Global Land Alliance’s October newsletter, our Parcel Post, shares the latest news from GLA including: A launch of a new GLA policy paper entitled: “Securing Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ Land Rights in the Voluntary Carbon Market: Key Actions and Considerations”; Registration and more information for the launch of a new Prindex report on tenure security and property rights; An announcement of two new members of Global Land Alliance’s board of director. We are excited to share articles on these subjects with you here:

Did you know that approximately 1.1 billion adults worldwide—23% of the global population—feel insecure about their rights to property or land? This number has risen significantly over the past four years. As we approach 2030 and the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, it’s crucial to ask: Are we truly advancing in securing equal land and housing rights for everyone? The new Prindex report dives deep into these critical questions and more.

In our 10^th year of operations, Global Land Alliance is excited to announce that Pranab Choudhury has joined the Global Land Alliance board of directors. Pranab has been working on interdisciplinary issues connecting natural resources, climate and local communities for more than three decades, with governments, civil society, academia and the private sector. Pranab Choudhury co-founded and leads Landstack, a global south think tank, that seeks to enrich and expand the land governance ecosystem with more information, institutions and innovations.

Global Land Alliance is proud to announce Faith Alubbe as the newest member of our board of directors. Faith is the CEO of the Kenya Land Alliance.  For the last 19 years, she has been working with marginalized Communities to support them to identify and claim their rights.

Global Land Alliance's Shahd Mustafa, Malcolm Childress and Cynthia Berning were published in this month's journal of "Reviving Aleppo". Their article, entitled "Perception of Tenure Security, a Helpful Tool in the Recovery and Rebuilding of Post-conflict Aleppo", discussed the potential benefits of using Prindex as a tool for rebuilding and recovering the post-conflict city.

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities across the world are affected by environmental, social and cultural degradation that are tied to the way land tenure is governed. In international discourse there has been an increasing focus to not just uplift the struggles of IPLC, but to make sure that their voices, sovereignty and knowledge have a seat at the table. The inclusion of Indigenous peoples in decision making processes and self-determination goes beyond consultation, the rights set forth under United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) obliges the free, prior and informed consent.

Today Malcolm Childress, GLA’s Executive Director and Audace Kubwimana, Africa Regional Coordinator of the International Land Coalition (ILC), signed a Memorandum of Understanding which makes official the organizations’ longstanding mutual effort to support and advocate for advancing gaps in land data and dialogues in the Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Last week, Prindex Co-Director Anna Locke attended the India Land and Development Conference 2023: Land - People Relations: Diversity and Transitions, cosponsored by Global Land Alliance. She reflects on the conference, people she met, and the future of land governance in India. Special thanks to the Center for Land Governance and Pranab Choudhury for convening an important space for dialogue and collaboration.

Global Land Alliance acknowledges that we, as individuals and as an organization, benefit from the traditional land of the Nacotchtank and the Piscataway Conoy People working in what is now known as Washington D.C. As a core value of our mission, we believe that the Indigenous knowledge is key to advancing rights to land and resources.

In the summer of 2023, Global Land Alliance’s Brazilian team and Brazilian partners Torsiano Consulting set out to conceptualize how the Brazilian government could approach the designation of public lands in the Amazon. Our team analyzed the efforts currently underway by the Brazilian government how they are improving and accelerating public land allocation process, which will have dual-benefits for climate outcomes and rights for Indigenous People and forest-dwelling communities in the Amazon. The following article is a summary of the legal and operational analysis.

This week Global Land Alliance and Prindex formally signed on as global partners of the Stand for Her Land (S4HL). We look forward to collaborating with, supporting coalition partners from around the work to advance the vision of S4HL: to bridge the gap between law and practice for Women Land Rights.

Last week, Andrea Teran and Christina Kuntz from GLA traveled to Bolivia to meet with representatives of the Bolivian National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA), Inter-American Development Bank, Fundación de la Cordillera (FUNDECOR), and other consultants for GLA's work regarding environmental and social safeguards within the land formalization process, land administration process, and institutional capacity building in Bolivia. 

Global Land Alliance has been selected by the European Commission (EC) to receive a €2.1 million grant to advance Prindex. It is part of an overall effort by the EC to advance land governance with the International Land Coalition (ILC), and underscores the importance of data on perceptions of land and property rights. This grant will further develop the global study which asks people how likely they think it is that they will lose their land or property against their will in the next 5 years.

We are pleased to announce that Global Land Alliance has joined the PLACE Community as the first PLACE Founding Member..

Earlier this month, Global Land Alliance’s Executive Director submitted an open letter, joining a collective voice promoting Brazilian State support for CLT initiatives, and influence representatives to take supportive measures to affordable housing and long-term community-building, development and/or guarantee of rights.

How do we better ensure that women are not left worse off after Land Tenure formalization campaigns? From February 21-25th, a Global Land Alliance team comprised of Laura Restrepo and Maribel Arguello visited the small villages of Tierra Grata and Chafurry in the Puerto Lleras municipality, which is in the larger Meta department of Colombia.

Global Land Alliance (GLA) participated in the international conference organized by Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests of the Kingdom of Morocco. The conference took place on February 22 and 23, 2023 in Rabat and was focused on the findings and recommendations of an in-depth report about the issues of land division.

The Government of Kenya, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Land Coalition (ILC) Africa and Global Land Alliance will host the the first-ever Regional Land Data and Digitalization Conference will bring together key actors in Africa and beyond to share good practices in data technologies and digitalization for the land sector

Global Land Alliance’s November 2022 edition of our Parcel Post contains articles entitled: Treaties, Indigenous Land And Resource Rights In The Great Lakes And Enbridge’s Line 5 Pipeline: Interview With Whitney Gravelle by Christen Corcoran; Treaties, Indigenous Land And Resource Rights In The Great Lakes And Enbridge’s Line 5 Pipeline: Interview With Aurora Conley by Christen Corcoran; Land Tenure Insecurity And Climate Adaptation: Socio-Environmental Realities In Colombia And Implications For Integrated Environmental Rights And Participatory Policy by Brianna Castro and Christina Kuntz; People-Land Relationships On The Path To Sustainable Food Security by Malcolm Childress, Pranab Choudhury, and Jolyne Sanjak

The 2022 United National Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) COP will be the 27th convening of this group and will take place from November 6th-18th. The stakes are higher than ever as a series of recent scientific reports has shown that global climate change affecting nature, people’s lives and infrastructure everywhere. Its dangerous and pervasive impacts are increasingly evident in every region of our world. These impacts are hindering efforts to meet basic human needs and they threaten sustainable development across the globe. (IPCC 6trh report 2022) The same scientific consensus shows a growing recognition of the role of land, land tenure security and forests in climate mitigation, adaptation and resiliency goals.