Since the rise of the modern corporate economy, land wealth has been relegated to a simple footnote when it comes to addressing wealth and wealth inequality.

The  4th India Land and Development Conference, set to start next week, invites a wide variety of individuals and institutions to engage in thought-provoking and interdisciplinary conversations and analyses.  More specifically, the Conference's theme Institutions, Innovations and Informations in Land Governance invites us all to think about us all to think about the role that information sharing can play in helping to ensure effective land governance.

When I was young, I was taught through my Maasai heritage that a woman is the property of her husband and is valued on the basis of how many children she can produce – and not by her education or economic success. 

I write this blog as our project team embarks on a fifth year of work on women’s land tenure security (WOLTS) with pastoral communities in mining-affected areas of Mongolia and Tanzania. Just before Christmas 2019, we were in Mundarara village in northern Tanzania. Exceptionally heavy rains made getting around much more challenging than usual. Locals travelling on foot had to make wide detours to avoid getting bogged down in waterlogged grazing land, and it took everyone much longer to get to the village primary school for our long-planned training day. 

A recent policy seminar at IFPRI presented an upcoming CGIAR publication on the topic  

Author: Priti Darooka [1] with contributions by Farida Akhter 

I want to thank IWRAW Asia Pacific for organising a two day strategic dialogue on Women Human Rights and Climate Justice. Some of the points shared here are points discussed at this dialogue in Bangkok in November 2019. 

The session ”Exploring tools and approaches towards responsible youth and gender sensitive land governance and transparency in Africa” took place on November 27^th, 2019 in the framework of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa and was organized by the Global Land Tool Network and the International Land Coalition. Land is both a source of livelihood and life line for most communities in Africa and is considered a strategic social and economic resource for communities in rural and urban areas.

This blog is a summary of a paper that assesses the effectiveness of a specific land tenure intervention to improve the lives of women, by asking new questions of available project data sets.

Local communities manage a significant portion of the world’s remaining forests, pastures, and fisheries as common property resources, but they are rarely recognized as formal owners. Important progress has occurred during the last twenty years, as growing evidence suggests that devolving rights to communities can provide incentives for new forms of investment that facilitate sustainable outcomes as well as greater equity in the distribution of benefits.

At CFS 46, the Land Portal had the opportunity to be the co-organizer of the side event How the VGGT have changed rural women’s lives:  Key strategies and innovations towards gender equality together with GLTN Unit UN-Habitat, the Cadasta Foundation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This side event brought together a range of experts who illustrated efforts aimed at ensuring women’s land rights through both formal institutions and customary systems.

Second in a series of blog posts on the release of the 2019 Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) at the ReSAKSS Annual Conference in Lomé, Togo, Nov. 11-13.

Using data collected from over seven million land records, this study examines the extent to which a systematic registration and certification program has contributed to women’s land tenure security. The Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) program is a six-year DFID-funded program that aims to improve incomes of the rural poor and enhance economic growth in Ethiopia.