It’s already been a few weeks since I took part in The World Urban Forum 12, a global conference on urbanization established by the United Nations, in Egypt between 4-8 November. It was a remarkable opportunity to bring together global experts, practitioners, and leaders to address major global challenges as cities worldwide face pressures, particularly from conflicts and natural disasters.
 

As we reflect on our work at the Land Portal Foundation, we are continually inspired by the transformative power of open data, especially in the land sector. Our newly launched Open Data Champions Initiative celebrates  the small but impactful contributions of open data champions worldwide, particularly those in the Global South, who are driving change at the country level and beyond. TheState of Land Information (SOLI) Program underscores our commitment to benchmarking and making land data more accessible and impactful.

India Land and Development Conference, ILDC is back with its eighth episode at the picturesque FLAME University in Pune this week. It has been quite a journey for this collaborative convening. Despite its 8th edition, it has emerged as a globally recognized land convergence event, drawing attention from far and near. 

Just thinking of a conference on a topic like ‘Land’, in a country like India, is in itself a big challenge, forget organizing it year after year, for eight years - setting a stature that has grown every year!  

In my role as Chair of the Board of the Land Portal Foundation, I recently had the opportunity to take part in two trainings to help me develop my leadership skills. The first was a 2-day Feminist Leadership ReTreat in Mechelen, Belgium, which I took part in alongside our Managing Director, Laura Meggiolaro, our Board Secretary, Laura Cunial, and seven other women leaders from different civil society organisations in Europe.

From the Land Portal team and board of directors

In 2022, countries reached a historic agreement to halt biodiversity loss by conserving at least 30% of land and water by 2030. This marked a critical step toward protecting the world's precious remaining species and ecosystems. But that's not all: The Global Biodiversity Framework, as it's known, also explicitly calls on countries to recognize and uphold Indigenous Peoples and local communities' rights in their conservation strategies.

India has made significant strides in empowering women over the past few decades, starting with self-help groups (SHGs) that became powerful vehicles for social inclusion. Government and NGO efforts later expanded to skilling and livelihood initiatives, helping women increase their income and build small businesses within their communities. Yet, despite this progress, the urgent need remains for a long-term, sustainable solution to women's empowerment.

Reliable tamper-proof records with a real time link between Registration, Survey and Revenue departments with common shared textual and spatial data that are geo-referenced and ground-truthed so that there is no need for repeated universal ground survey.

Such records are available to the respective land-holders/ owners with a simple system to update whenever a transfer takes place through sale, inheritance or any other transfer.

At the Rome launch of the Global Comparative Report on Security of Property Rights for Land and Housing in 2024 presented by Prindex initiative on October 22, alarming new data revealed that 1.1 billion people worldwide feel insecure about their property rights, reflecting an escalating global crisis in housing and land tenure. The findings, derived from Prindex data, present a worrying increase from 19% of the adult population in the surveyed 108 countries in 2020 to 23% in 2024—meaning almost one in four adults now fear losing their homes or land.

Photo: Youth in Rwanda engage in a Q & A session (Creative Commons Attribution)

Photo: UN Women (Creative Commons Attribution)

Photo Credit: ©2011CIAT/NeilPalmer