Land governance covers all activities associated with the management of land and natural resources that are required to fulfil political and social objectives.

Good and transparent land governance will serve a country's national resources management, the rights of its citizens, and lead to a reduction of poverty. In addition, sound land governance is crucial to achieving relevant sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Making the invisible visible within national data systems was an important area of discussion at the United Nations World Data Forum. Invisible population groups in data are commonly the most vulnerable populations — women and girls, people with disability, refugee and migrants, and the elderly.

We cannot restore tropical forests without restoring the rights of their traditional owners.

Implementing a coordinated global response to curb demand for energy and eliminate further deforestation would reduce the need to deploy artificial carbon dioxide removal technologies, according to a decisive report from the U.N. scientific panel on climate change.

Rural women and girls are far from the public or media spotlight, but their struggles deserve urgent attention

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) launched an Alumni Profile Series in which alumni of CCSI’s Executive Training on Sustainable Investments in Agriculture are interviewed about their career paths.

Droughts, floods, hurricanes, and other disasters displaced over 24 million people in 2016. When people leave their homes behind, land records offer critical protection of their property rights. This is crucial, as land and homes are usually

With the inclusion of several land-related indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), land data collection and monitoring has reached an unprecedented momentum. There is a palpable positive drive within both global and local civil society to contribute to the official process through advocacy, data collection and international monitoring efforts. The broad consensus is that data and information are building blocks that support better informed decision and policy making at all levels.

Following last week’s meeting of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), this piece reflects on a key CFS soft-law instrument. It is an edited extract from the article “International Soft-Law Instruments and Global Resource Governance: Reflections on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure”, Law, Environment and Development Journal (2017) 13(2):115-133. The full article can be freely downloaded at https://lead-journal.org/content/17115.pdf.

Until today, the world had no internationally comparable data on citizens’ perceptions of the security their property rights; no way of tracking how people evaluated the likelihood of their home or other land being taken from them.

“Land for me is life.”

“It is everything, it is health, food security, and dignity.” 

“It is life, overcoming adversity, and land security.”

“[Land for me is…] achievement and sustainability.”

“It is our home, where we raise our children, and where we preserve our culture.” – What does land mean for you? (2015)

Heat waves, floods, hurricanes, starvation these are the ‘rewards’ Mother Earth has for years of neglect, overuse, misuse, and abuse. The earth’s natural resources support life. Trees, soil, natural gas, coal, fresh water, and oil- life wouldn’t exist without oxygen, without food, medicine, and power. However, if natural catastrophes are anything to go by, we have gone way past the red natural these resources, creating a life-sucking ecological debt.

What will be our fate if natural resources run dry?

In 2015 the UN agreed a new tranche of global sustainable development goals, signed up to by all member states and due to be achieved by 2030. Among them was a target to increase not only the proportion of adults with legally documented property rights, but also the proportion of adults who perceived their property rights to be secure, whether legally documented or not.