Land administration has historically focused on economic growth and formalization – now it must evolve to address climate imperatives.

An Indigenous community in the Colombian Amazon learns basic land surveying to fix the errors of the past.

Sanjay Gajiwal, Deputy Election Commissioner and a seasoned Indian Administrative Service officer, delivered a thought-provoking keynote at the 8th India Land and Development Conference (ILDC). With a career spanning diverse roles in urban governance, disaster management, and land reforms, Gajiwal brought his unique blend of administrative experience and academic rigor to the stage, shedding light on the challenges and possibilities of modernizing land governance in India.

As we gather to discuss one of the most crucial topics for Africa’s future—strategic land use planning—the importance of youth land rights cannot be overstated. Based on my reflections and experiences that I prepared for the Fourth International Conference on Youth and Land Governance in Africa (CIGOFA4), I’d like to highlight why securing land rights for young Africans is essential for our continent’s progress.

The recent series of ALIGN articles shed light on how civil society, impacted communities and rights defenders across the world have used strategies such as legal action, publishing of mining contracts and stakeholder dialogues to change approaches to land-based investment governance.

Historically, our finite land and natural resources have been utilized by various agencies for diverse purposes on a first-come, first-served basis. While these agencies act with the best of intentions for their respective sectors, these efforts fall short of creating a cohesive framework that ensures sustainable utilization of our limited resources.

NLUZ stands out as a pivotal planning tool designed to guide and regulate land development and use within a country. Its significance lies in managing urban growth, safeguarding the environment, ensuring public safety, and fostering the overall well-being of citizens.

During the Conference for Land Policy in Africa (CLPA) which took place in Addis Ababa in November 2023, LAND-at-scale organised the side-event ''Climate-Resilient Land Use Planning as a Tool for Addressing Land Degradation''. The LAND-at-scale (LAS) project partners and their government constituencies from Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda participated in person. The set-up of the session was dynamic with each country first ‘pitching’ how land use planning processes were important in their LAS interventions, and then the government representatives adding to that a perspective from government. In each of the countries, the LAS partners consisting of NGOs and UN organizations, work closely with national or district land use planning officers of the government in carrying out project activities.

As part of a scoping study titled Land Governance for Climate Resilience: A review and case studies from LAND-at-scale projects headed by Richard Sliuzas, Emeritus Professor, University of Twente, CTV explored the links between climate and land governance in the LAND-at-scale project “Scaling Community Legal Literacy, Land Rights Certification and Climate Resilience in Mozambique”. This case study focusses on experiences from the Búzi District, where Cyclone Idai (March 2019) showed the need for proactive interventions in the land sector aimed at preparing districts and local communities to face and plan for severe climatic phenomena and their impacts, but also the challenges at making this link explicit. 

 

 

 

 

How a land surveyor in a rural Land Office in Colombia has overcome challenges to find herself in a career dominated by men.