Land is critical to the lives, livelihoods, and food security of millions of people across the world. But a series of unprecedented pressures on global farmland are now accelerating and converging. This land squeeze is driving a surge in land inequality, rural poverty, and food insecurity – and risking a tipping point for smallholder agriculture.

This data card shows some of the key available data from Bangladesh that helps to understand the connection between land tenure security and climate change in that country. It is meant to highlight this often underexplored nexus, though it does not claim to provide any scientific evidence of causality.

Land corruption seriously threatens efforts to fight climate change and achieve a fair energy transition. By undermining climate programmes, projects and practices, it fuels increased carbon emissions and negative climate outcomes. It weakens tenure security and contributes to human rights violations. By channelling funds and resources towards elites, and supporting harmful or poorly managed projects, land corruption also erodes the legitimacy and credibility of the climate agenda, reducing popular support for vital action.

This case study shows the challenge of securing land rights and land tenure security among a sector of Bangladesh’s landless poor whose claim to land is among the most tenuous in the world — the char dwellers. Their settlement on land that was created by river erosion and could at any time disappear in the same way provides a compelling case for the grant by the government of land rights that are not presently provided for by current land laws. The increasing risk of disasters, particularly flooding, threatens char dwellers equally if not more than other landless poor.

There is a correlation between socio-economic development, human rights and the empowerment of men and women to participate at all levels of decision making. Secure land rights are an important precondition for the achievement of these goals, including and the realisation of a broad spectrum of human rights: adequate housing, equality, food, health, work and education.

Context and background:Increasing refugee crisis has focused most host states to integrate refugees with the local communities through land access to customary land whose land rights are not clearly defined and documented.

Neste artigo se discute a relação entre conhecimento e sociedade sob a perspectiva da produção da verdade. Através de uma abordagem etnográfica, se examina relações cambiantes entre segurança ontológica e segurança jurídica no espaço da profissionalização da assistência jurídica em Timor-Leste1. Sugere-se, em consequência, que posse e alienabilidade da terra são produzidos em múltiplos cenários através de composições, sempre contingentes e emergentes, entre agendas de interesse heterogêneas e técnicas com pretensão de verdade.

A titulação da terra tem sido vista como meio de garantia da posse segura deste recurso por parte dos indivíduos, nomeadamente dos camponeses. Nessa linha, a maioria das reformas enfatizam a necessidade de se ter cidadãos com terra legalizada.

Este texto mostra que, se por um lado, a não titulação é uma ameaça à posse segura, por outro, a própria titulação pode ser um risco para os mais carenciados se observados, à letra, outros preceitos que a lei consagra.

Despite the progress made in terms of global and national land policy frameworks, effective changes in practices remain limited. This is particularly the case with regard to large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), as highlighted through this assessment of the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGTs) in the framework of LSLAs in Africa.

Key results for Africa include:

Key Messages and Recommendations

• Combating desertification and land degradation while mitigating the effects of drought can secure long-term socio-economic benefits for people living in drylands and reduce their vulnerability to climate change.

• Land degradation neutrality (LDN) is an approach that counterbalances the expected loss of productive land with the recovery of degraded areas.

• Land tenure insecurity, especially for women, often prevents farmers from adopting sustainable land management practices

Context and background:  The essential emerging reality from the statutory-versus-customary tenure debate is that both customary and statutory tenure systems have faults and good merits.