What are the state-of-the-art and new approaches to land consolidation as part of integrated rural development strategies in North Africa and Near East? That was the main question around which several experts from Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Turkey joined the FAO/ RVO roundtable discussion on land consolidation during the Second Arab Land Conference last February; a session which 110 participants attended – both in person and online.

The  ability of the Embera villages in Panama to shut off the road into their community, and to exclude outsiders, is based in large measure on the government’s official recognition of their indigenous collective land rights.

Law Project 2.633/2020 is presented to the Brazilian Congress and may sign a point of no-return in the struggle for the Amazon and its socio-biodiversity

Today we are pleased to mark the official launch of PlaceFund, an independent US nonprofit organization focused on addressing issues of insecure property rights, unsustainable land use, and climate change. Built off a decade as the Property Rights initiative at Omidyar Network, PlaceFund will operate under the leadership of Peter Rabley and Amy Regas, who will be leaving Omidyar Network to run this venture, and they will take our shared commitment to property rights and geospatial technology into the new decade.

In rural areas around the world, the face of a farmer is increasingly a woman’s.

From the paddy terraces of Asia to the maize fields of sub-Saharan Africa, she will till, plant, water, and harvest crops that feed her household and whole communities.

In the past decade, significant international attention focused on “land grabs” in developing countries by companies and others hungry for land to grow food and procure resources for the world’s growing population.

Maritza Losada moved to Puerto Guadalupe five years ago when her husband found a job with a large biomass energy company that grows sugar cane. She and her husband purchased a lot in the town’s poorest neighborhood, Barrio Nuevo. The district remains today much like it was in 1995 when the government created the housing project for future agro-laborers: no roads, no sewage, no gutters.

The data ecosystem is an extremely vast and cluttered space. What data exist? What data is up to date? What data is reliable? Who owns the data? Can I use the data without inflicting harm? Who are the data subjects? Many people across numerous sectors struggle with such questions and more on a daily basis. The land governance sector in India is no different. But somehow, it seems the land data ecosystem in India is more complex and controversial.

Conservation, said Aldo Leopold, is harmony between (wo)men and land. Land should justifiably figure not only into the conservation, but also in development debates, policy and discourses. Missing land rights and land tenure security can be costly for states, communities as well as local and global development.

Welcome to 2019. In San Francisco, commuters shuttle to work in self-driving Ubers. In Rwanda, drones deliver blood to patients. In China, Xiaomi released a $500 phone that allows users to map the world with 30 centimeter accuracy.

And yet, a quarter of the world’s population lacks a fundamental human right: the right to property.

There is no doubt that land use and reforms are at the heart of Kenya’s political and economic future stability. In Kenya in particular, land has a central position in Kenya’s social, economic and political history. An estimated 75% of the country’s population depends on land for their livelihoods, making the ownership, management and control of the resource of great importance. Land is an enabler to support manufacturing, access to affordable and decent housing, universal health care, food security and nutrition.

On September 19, Liberian President George Manneh Weah signed into law the Land Rights Bill (LRB), a landmark piece of legislation that recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to their customary lands and gives customary land the same standing as private land in Liberia.