The climate crisis demands urgent action, yet we live in a politically polarized and paralyzed world. As governments and other actors struggle over climate change, our environment is irreversibly changing. A United Nations report on the Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services revealed that three-quarters of the earth’s land-based environment has been significantly altered by human actions.

lack of transparency in the land and property sector prevents individuals, communities and governments from unlocking the value of the property as an asset, and undermines policies and legal frameworks that aim to provide land tenure security, potentially leading to a misallocation of rights. In fact, land governance is ranked among the sectors in which people are most likely to pay bribes for access to services, according to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer.

Post-war societies not only have to deal with continuing unpeaceful relations but also land-related conflict legacies, farmland and forest degradation, heavily exploited natural resources, land mines, a destroyed infrastructure, as well as returning refugees and ex-combatants. In the aftermath of war, access to and control of land often remains a sensitive issue which may precipitate tensions and lead to a renewed destabilization of volatile post-conflict situations.