The Land Portal is hiring researchers with expertise on Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Mozambique, Ghana, and The Gambia.
Newsroom
Announcements
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.
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Land Portal Events
The momentum is increasing around international land monitoring initiatives, together with an unprecedented demand for free, accessible, and usable land data and information. The land sector must find ways to seize opportunities presented by open data innovations while negotiating a rapidly changing data environment.
The Land Portal and Open Data Charter have been working with the Government of Senegal to open up land data, following the guidance set forth in the Open Up Guide for Land Governance. The Open Up Guide is a practical guide for governments who are seeking to better collect, publish, and use land data for the public good. As Phase 1 of this project, the team has published the State of Land Information in Senegal (SOLI) Report. SOLI reports are research-driven analyses of the current state of land data that assess the available land information against open data standards.
The webinar will:
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Share latest results from the Open Up Guide implementation pilot in Senegal and findings from the SOLI Senegal report
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Ask and discuss questions concerning the interest in and maturity of open data in Senegal as it relates to land
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Hear perspectives from the government of Senegal (ANAT, PROCASEF), donors (GIZ, World Bank), local community members, using specific case studies on data and land initiatives
Strengthening security of tenure is considered a key outcome of the LAND-at-scale program as a pre-condition to improved livelihoods, resilience, and sustainable resource use. LAND-at-scale interventions employ a range of tools to achieve tenure security, in particular land mapping and registration. Despite the popularity of such interventions, the assumptions underpinning the impact pathways from registration to tenure security and derived outcomes such as improved livelihoods are not always built on a solid evidence base.
This final webinar of the Land Dialogues 2022 series, will take place after the UN Climate Change Conference COP 27 (6 – 18 November, Sharm El-Sheik). With a historic 1.7 billion dollar pledge having been made at last year’s COP26 by the Forest Tenure Funders Group to advance Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ tenure rights and their forest guardianship, it is important that we discuss challenges and opportunities in the context of these important advancements. The “Post COP27: Reflecting on Donor Promises to Forest Guardians” webinar will serve as a platform to reflect on progress made, what is falling short and if the 1.7 billion dollar pledge made during COP26 was reflected during COP27.
The webinar will share the latest results from the Open Up Guide implementation pilot in Senegal and the SOLI research in Namibia. We will ask and answer pressing questions concerning the interest in and maturity of open data in the two countries and specifically in the land sector.
Insights
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.
A review of initiatives and reports which examine the impacts of mining in four countries in Southern and Central Africa
Last week, I had the honour of moderating a panel on ‘Monitoring, Evidence and Data’ for Land Portal during the 10th Anniversary Event of the VGGT. The intention was to take inspiration from a recently published data story questioning the provision of data and monitoring to measure the impacts of the Voluntary Guidelines over the past 10 years. Yet the topic was already highly visible, garnering much attention during the first day of the event.
This data story scrutinises some of the impacts of the VGGT. It highlights available data on how the VGGTs have been used, how associated project work incorporates the guidelines, and whether implementation has resulted in tangible change in the security of land tenure for communities around the world.
The newsroom is designed to help visitors get the latest news from the Land Portal. We regularly release announcements and blogs with original insights into land governance, open data, and related issues. To discuss any news release below please contact hello@landportal.info and subscribe to our mailing list here.
New Work
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.
The Sudan country profile is now also available in Arabic.
A new country portfolio unpacks the complexity of governing land in India.
Guinea-Bissau has been described as a country of “precarious complexity”. Home to more than 20 ethnic groupings Guinea-Bissau fought one of the longest wars on the African continent to end centuries of Portuguese control. It finally obtained independence in 1974. Since 1980 the history of Guinea-Bissau has been marked by multiple military coups and extreme fragility. This political instability has driven up poverty and stalled legal reforms to secure land rights. In 2008 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime declared Guinea-Bissau to be Africa’s first ‘narco state’. By 2019 Guinea-Bissau was the 12th poorest country in the world. It has also been identified as highly vulnerable to climate change with low lying coastal areas at risk from rising sea levels and flooding.