Land Equity International (LEI) is ready to hire a passionate and skilled Research and Communications Officer to help advance equitable land governance worldwide. Continue here for more details.
+
It has been a super productive and exciting time here at LEI over the past six months with tenders, international conferences and bigger still, project mobilisations. We won’t be enjoying long summer holidays like our northern partners but aiming for some crisp short winter-breaks down-under instead.
Why did three members of the LEI team travel to Lesotho in the last three months? Because we kicked off with our national and internationally staffed team, a five-year contract by the US-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation to support the modernisation of the Rural Land Registration System in Lesotho, with a particular emphasis on supporting the accessibility and inclusiveness of that system for women! Our contract is called the Land and Gender (L&G) consultancy.
No country has yet achieved middle-income status without urbanising (World, Bank, 2012). Yet governments around the world are racing to keep pace with the infrastructure demands of rapid urbanisation. Like many cities around the world, Port Vila is facing an affordable housing shortage – with over 1000ha of new serviced land needed by 2030 to meet requirements, and an estimated 80% of city residents already suffering from rental stress. The Vanuatu Affordable and Resilient Settlements (VARS) project is seeking to help grow government and developer capacity to address the affordable housing and resilient infrastructure shortage.
Globally, women currently own and control less than 20% of the world’s land. In lower income (‘developing’) countries, this figure is as low as 10%. Low documentation levels are an exacerbating factor – 75% of the world’s population cannot prove they own the land on which they live and work, and it’s estimated that 90% of Africa’s land mass remains undocumented. What this means is increased vulnerability for women – women who farm the land, live on the land, invest on the land, but who – without their rights recognised – ultimately have no control over the land.
In just a few days the World Bank’s newly relaunched Annual Land Conference will commence in Washington DC! The 2024 Conference, which has the theme Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action, aims to highlight effective strategies for securing land tenure and access in support of climate change mitigation and adaption.
On Thursday 15 February, the Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project and the Land Portal launched the first webinar in the State of Land in the Mekong series. The series, which will consist of three webinars across 2024 and 2025, aims to shine a spotlight on land issues in the Mekong region during a time of immense rural transformation.
The Mekong Region Land Governance Project aims to improve land governance in four of the Mekong countries, by empowering local reform actors, building alliances, and supporting policy influencing activities. The Project takes a regional approach across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam to support cross country learning and to facilitate and open up space for dialogue and alliance building. The Project has been designed to deliver the following key objective: Smallholder women and men farmers in CLMV countries, especially those belonging to ethnic minorities, have secure and equitable access to and control over agricultural land, forest and fisheries.
As the year draws to a close, the LEI team look back with appreciation for the loyalty of all our project teams and consultants and the support of clients and implementing partners. We look forward to a new year of more great work together in 2024.
The purpose of the 2018 ASEAN Guidelines for Responsible Investment in Food, Agriculture and Forestry is “to promote investment in food, agriculture and forestry in the ASEAN region that contributes to regional economic development, food and nutrition security, food safety and equitable benefits, as well as the sustainable use of natural resources”. Guideline 3 states that ASEAN RAI Guidelines want to “contribute to equality, engagement and empowerment for women, young people, indigenous peoples and marginalized groups by…Supporting equitable access to opportunities and protecting human rights.”
Indonesia has a special place in LEI’s company heart, with a nearly 30-year history of partnership between LEI and the Government of Indonesia. The recently closed Papua Spatial Planning (PSP) project has been a particular highlight, undertaken in partnership with Daemeter Consulting and the governments of UK and Indonesia.
To explore deeper the challenges of land acquisition and extract good practices, LEI’s Senior Land and Law specialist, Renée Chartres, reached out to Racheal Kisiangani, a land acquisition practitioner, to share her years of experience working for private sector utility and infrastructure companies across seven sub-Saharan countries.
In spirit of reconciliation, Land Equity International acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
