Where Technology Meets Land Rights: Utilizing Technologies to Support Land Governance | Land Portal
Contact details: 
Stacey Zammit (stacey.zammit@landportal.info)
Organizers: 
The Tenure Facility

The International Land and Forest Tenure Facility is focused on securing land and forest rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. We are the first financial mechanism to exclusively fund projects working towards this goal while reducing conflict, driving development, improving global human rights, and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

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The Thomson Reuters Foundation was created to advance and promote the highest standards in journalism worldwide through media training and humanitarian reporting.

For over three decades, we have been informing, connecting and empowering people around the world through our free programmes and services.

We support our work through a combination of core annual donation from Thomson Reuters , other donations and sponsorships, through external funding from other organisations as well as grants specifically dedicated to supporting our core programmes.

Ford Foundation

We believe in the inherent dignity of all people. But around the world, too many people are excluded from the political, economic, and social institutions that shape their lives. 

Language of the event: 
English
Portuguese
Spanish
French

As people across the globe turn to information and communication technologies (ICT’s)  in their everyday lives, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are also utilising innovative solutions. Increasingly, communities are integrating their traditional knowledge, skills and values with digital and satellite tools that support them in their efforts to secure their ancestral territories.

While the use of digital tools has the potential to contribute to improving land gov­ernance, there are also considerable risks. A 2020 study from FIAN shows that, despite promises to fix unjust land governance, digital technologies can further land grabbing and inequality.  Although land is recognized as a human right and is essential for the lives of rural people, digitization projects are often implemented with no human rights safeguards. As many discuss “Tech for Good”, this research has revealed how digital technologies have in fact become new tools for land grabs and sources of profit.  In short, one of the persistent criticisms of using digitalization in this sphere is that digitising land rights  can reproduce, consolidate and even exacerbate existing forms of exclusion and marginalisation and is not grounded in a human rights approach.  

This webinar discussed the implications of technologies for land rights, including the potential benefits and drawbacks. The webinar considered whether technology and data sharing a viable and practical  Indigenous communities to defend their land rights.

 

Speakers

 

  • Anastasia Moloney (Moderator), Thomson Reuters Foundation,  is based in Bogota and is TRF's Latin American and Caribbean correspondent.  Prior to joining the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2009, she was a freelance journalist covering the Andean region for the Financial Times and other British and U.S. media.

  • Frank Pichel, Co-Founder and Chief Programs Officer Cadasta, is a land administration specialist with experience designing, managing, and implementing land-related projects with a technology focus around the globe. He has worked both with the private sector in implementing programs while based in West Africa, as well as designing and managing programs as part of the Land Tenure and Property Rights Office for the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

  • Harold Liversage, Lead Land Tenure Technical Specialist International Fund for Agricultural Development, has over 30 years of experience in land and natural resource governance issues, mainly in Eastern and Southern Africa. In his current  capacity he is responsible for assisting IFAD to better address land and natural resource tenure security issues in the projects and programmes it supports. This includes supporting IFAD’s engagement in regional and global initiatives such as the Africa Land Policy Initiative, the “Voluntary Guidelines for the Governance of Tenure” and the Global Donor Land Working Group.

  • Elicio Quintero, COONAPIP Panama, is an organization representing the 12 leaders of the councils that represent the nation’s seven indigenous peoples—the Ngäbe, Kuna, Emberá, Buglé, Wounaan, Naso Tjerdi (Teribe), and Bri Bri groups. COONAPIP has a mandate from the 12 leaders to unite Indigenous people under one national agenda, and the legitimacy to present demands and proposals at the national and international levels.

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