On 24 and 25 September 2019, Heads of State and Governments will gather at the United Nations Headquarters in New York for the summit Accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is a crucial event for evaluating progress towards the 17 goals and 169 ambitious targets countries have set to eradicate poverty, achieve food security, empower women, secure the planet and foster peace and stability.
There is a strong and compelling environment and development case to be made for securing indigenous and community lands. Securing collective land rights offers a low-cost, high-reward investment for developing country governments and their partners to meet national development objectives and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Securing community lands is also a cost-effective climate mitigation measure for countries when compared to other carbon capture and storage approaches.
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).
Working on and with open data means that we are avid believers in the notion that pathways of information should be opened up, that we are building the proper technological infrastructures for information to be appropriately shared, thereby creating connections. Networks such as the International Land Coalition serve this very same purpose; with the exchange of information and knowledge being one of the Coalition’s main missions.
Disabled people have been increasingly recognised as the most marginalised group in any society. This group faces various structural, political and systemic barriers hindering their access, participation and contribution in the economy.
“We, the poor.” This is how Francisco Chicompa introduces the peasant families who live in Napai II, a village in the district of Mecuburi, Nampula province in Mozambique. The label stuck like glue: poor is what they were called, and so poor is what they were. Despite this, the land in the region has provided food for him, his wife and his eleven children. The land has provided money to buy clothes and sent the children to school. The land has held memories of his ancestors, which he was of course obliged to pass on, intact, to future generations.
Women represent the majority of Brazil’s population (51.6% in 2017). However, only 12% of the landowners are women and just 5.5% own agricultural land in Brazil (IBGE, Agricultural Census, 2006). This gender disparity is just part of the immense problem women face in terms of land rights in Brazil. A major issue is the persistent gap between what is in the law and what happens in practice.
New technology has unleashed a wave of opportunities to secure formal land rights for hundreds of millions of people, but it is not a solve-all solution in countries with weak institutions, said a senior World Bank economist.
Satellite imagery, drones, cloud computing and blockchain are among technologies with the potential to help many of the world’s more than 1 billion people estimated to lack secure property rights, said the World Bank’s Klaus Deininger.
The 16th of October marks World Food Day, a reminder to the international community of the criticality of treating food security as a 21st Century priority if sustainable development, peace and security and the realisation of human rights are to be achieved.
By Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Chairman of the Advisory Board of CCSI, University Professor at Columbia University, and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
