Laura is the lead of the Land Portal team. She a specialist in information and knowledge management for development with a passion for Open Data. She has substantial program management experience and during the last fifteen years, she has been responsible for kicking off, implementing and leading a range of data, information and knowledge management initiatives focused on land rights. Prior to joining the Land Portal, Laura worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization, ActionAid International and the International Land Coalition among others. Laura holds Master’s degrees in Communications Science and on Economics for Development. See Laura LinkedIn profile here.
The Land Portal is a Foundation registered in the Netherlands in 2014.
The vision of the Portal is to improve land governance to benefit those with the most insecure land rights and the greatest vulnerability to landlessness through information and knowledge sharing.
The Land Portal, Global Data Barometer, and Open Data Charter are working together at the nexus of open data and land governance. This blog shares how we are bringing our complementary expertise and passions for more open and transparent land data systems.
The problem
Twenty six years after South Africa’s first democratic election, land issues remain a point of contention, from land reforms to expropriation without compensation. Given the primacy of this issue in South Africa, it begs the question of what is the state of land information in South Africa? Do government agencies have sufficient data to support land governance decision making? Can civil society access the kind of information it needs to defend its interests? These were the kinds of questions we asked ourselves when we were reflecting on data fragmentation and access to information in South Africa.
"Information is power but information sharing is even more powerful." With this statement, during his opening of the side event on blockchain at the LANDac encounter 2020, John Dean Markunas, Power of Chain Consultancy (PoC) cited me. I am now citing him back to explain what I meant.
Hundreds of land practitioners from around the globe gathered and came together at the 2019 LANDac Conference at the beginning of July with the purpose of looking at land governance from the lens of transformation and in particular, how to support transformation that works for people and nature. The conference delved into questions such as the long-term dynamics around land, water and food production and promising concepts and tools for building learning and knowledge building about these dynamics.
With the inclusion of several land-related indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), land data collection and monitoring has reached an unprecedented momentum. There is a palpable positive drive within both global and local civil society to contribute to the official process through advocacy, data collection and international monitoring efforts. The broad consensus is that data and information are building blocks that support better informed decision and policy making at all levels.
La Route de l’apprentissage consacrée aux « approches et outils innovants visant à sécuriser les droits fonciers des femmes » a été organisée au Rwanda et au Burundi en février 2014 par l’initiative relative aux droits fonciers des femmes de la Coalition internationale pour l’accès à la terre (ILC) et Procasur.
