Over the past nine years, the project on Supporting Implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) has helped countries make political commitments towards the eradication of hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition, with the explicit outcome of increasing awareness among decision makers, development partners, and society at large regarding access to natural resources. The Food a

There is an immense pressure on land in Uganda. The country has a rapidly growing population and is host to the world’s third largest refugee population. Particularly poor people struggle to get access to healthy food. Agriculture practices need to become more efficient and focused on the domestic market. The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN) in Uganda works to improve food security in selected areas in the country. Among several food security projects, the EKN works with the LAND-at-scale program to improve land governance.

Our food system doesn’t work for everyone.

Our food systems are in urgent need of transformation, as humanity faces one of our biggest challenges yet; feeding a future population of 10 billion people with safe and nutritious food while keeping a healthy planet. Our food system has the power to tip the scales and transform the future of our planet and humankind.

The main objective of the LAND-at-scale program is to directly strengthen essential land governance components for men, women and youth that have the potential to contribute to structural, just, sustainable and inclusive change at scale. An ambitious objective, that cannot be achieved in isolation. Alignment is, therefore, a key factor in all LAND-at-scale activities - be it at project level for our country interventions or through our collaborative approach to knowledge management.

In the second PhD session of the LANDac Conference 2021, three PhD researchers presented their work in progress. We learned about slums in Abuja, Nigeria, about forest rights in India, and about the relation between inequalities in soil fertility, gender, and access to subsidies. Each presentation was discussed by an expert from the LANDac network.

Key Takeaways

This session focussed on the transition towards more sustainable food systems in light of the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit. Four presenters shared their work, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, and their recommendations towards more fair and sustainable production of food, as well as recommendation to change the way we think about food.

Key Takeaways

From Europe to the U.S., migration issues are highly politicized, divisive, and complex. When U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Central America a few weeks ago to better understand the root causes of migration, she recognized the driving force of poverty that leads people to leave their homes.

By: Thais Bessa, gender advisor at Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG). 

Purnima Kora is an ambitious farmer. She owns two small parcels of land that she purchased with her husband’s support and years of savings she earned from farming PepsiCo potatoes and rice, as well as by leveraging micro loans through a women’s self-help group. She also leases another half-acre plot to farm potatoes.  

Instruments like the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) are "voluntary", i.e., legally non-binding. These instruments are intended to have a direct influence on the governance of the tenure practice of states by providing an internationally recognized set of principles, and by simultaneously encouraging good practices.

In this first edition, Daniel Hayward brings you four articles that talk about customary land tenure and responsible agricultural investment. It’s a prelude to the 3rd Mekong Regional Land Forum with each article unfolding the topic of each session.

A 2021 African land rush seems unlikely, but issues persist

Joseph Feyertag is a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Roger Calow is a senior research fellow at the ODI, and Ben Bowie is a director at TMP Systems.