Since the pandemic began, housing experts (including one of the authors of this article) have been predicting that the pandemic’s economic fallout would produce an eviction “tsunami” that could put as many as 40 million people out of their homes.

Land tenure—the formal and informal relationship individuals and groups form with land—effectively determines who uses what land under which conditions. Tenure security is important to promote rural resilience and climate change adaptation, build endowments of assets, and provide adequate housing. But land tenure security is not static.

Our food system doesn’t work for everyone.

The COVID-19 crisis exacerbated land governance challenges, including addressing failures in land governance systems, a lack of transparency, systemic corruption, and lack of accessibility to data. It undermines development progress on global food security and has driven people into poverty, while governments take license to develop indigenous and community lands and thus fuel the climate crisis.

This session brought together colleagues from different organizations working in the broad field of land rights, discussing lessons and experiences from working in crisis mode, in fragile and conflict affected settings. The participants shared experiences, challenges they faced especially during Covid, the solutions they found and critically reflected on shortcomings and unsolved issues.

Summaries and selected replays from the 3rd Mekong Regional Land Forum are available below. Full replays of the plenary sessions will be posted shortly -- check back soon!

Prindex Researcher Joseph Feyertag sets out some key findings from his latest paper 'How perceived tenure security differs between men and women in the MENA region'

It is for good reason that gender is a major theme at this week’s Arab Land Conference. Around just 5% of women own land or property in the region – one of the lowest rates in the world.

Prindex Researcher Joseph Feyertag argues that corruption holds the key to unlocking tenure insecurity.

For rural people, especially low-income rural people, land and livelihood are one and the same. Access to land means the opportunity to earn a decent income and achieve food and nutrition security, and it can also pave the way for access to social benefits such as health care and education. A lack of secure land access, on the other hand, can disempower rural people and expose them to the combined threats of poverty, hunger and conflict.