interacts with the national level. In this session, the African Union Commission inputs highlight how research findings make their way into the formulations of continental frameworks and guidelines and windows of opportunities this presents.
Session 4: Roundetable Discussion
This roundtable discussion brings together lessons learned, challenges identified, and proposed new ways of working as recommended from the previous three sessions towards bridging gaps for informed policy-making.
It is expected that at the end of the series, participants would:
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Appreciate the relevance of research as a tool to support the formulation and implementation of land policies is understood.
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Understand the importance of a research transition: research "traditionally" confined to the academic sector must respond to data demand and consider the land sector's practical implications.
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Identify and support good practices in the establishment of dialogue between the political and academic spheres.
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Explore the examples of mechanisms to strengthen research-legislative linkages in land law and policy-making processes.
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Share their approaches to institutionalise science-policy dialogues.
Sustainable integration of fit-for-purpose (FFP) approaches into government procedures and policy for upscaling
Many countries struggle when establishing and maintaining a functional land administration system. Due to government entities limited financial resources and capacities, large parts of their population still don't have access to legally recognised land rights. This context has led to the introduction of modern approaches popularly known as fit-for-purpose (FFP) methods and tools to meet basic needs of populations as best "fit" for achieving its purpose while building on possibilities for incremental upgrading and improvements over time.
The Knowledge Exchange Workshop (KEW) provides a series of sessions to examine and question FFP approaches and tools, especially on how to cooperate with other sectors when securing land rights to unleash potential benefits in a strongly interconnected world.
Objective
At the KEW we will discuss how FFP approaches and tools positively impact other sectors such as agriculture, forestry, urbanisation, water, gender, etc. in different countries and beyond. Especially when you look at positive impacts of secured land tenure rights on prevention and solution of land conflicts, FFP can be an argument to increase land registration and governance efforts.
The GIZ Global Programme Responsible Land Policy team and partners have developed, tested, and applied innovative FFP approaches as well as tools and adapted them to specific country contexts. Positive experiences have been gathered, but there are still challenges to address. This series of sessions will provide insights into the use of FFP approaches and tools during the implementation of the Global Programme.
The series of sessions will focus on challenges and opportunities for systematic integration of developed FFP approaches and tools into national strategies and land management systems as well as on ways for efficient upscaling based on practical experience and exchange among participants of the series.
The objectives of the individual sessions are to:
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Collect and discuss lessons learned, challenges and experiences (including risks) of partner institutions and GIZ in implementing FFP approaches and tools.
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Exchange of experiences regarding bottlenecks/obstacles for promoting the uptake of FFP approaches and tools into policies, national strategies, government systems and upscaling.
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Identify opportunities and success factors for sustainable international and national funding of land registration projects and land management systems.
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Formulate strategic recommendations for upscaling FFP approaches and tools.
Session Overview
Session 1: The discussion will provide a conceptual framing and inventory of FFP approaches and tools.
Session 2: This will focus on sustainable funding of land registration, land management and administration systems.
Session 3: A summary of the previous sessions to identify shared experiences and gaps with new and additional experiences or perspectives on the topic FFP approaches/tools are relevant.
Session 4: Brings together a panel on "How to mobilise resources for upscaling." The session consolidates the key messages from the series of sessions.
At the end of the series, participants will develop new ideas on how to use FFP approaches and tools in their national context. Additionally, success factors and risks during implementation are collected for partner countries, and participants of the series will estimate their applicability in general and in different contexts. A long-term perspective focusing on sustainable funding for land registration and land governance management systems is discussed as well as major success factors are identified. Participants will understand which benefits can be created/strengthened in other sectors, which can be used as an argumentation for updated priority setting and request additional support from national and international stakeholders. Tangible recommendations for the integration of FFP approach into policy and/or FFP tools into land management systems and successful upscaling will be elaborated and documented.
What is the state of data around the world?
To share the Global Data Barometer results, this webinar discussed the main findings and observations with some key stakeholders and the entire data community. This event also showcase the organizations that have supported this endeavor.
Building open & transparent land information systems through a global alliance
Over the last three years the Land Portal Foundation has collaborated with Global Data Barometer and Open Data Charter to embed land issues within key open data activities.
Global Data Barometer
Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa
Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa analyses contestations of power and control over land through the lens of local case studies in the densely settled former African ‘homelands’ or Bantustans. These were areas reserved for African occupation by the apartheid government and when the ANC came to power in 1994, they were the poorest and least developed parts of the country. Over the last few decades, mineral deposits have been exploited and some are located close to the boundaries of rapidly expanding cities, such as Durban, where peri-urban land is at a premium.
Wits University Press
The fundamental role of any university is to promote freedom of enquiry and the search for knowledge and truth. Wits has built a reputation for itself in this role, establishing itself at the industrial and commercial heart of South Africa as a centre for education and research of the highest quality.