Announcements
New launches, project updates, job opportunities, and anything Land Portal.The Land Portal Turns 15!
Happy birthday, Land Portal!
At 15 years, it’s fun to reflect on the Land Portal’s beginnings. Someone recently asked me if there was a time when I thought the Land Portal wouldn’t make it, and I could instantly recall those moments. There were times when I flew from Rome to Berlin or Rotterdam, including with my infant son to meet our first potential donor, only to hear that we weren’t successful. Or before, when the Land Portal was a small project under the joint oversight of the International Land Coalition and landtenure.info consortium. Despite the great initial support they provided in bringing the Land Portal to life, none of us was completely sure if it could fulfill its potential without becoming an independent, neutral organization with its own funding. There were more recent times too. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we fought to keep our operations going as uncertainty changed everything around us.
Reflections from an early supporter
In the beginning
Back in 2009, when I joined a meeting of the International Land Coalition, the Land Portal was on the agenda, and they were looking for people to be part of the steering committee in order to give shape to the future of the Land Portal. One of my two focus areas in research is land and property in general. The other focal is family law, by the way. I was interested in doing something internationally, and I wanted to explore the possibilities regarding research related land on an international level. I joined the committee together with the representatives of other organizations. From that moment on, I got interested in the work of the Land Portal, I got to know how it functions, and past initiatives on land information and data.
The Land Portal at the World Bank Land Conference 2024
Land Portal Events
Dynamic conversations and robust debate. The Land Portal welcomes all voices from around the globe.From Commitment to Action: Enabling Direct Funding for Indigenous Peoples in Multilateral Climate and Biodiversity Initiatives
September 23 2024
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM EST
REGISTER HERE
Countries are increasingly turning to multilateral funds as a way to drive impactful change.
Inclusive Land Governance and Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration: Whose Purpose?
Pathways to Customary Land & Forest Rights in the Mekong
Gender and Biodiversity : How Indigenous and Local Community Women Safeguard Nature
Indigenous women’s knowledge is rooted in ancestral understanding of the natural world and the accumulation of observations of local phenomena. The most significant aspect of Indigenous women holding and preserving these traditional knowledge is their holistic approach, which encompasses a wide range of domains beyond mere specialization. They possess an intricate understanding of various species, considering their nutritional value, medicinal properties, and ecological roles. This knowledge, passed down through generations, not only enriches their communities but has been crucial for western science. Indigenous women's insights have often informed Western understandings, leading to the development of medicines and a deeper understanding of climate phenomena such as droughts, floods, and biodiversity migration.
Insights
Analysis and perspectives on issues that lie at the heart of land governance challenges.
Inclusive land governance at the local level allows for the community’s broader governance ‘muscle’ to be exercised in a constructive and practical way. This can reduce conflict and spark transformative social change.
We often ask for feedback from you. Knowing this takes time, effort, and thought, we are grateful that so many of you do it. We want you to know that we read and hear every single person’s comments. We implement a fairly dynamic feedback loop, but just in case you have wondered how Land Portal uses data and users’ feedback to make a real difference, here is a comprehensive look at our rigorous and participatory monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. This blog is taken from our 2023 Annual M&E Report, which dives deep into how we collect and analyze data and user feedback to drive impactful initiatives for better land governance.
After a four-year hiatus, the World Bank Land Conference took place again in Washington, D.C. this May, convening one thousand government, civil society, and land stakeholders in person and thousands more online. The theme of the 2024 conference was "Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action," an exciting and meaningful frame for discussing an issue near to our hearts – open access to land information.
The Land Portal organized a panel on building a robust and open land information infrastructure for tenure security and climate action in Africa, moderated by Romy Sato. The session featured an outstanding panel of speakers from the public and private sectors representing perspectives on land data from Malawi, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, and Uganda.
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
New work from the Land Portal.New data story: Challenges of securing land rights in post-conflict Burundi
The Land Portal Turns 15!
15th Anniversary Celebration Messages
Thank you to our friends, partners, and supporters who sent us messages and videos for the Land Portal's 15th anniversary! Want to add your voice? Send us an email!
Iris Krebber and UK's FCDO (then DFID) figured prominently in the early days of the Land Portal. Read this recollection to see how Iris inspired Laura Meggiolaro as the Land Portal was being launched as an independent organization.
Happy Birthday! My sincere congratulations to Land Portal on an astounding journey from a small initiative into the world’s leading window of all things land tenure and governance!
The team and all who contributed to this tremendous success should be really proud. As Margaret Mead famously said, 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.'
The Land Portal has become a true game changer and catalyst of transformation. This is through its role in making key data and information available and accessible, stimulating and facilitating debate about policy and learning from the evidence from the local to the global level, delivering impact at scale, proactively managing risks and trade-offs around the complex political economy of land, and, finally, helping to hold ourselves and key actors accountable for progress, including for the benefit of and through the Sustainable Development Goals.
In my career, not a day goes by when I am not reminded of the tremendous importance of good land governance systems and the important contribution that Land Portal is making, whether I work on economic development, food security, climate, or, as I do now, on conflict and fragility.
Supporting the beginnings and the trajectory of Land Portal over the past 15 years has been an incredible experience and honour for me personally, and a hugely valuable investment through DFID/FCDO by the UK taxpayer, for the more inclusive and sustainable world of tomorrow.
Iris Krebber | Head of Civilian Stabilisation Group Operations |Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation (OCSM) | UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
Congratulations to the small but mighty Land Portal team for fifteen years of service to the sector. You have provided valuable information to civil society, researchers, governments, donors, implementers, journalists, and many others. You have stimulated dialogue, provided data and analysis, helped us visualize the world around us, and informed us of the next interesting webinar or event. You are a critical component of the land ecosystem and I can’t wait to see what you do in the next fifteen years. Congratulations and thank you for all that you do!
Amy Regas, Co-Founder, PLACE | Senior Associate, Tetra Tech
Happy anniversary, Land Portal! It's been an amazing collaboration since the beginning of the Global Data Barometer back in 2020. Looking forward to more great projects to advance our understanding of data within the land sector. Cheers to many more years of fruitful collaboration!
Silvana Fumega, Project Director, Global Data Barometer
Huge congratulations to the entire Land Portal Team for reaching a 15th successful year! From the early beginnings as a project, to becoming incorporated as a global not-for-profit Foundation under Dutch law, it’s been an inspiring journey all the way.
Land Portal exemplifies a public good at its very best, with its informative content and debates open to everyone online. Land Portal is a one-of-a-kind curator and aggregator of every type of land data and is now well-known and respected among the global land governance community of practice as the ‘go to’ destination on land.
I am extremely proud to be a small part of this fantastic group of people.
Dr Elizabeth Daley, Chair of the Land Portal Board
Congratulations to LandPortal.info on reaching this significant milestone of 15 years! Your unwavering commitment to providing invaluable resources and fostering knowledge sharing in the realm of land governance, particularly in addressing the critical issues of data transparency and combatting land grabs, is truly commendable. As a member of the Steering Committee of the Land Matrix Initiative I highly appreciate our joint endeavour in improving access to land data for holding investors in land accountable. Here's to many more years of cooperation, empowering communities, advancing research, and advocating for positive change. Cheers to your continued success and impact!
Dr. Jann Lay
German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) / Leibniz-Institut für Globale und Regionale Studien and University of Goettingen
Dr. Elizabeth Daley. Chair of the Land Portal Foundation Board, freelance consultant and a Principal Consultant of Mokoro Ltd.
Laura Cunial, Member of the Land Portal Foundation Board and Syria Crisis Legal Research Adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Middle East regional office
Leon Verstappen, former Chair of the Land Portal Foundation, and full professor of civil and notary law at the department of Private Law and Notary Law of the University of Groningen
Dr. Ritu Verma, former Board of Director of the Land Portal Foundation, adjunct professor at Carleton University, research scholar at the University of California Los Angeles, and associate professor at the College of Language and Culture Studies
Mike Taylor, Director of the International Land Coalition
Madiodio Niasse, Former Director of the International Land Coalition
Nati Carfi, Executive Director of the Open Data Charter
Pranab Choudhury, Co-Founder & Director, Landstack
Stephan Dohrn, Early Land Portal Supporter, Radical Inclusion