By Annelies Zoomers and Kei Otsuki
Two decades after the start of the debate on land grabbing, scholarly and policy attention is shifting from ‘how to stop land grabbing’ to ‘how to use land to combat climate change’. In this trend, the climate-induced land grabbing is deepening for production of renewables, carbon trades and nature conservation, whereas the concept of climate justice is not sufficiently incorporated in the agenda against the land grabbing. In this article, we discuss seven reasons why we need significant changes in land governance to prioritise climate justice and address the overlooked inequalities caused by climate policies in a rapidly changing context.
Read the full article on https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2025.2474523
With the Call for Sessions for the 2025 LANDac Annual Conference just out, the LANDac team is happy to close the year 2024 putting some of our founders into the spotlight. We could say we are closing an era… In 2024, we said goodbye first to Guus van Westen, then to Annelies Zoomers (both IDS, UU) and just recently to Frits van der Wal (MFA), all three of them moving into a next phase of life: retirement. All three were key in developing LANDac from the very beginning, from the very first idea of creating a “ Academy on land governance for equitable and sustainable development”, to making it the lively network (and, we hope, reference point), it is today. Here are some words of appreciation for each of them, in chronological order. Thank you all three for your hard work, bright ideas, and commitment, not just to LANDac as such, but to the cause of land rights for those who most need them, as a key building block in constructing social and environmental justice.
Guus van Westen:
Guus, we said goodbye to you in May. From the start of the idea of LANDac (even before it was a reality), you were invaluable as the sidekick to Annelies. You brought in expertise on a range of topics, including (peri-)urban land issues, food systems transformation, but your most important contribution to LANDac was around responsible investment, always appreciative of the challenges private sector actors may face when trying to do “the right thing” but not hesitant to put the finger on the sore spots. Many in the network will remember and appreciate your tireless efforts in support of the LAND dialogue. You took up as a co-chair in 2019 (with Gemma van der Haar as the other half of this “tandem”) for what turned out to be a bumpy ride: first, the challenging period of COVID, then the adventure of developing the LAND-at-scale knowledge management programme. In the last years, you became very interested in land registration and land tenure security and contributed to opening the space to discuss these issues critically. Thank you for all this, Guus!
Annelies Zoomers:
Annelies, as the “founding mother” of LANDac, you leave a big hole. You effectively brought together a great range of people to put in the bid for LANDac. The rest is history…. Your efforts to put land on the agenda go back a long time, with a conference and two books at the end of the 1990s. You were ahead of your time: colleagues would tell us at the time that land was “out of fashion”. They were wrong. That conference was a success and ten years later the “land grab debate” took off with full force, motivating the creation of LANDac. In this debate you were always alert to new opportunities, which allowed LANDac to grow and build not only a network worldwide but also to build the expertise of many who today are working in the land and development sector in the Netherlands and beyond. Your primary commitment throughout has been with pro-poor land rights. You have remained critical of “false solutions” that look good on paper but fail to protect people on the ground. Thank you Annelies, we need this kind of tenacity!
Frits van der Wal:
Frits, we now also say goodbye to our “founding father”. This really means the closing of an era. You and Annelies were a powerful team, bringing what was necessary to not only conceive of the idea of LANDac, but to bring it to life. Throughout, you remained the pater familias. With your expertise and energy you were an invaluable ally in the Ministry. After paving the way for LANDac, you initiated the LAND dialogue and, next, you masterminded the “next generation” of Dutch land policy: the LAND- at-Scale programme. This created a “family”, of people who developed their talents and found their way to the Ministry, to RVO, to NGOs… You were tireless in connecting people, signaling new trends, creating enthusiasm, drawing up catchy phrases… One of these was: “Be with the troops and ahead of the troops”. This is a great motto for LANDac in the years to come. Thank you Frits for the productive collaboration!
To conclude:
Guus, Annelies, Frits: Your expertise and commitment has been invaluable in the development of LANDac. We plan to bring this legacy forward in the coming years: to keep building connections, to keep asking the questions that need to be asked, and to keep inspiring through our Annual conferences. We wish you all the best in this new phase of your lives. Let’s hope our paths will continue to cross. Safe journey!
The Future of Land Governance in Shifting Glocal Contexts
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 2-4 July 2025
As the LANDac contribution to the LAND-at-scaleknowledge management programme draws to a close, we are pleased to use our Annual Conference 2025 as a space to share the rich learnings over five years of collaboration, and to use these learnings to inform how land governance can contribute towards equality and justice in an increasingly polarising world. We will offer two days of thought inspiring keynotes, panel sessions, round tables and other sessions for which we welcome your suggestions. Prior to the conference, on 2 July, we host a pre-event with an educational focus, providing space for PhD and MSc students to present and exchange their work.
Registration for the conference is now open and closes 29 June. We are happy to offer an early bird fee of €175 (open until 17 April). The regular fee for participation after 17 April is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. There is no additional fee for the Early Career Researchers Day. Online presentation is free of charge.
Our conference team will send you a payment link within 3 working days. Registration is confirmed after your payment has been received. Requests for letters for visa applications are also handled upon registration. We are not able to provide sponsorships or financial support to attend the event.
Registration fees for the Conference: • Early Bird fee: €175 (before 17 April 2025) • Regular fee: €225 (from 17 April 2025) • PhD students: €100 • MSc students: €50
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise to start booking an appointment well ahead of time.
Conference Programme
Please note that the programme is provisional and thus is subject to change. For the latest version of the programme, please regularly check the Conference Page. Times are displayed in CEST (Central European Summer Time).
The 2-day conference kick-offs on Thursday morning 3 July with a plenary session with prominent keynote speakers. This is followed by several rounds of parallel sessions in 1,5 hour slots on Thursday and Friday 4 July. The conference closes on Friday afternoon with a keynote plenary. As in previous editions of the conference, we welcome a variety of formats: paper presentations, panel discussions, round tables for these two days. On 3 July we will close the day with drinks and snacks, offering ample opportunities for networking.
Prior to conference, on 2 July, we host a pre-event for early career researchers, providing space for PhDs and MSc students to share their knowledge, think about how to present this knowledge to other stakeholders, and to inspire each other.
The conference will be concentrated on-site, at Janskerkhof 2-3 Utrecht. We aim to stream keynote sessions. We will have the possibility to host a limited number of sessions in hybrid format.
Keynote speakers
Opening Plenary Day 1
Esther Mwaura-Muiru
Esther Mwaura-Muiru is currently the Global Advocacy Director for the Stand For Her Land (S4HL) Campaign at Landesa. Previously she worked at the International Land Coalition as the Global Women Land Rights Manager. Esther is also the Founder of GROOTS Kenya (Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood), a grassroots women movement of more than 3000 organised groups from rural and urban communities living in poverty across Kenya. Over the years, Esther has demonstrated deep expertise in development and management of initiatives that influence good governance and delivery of public services in sectors like health, housing, land, water, climate change and agriculture. “Transformative development is only possible if those impacted by inequality and oppressive systems are on the leadership and at the centre of the solutions towards a positive change”.
Raymond Cardinal
Ray Cardinal grew up in Alberta, primarily at Sucker Creek First Nation. One of six children, he is the son of the late Harold Cardinal and Maisie Cardinal. Ray earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Saskatchewan and his Master of Arts at the University of Arizona. A proud father to one son, his professional passions include monitoring, engagement, workforce training, and emergency preparedness. Ray holds leadership roles in several organizations, including Indigenous Chair of IAMC-TMX and member of the IAIA-WNC Executive Committee. He is also a proud member of Sucker Creek First Nation.
An Ansoms
An Ansoms, professor at UCLouvain, leads research on environmental and climate change in Central and Eastern Africa. Her team explores climate and resource conflicts using interdisciplinary, art-based, action-oriented methods. Working in DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi, she also specializes in research ethics, focusing on emotional and ethical dilemmas in challenging field contexts.
Closing Plenary Day 2
Jahin Shams Sakkhar
Jahin Shams Sakkhar is a PhD researcher at the University of East Anglia’s School of Global Development, specializing in land rights, gender equity, and climate resilience. His research investigates whether the transfer of Khasland (public land) to women in Bangladesh can enhance their adaptive capacity, strengthen their agency and build resilience in the face of social and environmental change. With over a decade of experience in the NGO sector, Jahin worked with Uttaran, a grass-roots NGO in Bangladesh, where he led climate change and humanitarian programs in Bangladesh. His initiatives focused on water governance, Tidal River Management, Landscape governance, land rights, nature-based solutions, agro-ecology, climate change resilience, disaster risk reduction and humanitarian aid. His impactful work in the field earned him the Change Maker Award from the Start Network. Jahin is also involved in the CLARE SURF-IT project, which uses AI and satellite data to improve early flood warning systems, supporting his commitment to integrating technology into climate adaptation strategies.
Elizabeth Daley
Dr Elizabeth Daley works as Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) Advisor of the Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises (SPARC) programme. She is also Chair of the Board of the Land Portal Foundation and has worked as an independent consultant on land tenure, gender equity and social inclusion for over 20 years, including as Team Leader and instigator of the WOLTS (Women’s Land Tenure Security) project since its inception in 2015. Elizabeth has worked with multilateral and bilateral development partner agencies, international and national NGOs, and national governments, philanthropists, private sector companies and local communities. Her roles have included legal and policy reviews, project and programme evaluations, design and implementation of training and capacity building programmes, technical advisory inputs to land administration projects, and rigorous academic and technical fieldwork-based research on a host of land-related issues. As GESI Advisor for SPARC, Elizabeth supports local researchers across the consortium to elevate gender issues and strengthen understandings of normative change in pastoralist communities, for improved resilience and empowerment outcomes. See https://www.sparc-knowledge.org.
Conference Description
Over the five year period, we have seen changes in global and local contexts. Complex and interrelated crises threaten development achievements and challenge the resilience of people and governance agents. Themes central to the LAND-at-scale learning agenda have seen shifts: land and housing rights are increasingly insecure (2024 PRIndex Report), climate change more and more affects people’s ability to build livelihoods from their land, increasing numbers of people are displaced due to conflict, violence, political or economic instability, and despite many efforts, women still experience inequality when it comes to their rights to land and resources. In recent times the Global North is starting to renege on its efforts to curb climate change, its (financial) support to the Global South, and anti-immigration voices are getting stronger. Democracies and human rights are under pressure, across the globe. In a connected world, such global shifts have impact at local levels. In this rather grim reality, how can we, as academics, practitioners, CSO’s and policy makers, as human beings, contribute with our plurality of knowing, of seeing, of imagining, to a more just, inclusive and sustainable land governance?
Knowledge management is a way to bring these different stakeholders together with the aim to strengthen the implementation of land governance projects and programmes and inform policy in both the Global South and North. Dedicated components aim to work on generating, managing, disseminating, and using knowledge, with a focus on learning and adaptive programme management. This conference will zoom in on how plurality of knowledges have shaped and changed the implementation of land governance activities. With an integrated KM-strategy, implemented with and by LANDac and its partners, knowledge management and learning have been at the heart of the LAND-at-scale programme since its inception. The aim was to contribute towards the impact both at global programme level, and of the local in-country projects. The LAND-at-scale knowledge management programme brought together academia, practitioners, CSOs, policy makers and donors. This has taken shape in several collaborations such as between LANDac partners and the donor, and between the knowledge management partners and implementing organisations across the different countries. At country level, practitioners from different backgrounds and with different ways of thinking jointly worked towards shared outcomes. At the LANDac conference, we want to reflect on: What lessons can be learned from such collaborations, what has been the impact? At the same time, we want to look forward to see how these experiences can inform future land governance interventions in a glocal world where interconnected global and local issues are being reshaped.
Conference Themes & Sessions
The themes of the 2025 conference align with the objectives and themes of the LAND-at-scale knowledge management programme. In addition to the themes outlined below, cross-cutting themes are tenure security, gender and climate change in both rural and urban contexts. We welcome empirical, theoretical and philosophical contributions as well as practical and impact-oriented ones in the Global South and North. We now invite abstract submissions for those sessions open to abstracts on the following themes (please consult the instructions for submission below).
For a complete overview of the sessions and their descriptions, click here or click on the themes below. More information on the submission guidelines can be found below. The below list of sessions, as well as the Overview of Sessions can be subject to change. Please consult the LANDac website for the most recent version.
Shaping collaborations for just land governance
Working towards a fairer world involves addressing challenges at multiple scales and domains. Collaborations across different social and geographical spaces, disciplines, and positionalities might offer ways to address interconnected issues, but such collaborations come with challenges of their own. For this theme, we are interested in understanding the negotiation of power and knowledge in such collaborations and the transformative potential that might or might not be generated. We welcome sessions that discuss experiences of collaboration, how these engage with difference and plurality, and the (dis-) encounters involved. (How) can co-creation work? How to deal with different views on what is “just” and how to get there? How to translate lessons from one experience of collaboration to the next? Is collaboration always better than no collaboration?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Shaping Collaboration in Transdisciplinary Research Projects
Using environmental collaboration to shape peace-positive land governance structures.
Shared Land Due Diligence: Towards a Common Framework to Reduce Harm and Securing Tenure
Bridging Differences – Leveraging Collaboration: Overcoming the challenges of transdisciplinary and inter-institutional project implementation
Effective collaboration for inclusivity and sustainability in land governance and administration
South-South Knowledge Exchange and Collaboration around Just Land Governance
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Fostering food security by ensuring access to land for persons with disabilities
Power asymmetries in multi-stakeholders platforms: putting Peoples’ organizations (POs) at the centre of land governance
Impact of knowledge
To effectively address the complex challenges of good land governance, knowledge management increasingly operates at the intersection of legal, social, economic, and environmental dimensions, while striving to integrate diverse sources of knowledge. Within this theme, we seek to deepen our understanding of how integrating diverse knowledge sources can create meaningful impact. We welcome contributions that address the following key questions. What is the influence of various knowledge sources on policy and practice in the field of land rights and governance, and how do policy and practice, in turn, shape these sources? What are the pathways through which such impacts are achieved? Moreover, what lessons can we draw from these pathways to optimise the use of diverse knowledge sources?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
G(e)overnmentality: unpacking the roles of geological and geographical knowledge for Earth governance
Faith and farming: exploring the role of spiritual values in the valuation and understanding of land
Potential Impacts and Limitations of the SDG Indicators 5.a.2, 5.a.1 and 1.4.2 and the related indicators in the Context of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
Understanding Grand Corruption in Land Governance: Key Features, Manifestations and Impacts
A critical reflection on LAND-at-scale’s knowledge management programme – tools to enable the plurality of knowledge (management)
Scaling and innovating approaches to land governance
Land and housing rights are increasingly insecure. New approaches and thinking have been implemented to strengthen land governance. One line of development focuses on new technologies, while another approach focuses on new collaborations and policy instruments directed at fit-for-purpose or bottom-up and community-based initiatives. What have we learned from such new methods and approaches? (How) can these be scaled responsibly to different contexts? And how to ensure institutionalisation for durable solutions and long-term sustainability?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Innovative Ideas in Land Administration and Management: Lessons from Digitalising Land Documents
Living apart together: Land Commissions as attempt to marry customary rules and state legislation for securing land tenure, building peace and settling land conflicts in the Sahel/West-Africa
Breaking Ground on Land and Housing Rights: Grassroots Solutions for Security of Tenure and Adequate Housing
Secure Land Tenure in Customary Land: Unlocking Opportunities or Not?
Land governance in contexts of increased migration and mobility
Debates on land politics and migration have conventionally focused on fixing people to a particular space by regularising land tenure, containing migrants within a territory, and enforcing boundaries against outsiders. In these debates, little attention has been paid to how land and human mobilities are mutually linked – how land politics and governance arrangements shape migration, and how mobilities influence land use and access to land for different groups of people. As increasing numbers of people are on the move due to conflict, to climate change, to build livelihoods and seek opportunities; or many people are also immobile despite risks, we need new insights into the question whether the focus on fixing people in a place or securing land titles helps people – especially when we pay attention to intersectional gender inequalities and power relations – to prosper in the increasingly volatile world. Given the salience of mobility and immobility worldwide, this theme invites contributions to the question how to make land governance – traditionally geared towards sedentarism – better prepared for future migration/mobility?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Homemaking and land in situations of protracted displacement
Slum blind: The overlooked links between climate migration and informal settlements
Rethinking relocation practices: land rights, spatial politics and social ordering
Land Governance and Women’s Rights in the Context of Migration and Mobility in Africa
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
New Urban Land Development and (Im)Mobilities in Indonesia: Learning from Nusantara
Learning from SPARC Research on Gender and Youth Issues in Farmer-Herder Conflicts and Pastoral Land Governance
Land governance in post-conflict contexts/settings
Violent conflicts tend to seriously influence land and property-related issues, due to protracted displacement and partial return, irregular war-related acquisitions, and erosion of land governance capacity and legitimacy. What is the role of land governance and its reform in post-conflict period? How does it help rebuild war-torn societies or instead cause new conflict? How to deal with overlapping land rights due to government endorsed, but contested reallocation, long-term occupation of land by refugees, or competing tenure systems? To what extent can reform programmes from less conflictive settings inspire post-conflict reforms?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Tenure security in post-conflict settings: differentiated effects of land governance strategies.
Plurality of Knowledge in Conflict-Sensitive Land Governance. Addressing the Past for a Resilient Future
Rebuilding Land Governance in Post-Conflict Africa: Challenges
Governing land amidst protracted armed conflict
Global connections, local approaches
The world is interconnected, people engage across places. In recent times of geopolitical shifts and increased nationalism – while global interconnectedness has not weakened – land governance at local levels faces new challenges. Under this theme we want to explore the following questions: What is the space for local ways of land governance and climate resilience particularly when financed by Western (donor) funds? What is the role of international relations in re-shaping control over land and natural resources and ‘vice versa’? How does decolonisation play out within land governance, and with new geo-political actors entering the scene? And how can local voices and knowledges be better represented in global value chains, trade agreements, and international policies for food security and climate change?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism: impacts on land tenure and local empowerment
Discourses on sustainable agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on land tenure
Measuring and monitoring social and human wellbeing in payment for ecosystem services (PES) projects
Local land governance for peace and climate?
Knowing land locally, knowing land globally: translations, negotiations, tensions
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
People power for social and environmental justice in (global) value chains – Experiences from community-led advocacy for just transitions and social & environmental safeguards in extractives and energy value chains in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Impacts and ongoing challenges.
Pre-event: Early Career Researchers Day
Are you an early career researcher working on topics related to land governance, justice, and sustainability? As part of the LANDac Annual Conference 2025, we are pleased to announce the Early Career Researchers Day, dedicated to supporting and showcasing the work of PhD and MSc students.This day is open to early career researchers attending the conference, with a focus on fostering meaningful discussions and collaborations.
The Early Career Researchers Day will take place on Wednesday 2 July 2025, immediately prior to the LANDac Annual Conference. This special day is dedicated to providing a platform for early career researchers to share their work, exchange ideas, and receive constructive feedback in an interactive and supportive environment. You will focus particularly on translating your research findings into a useful product and format for non-academic (e.g. policy, practitioner, activist) audiences. To participate on this day, you will need to submit a contribution (see below) outlining your research and the target audience you want to reach.
What to expect of the day:
Opportunities to present and discuss your research with peers and experienced professionals.
Workshops on translating research into applicable knowledge for diverse stakeholders and enhancing research impact.
Networking with other young researchers and professionals in the field of land governance and related areas.
If you would like to participate in the Early Career Researchers Day, please submit the Contribution Form where you can provide:
Your research topic/them
Ideas for a product or target audience related to your research
A short motivation (300 words max)
Send your Contribution directly to landac2025@gmail.com.
Below you can find the hotels and hostels that have agreed to partner with us and have provided us with booking codes and discounts:
NH Hotel
The NH Utrecht hotel sits right in the heart of this historic city. It’s very near to Utrecht Central train station, and is about a 10 minute walk from the conference location. The hotel is one of the highest buildings in Utrecht – it’s 21 stories high and enjoys fabulous views over the city.
NH Utrecht offers a rate of €145 per night for a single person, including breakfast. This special rate is available from 1-5 July. You can find this offer here.
Inntel Hotels Utrecht Centre
The 11-storey Inntel Hotels Utrecht Centre is connected to the Central Station. The hotel is centrally located in Utrecht in an inspiring hub to meet, stay, and relax.
Inntel Hotels Utrecht Centre offers a 15% discount on rooms for 2 and 3 July. Use this link to access this discount.
Bunk Hostel
Bunk Hostel is a trendy and affordable hostel located in a historic building (old church) in the heart of Utrecht. With a range of dormitory and private rooms, Bunk Hostel offers comfortable and stylish accommodation for budget-conscious travelers. The hostel also features a restaurant and bar, as well as a shared kitchen and lounge areas.
Bunk offers LANDac a 10% discount. When booking, enter promo code UU25.
Stayokay Hostel Utrecht
Stayokay Hostel is a budget-friendly option for travelers looking for affordable accommodation in Utrecht. The hostel offers dormitory rooms as well as private rooms, all equipped with modern amenities such as free WiFi. Guests can also enjoy the hostel’s communal kitchen and lounge areas.
To use the special LANDac rate, enter coupon code UU25 after filling out your personal details.
Updates on the programme will be published on the LANDac website.
Organising Committee
Kei Otsuki (IDS-UU, co-chair), Femke van Noorloos (IDS-UU, co-chair), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac/LAND-at-scale), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Marja Spierenburg (Leiden University), Dimo Todorovski (ITC-University of Twente), Gemma Betsema (RVO LAND-at-scale), Mathijs van Leeuwen (Radboud University), Bertus Wennink (KIT Institute), Brent Sandtke (IDS-UU).
Supported by
Summer School
The conference forms part of the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School. This Summer School takes place from 30 June – 11 July. Titled “Fair Land Governance and the Politics of Competing Claims”, it offers a space to explore the multiple and competing claims of various actors on land, how these are framed and how they can be understood. For more information and to register, visit the Utrecht Summer School website. For enquiries, contact landac2025@gmail.com.
On World Food Day, the 16th of October DCDD, We Are Able! in cooperation with LANDac, are organizing a parallel session on Disability Inclusive Land Rights during the Annual Netherlands Food Partnership WORLD FOOD DAY event.
We are happy to invite you to join this side-event on disability-inclusive land rights!
Discover how ensuring land rights for persons with disabilities can help achieve Zero Hunger. Get insight in the barriers persons with disabilities face in accessing land and how these barriers can be overcome.
Expect interactive activities, insightful presentations, videos and discussions.
PROGRAMME
Introduction & Disability Inclusive Land Rights Game – by Paulien Bruijn from DCDD
The importance of disability inclusive land rights – by Inge Vos – Livelihood and Food security sector Specialist of the We are Able! programme
Barriers persons with disabilities are facing in getting access to land. Video report from East Africa.
Roles of different stakeholders in promoting disability inclusive land rights
Interactive discussion
Join the YouTube Livestream
Not based in the Netherlands? We invite you to participate in our workshop via YouTube Livestreaming.Live captioning will be available during the live-stream. You can register for the Liveastream via this registration link.
Join the session in Amersfoort
Are you based in the Netherlands? Come and join the World Food Day event in Amersfoort! This year’s edition of NFP’s WORD FOOD DAY event offers a dynamic program packed with activities including expert speakers, talk shows and presentations on trends and solutions shaping the future of food systems. Right after the Disability Inclusive Land Rights workshop there will be a plenary closing session followed by drinks and time for networking.
Please confirm your participation by:
Step 1: Registering for the WORLD FOOD DAY event via this registration link.
Step 2: Download the WORLD FOOD DAY event app (available at the end of September).
Step 3: Indicate your parallel session preferences using the app.
All WORLD FOOD DAY participants will receive further instructions closer to the event date. Registration and participation is free.
We are calling upon practitioners, policy makers and scholars from a wide variety of fields (humanities, geosciences, law, governance and those involved in issues of sustainability) to join us for our second joint Conference, which will this year have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We will hold panel sessions and round tables over the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
Explore the sections below for further details on registration, conference themes, programme highlights, practical information, and more. Don’t forget to secure your early bird ticket before May 15th!
Registration for the conference is now open and closes end-June. We are happy to offer an early bird fee of €175 (open until 15 May). The regular fee for participation after 15 May is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. Online presentation is free of charge. On Thursday evening we will host a 3-course Conference dinner at an iconic venue in the city centre of Utrecht.
You can now register for both the conference and the dinner here:
Our conference assistant will be in touch with you within 3 working days. Requests for letters for visa applications are also handled upon registration. We are not able to provide sponsorships or financial support to attend the event.
Conference Programme
Please note that the following programme is provisional and thus is subject to change. For the latest version of the programme, please regularly check the Conference Page. Times are displayed in CEST (Central European Summer Time).
Liz Alden Wily (PhD) is an independent political economist specialising in land tenure, associated with the Van Vollenhoven Institute as an affiliated researcher. Liz works in Africa and less frequently in Central Asia and Asia. Since the 1980s Liz has provided land policy guidance (e.g. Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia, Ghana, Cameroon, Gabon, Nepal, Afghanistan), conducting research, and designing and technically guiding projects on a learning by doing basis to practically guide policy and law-land and forest law making. This work has been driven by urgent post-conflict requirements in Uganda, Sudan/South Sudan, Liberia, Nepal and Afghanistan. Liz is also closely engaged with the forest and climate change sector, playing an active role since the 1990s in the development of community owned protected forests, especially in Tanzania.
Liz’s research continues to arise directly from social change and governance requirements as affecting the majority rural land dependent sector. Her core focus is towards improved national law status of customary/indigenous land interests (‘community land rights’), as informally held by more than 2.5 million contemporary land and resource dependants around the world. Her principal interest in supporting legal recognition of the collective ownership of commons, the several billion hectares of forest/woodlands, arid/semi-arid rangelands and swamplands held in common by communities under customary, neo-customary, or increasingly, hybrid statutory-customary laws. Liz has worked directly towards policy and, forest and rangeland law reforms in 12 states, and contributed in as many others. Since 2021, her research and practitioner work has focuses upon on critiquing existing community conservation initiatives to remove legal and other impediments which limit the right and capacity of communities to establish and sustain Community Protected Areas. Liz is periodically requested to provide expert affidavits in litigation brought by communities seeking secure tenure over specific state/public resource lands.
Listen to Liz Alden Wily why this conference is important to her in this video.
Presenters:
Bram Büscher
Bram Büscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University and Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg. His research and writing revolve around the political economy of environment and development with specific interests in biodiversity, conservation, new media and digitalization, violence and extraction. His broader theoretical project seeks to bring biodiversity, human-nonhuman relations and conservation deeper into our understanding of the historical and contemporary trajectories of global capitalism.
Bram has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and is the author of Transforming the Frontier. Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa (Duke University Press, 2013). Together with Robert Fletcher, he authored The Conservation Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond The Anthropocene. This 2020 book was published by Verso and has been translated into Spanish, German and French, with Italian forthcoming. His most recent book, The Truth About Nature. Environmentalism in the Era of Post-Truth Politics and Platform Capitalism was published by the University of California Press in 2021. Bram is one of the senior editors of the open-access journal Conservation & Society (www.conservationandsociety.org).
Get to know Bram and his work, and listen why he thinks the IoS Fair Transtions/LANDac conference is important in this video.
Morgan Ody
Morgan Ody is the General Coordinator of La Via Campesina and a small-scale vegetable farmer in Brittany, France. Via Campesina is a worldwide movement defending access to land, water, and territories, food sovereignty, agroecology, climate and environmental justice, as well as dignity for migrant and waged workers in agriculture. During the European farmers’ protests earlier this Spring, Megan Ody pressed the European Commission to create the conditions for an agroecological transition, in solidarity with the Global South.
Frances Cleaver
Frances Cleaver is Professor and Chair in Political Ecology at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. Her research is concerned with how we can understand natural resource governance in order to inform progressive social change. Institutions really matter in social and political life – they are the rules (often implicit) and arrangements through which people organize their lives, access resources and give order and meaning to their world. Critically, they are also channels through which power is exercised, reproduced and challenged. Working from a political ecology perspective, Frances is particularly interested in how institutions shape the governance of water, land and forests, and impact on people’s livelihoods.
Plenary Session #2: Women’s Land Rights as A Pathway to Social, Economic and Climate Justice
There is a widespread recognition of the importance of land tenure rights in addressing the global challenges of climate change, gender inequality and unsustainable food systems. Remarkable progress has specifically been made in the context of key international frameworks such as the Beijing Platform for Action, 2030 Agenda, the three Rio Conventions (UNFCCC, CBD and UNCCD) as well as the UN Decade on Family Farming, all of which acknowledge the critical role of land tenure security in the context of climate change solutions and food security. However, a huge challenge continues to persist as far as the implementation of these frameworks and commitments at national and local level is concerned.
Although women bear the greatest brunt of the double crisis of climate change and land degradation, gender inequality in the control, access, use and ownership of land is yet a battle to be won. At the same time, while emerging climate solutions such as renewable energy have the potential to bring numerous benefits to Africa, they equally pose a risk to women’s land rights if a gender perspective is not taken into consideration. This plenary session will therefore aim to engage in a candid dialogue that addresses the following themes and objectives:
Amplify our collective efforts to advancing secure women land rights on one hand and gender equity, food security, and just energy transition on the other hand.
Highlight the progress made on the policy front in terms of recognizing the importance of women’s land rights in achieving gender equity, food security, and just energy transition.
Address the challenges affecting women’s equitable access to land and property rights and examples of innovative approaches that contribute to addressing these challenges such as the S4HLC.
Reiterating key policy recommendations on how women’s land rights can be best integrated/mainstreamed in the pursuit for gender equality, food security, and just energy transition.
This session will be hosted by the Stand for Her Land Campaign and co-organised by ILC Africa, Landesa, IDLO, REN21, GROOTS Kenya, UCOBAC, and UN Habitat/GLTN.
Presenters
Frances Birungi Odong– UCOBAC
Nupur Prakash – IDLO
Ngone Ngom– CICODEV
Annabel Kennedy – WECF
Jane Njeri – International Land Coalition (ILC)
Moderated by Simon Peter Mwesigye – UNHabitat/GLTN
Stand for Her Land
The Stand for Her Land Campaign is closing the implementation gap for women’s land rights: the gulf between the strong standards in place to protect women’s rights to land, and the realization of those rights in practice, so that millions of women can realize the transformational power of rights to land.
Plenary Session #3: Imagining the Possible
Presenters:
Kumi Naidoo
For over 40 years, Kumi Naidoo has been a voice amongst many for social, economic and environmental justice. From his humble township upbringing in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, to his work as an anti-Apartheid activist, to his leadership of international NGOs, Kumi has remained rooted in Martin Luther King’s Creative Maladjustment principles – refusing to normalize inequality and devoting himself to exposing injustice.
Kumi serves as the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, and Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, and a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and Honorary Fellow at Magdalen College. He also is a Senior Advisor for the Community Arts Network (CAN) and Special Advisor to the Green Economy Coalition.
Kumi was International Executive Director of Greenpeace International, from 2009-2015, and Secretary General of Amnesty International, from 2018-2020. As of June 2020, he is Global Ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace & Dignity. He has served as the Secretary-General of Civicus, an international alliance for citizen participation, from 1998 to 2008. Kumi has also served the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and the Global Call for Climate Action (Tcktcktck.org), which brings together environmental aid, religious and human rights groups, labour unions, scientists and others and has organised mass demonstrations around climate negotiations.
In this next chapter of his activism journey, Kumi is dedicating himself to getting back to his ‘roots’, with a focus on contributing more to the growth of activism movements and organisations, academia, as well as paving the way forward for a new generation of activists.
Peter Akkerman
Peter Akkerman works passionately for our beautiful planet. He grew up in the forests of the eastern Netherlands and has a background in international relations. Already from a young age he was a volunteer for the state forest agency, actively participated in the drinkingwaterproject of his father in a wide variety of African countries and started his carrier at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
For almost ten years he has worked on environment, climate, and biodiversity at a variety of different ministries. Currently he is project leader for the National Climate week at the Dutch Government. Next to his work he is the founder of the Youth Environment Council, NGO “Bos dat van Zichzelf is” (forest that owns itself) and organizer of a variety of green conferences. He travels throughout Europe to speak about rights for nature, youth participation and leadership in starting green initiatives. For Peter it is important to bring people into nature, to let them experience the importance of our ecosystem and to coach young people to take action on the positive change they want to make in the world.
Xandra van der Eijk
Xandra van der Eijk is a Dutch artist, researcher, and educator. Their practice is situated in the field of ecological art and ecocriticism, with a specific interest in the influence of the technosphere on evolutionary processes and methods of attunement, particularly to matter and their situated and networked lives.
The artistic practice is research-driven and finds its voice in developing and exhibiting artwork, writing, curating and developing education. For the past 4,5 years Xandra has pioneered ecological art in the field of education, by founding and developing a new master’s program “Ecology Futures” at the Master Institute of Visual Cultures of Avans University of Applied Sciences, that puts the exploration and invention of artistic-scientific methods at the forefront of practicing ecocritical theory in the field, aiming to find new ways of (co)generating practice-led knowledge in the process. Ecology Futures is the first MA program on ecological art in the Netherlands, as well as the first MA art program in the Netherlands to center, facilitate and teach biotechnological methodologies. The latter was developed from their position as a researcher in the affiliated Biobased Art&Design Research group (CARADT) and in the newly installed Material Incubator Lab & Project Space.
Over the years Xandra has been involved with numerous institutions and initiatives, often leading to longstanding collaborations and multiple roles, such as with MU Hybrid Art House and the Bio Art & Design Award, Embassy of the North Sea, FIBER and ZKM/Driving the Human and is co-leading the discussion group “Planetary Ecologies” as an associated researcher at Critical Media Lab (FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, CH). Their work is exhibited worldwide, most recently at the Biennale of Sydney, ZKM Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe and MUDAC Lausanne.
Summit
On the final day of our conference (July 5th) we invite you to participate in a Summit – a more-than-human exploration at the intersection of academia, activism, and the arts. We aim to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice by challenging conventional methodologies and foster creative avenues in our research. Together, we will tackle the question: How can art and the more-than-human deepen our understanding of social justice? Drawing on techniques such as counter-mapping, visual representations, storytelling, and even performance art, we will challenge traditional boundaries of academic inquiry.
Presenters:
Agata Nguyen Chuong
Agata Nguyen Chuong (she/her) is an advanced researcher at Forensic Architecture, born in Warsaw and based in London, UK. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Bath and MA at the Royal College of Art.
She currently coordinates FA’s multi-year investigation into the colonial genocide perpetrated against the Nama and Ovaherero in today’s Namibia. A Royal College of Art graduate, she was previously involved in projects about land dispossession in Colombia, illegal gold mining in the Amazon and the Nebelivka Hypothesis, shown at the 2023 Biennale of Architecture in Venice.
Agata’s research has focused on environmental violence, land dispossession, migrations and landscapes of extraction, including a master thesis formulated with ADS7 around the changing territories of the indigenous Evenki people impacted by diamond mining in Siberia. She works primarily with worldbuilding and geospatial analysis.
Lisette Ma Neza
Lisette Ma Neza is known for her sharp pen, soft voice and poetic performances. In 2017, Ma Neza became the first Dutch speaker, first woman and first person of color to win the Belgian Championship in Poetry Slam. In 2024, she has been chosen as Brussels’ first ever city poet, a position which she will hold for two years beginning on 21 March.
She then traveled to different parts of the world as a troubadour. With poetry; written and slammed, she now navigates through Brussels and Breda. In her writing, music and filmmaking she searches for her own language, to translate all feelings into words, images and melodies. In this way she searches for the untold story of humanity.
Lucas van der Velden
Lucas van der Velden is the director of Sonic Acts, an Amsterdam-based organisation and festival operating at the intersections of art, science, music, and technology.
Van der Velden studied at the Interfaculty of Image and Sound at the Royal Conservatory and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. He is also a co-founder of Telcosystems, an experimental art collective dedicated to audiovisual installations, films, videos, soundtracks, and live performances.
Dr. Rick Dolphijn
Dr. Rick Dolphijn is a writer, educator, and curator, serving as an associate professor at Media and Culture Studies, Humanities, Utrecht University. He published widely on continental philosophy (Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres) and the contemporary arts. He studies posthumanism, new materialism, material culture (food studies), and ecology. He coordinates the Humanities Honours Program, is involved in interfaculty cooperation concerning Community Based Research, Open Cities, and COVID-19.
Since 2015 he runs an undergraduate exchange with the University of Hong Kong (themed “The More-Than-Human City”), a graduate exchange (themed “The Lives of the Delta”) commenced in 2021. Rick Dolphijn is an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong (2017-2026) and a Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona (2019/2020). In 2024 he is Vice Chacellors Visiting Professor at the University of Gdansk. His books include Foodscapes (Eburon/University of Chicago Press 2004), New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (Open Humanities Press 2012, with Iris van der Tuin).
Movie screening
As a pre-programme event, we organise a screening of the intriguing movie Our Land Our Freedom which explores themes such as colonial legacy and land rights. Entry is free for conference participants. The screening will take place in the Grote Zaal at Muntstraat 2a.
The starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead, they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it risks being stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Conference Themes
1. Land governance: safeguards and the defence of rights
What is happening to safeguards to rights to land, water, and forests under the current climate imperative as well as the claiming of spaces for massive city and infrastructure development, and food production? What are innovative ways in which land governance actors and land rights activists and advocates seek to ensure due diligence in the context of growing inequality? What lessons can be learned from ongoing experiences in land governance, land administration, and urban planning?
2. Carbon colonialism: A new scramble for land in the name of the climate?
What are the (land governance) challenges of the rush for carbon credits and the spatial claims derived from renewable energy sources in different parts of the world? How could these challenges be met? What would it take to democratize participation in carbon markets and renewable energy and make new value chains more inclusive? And what about geopolitics: what is the role of control over land and natural resources in re-shaping international relations?
3. Justice as restoring, re-claiming, re-commoning
How can land governance serve a broader understanding of justice beyond protection of rights through recognition and formalization? Could/should we move beyond narrow conceptualizations of property rights as individual and instrumental? What might be valuable examples of re-commoning, and regenerative or conservation agriculture? What can we learn from ‘lived resilience’ experiences of marginalized people?
4. Building more-than-human solidarities in the search for social justice
Can the search for social justice build on more-than-human solidarities? What contributions can be made by the Rights of Nature movement? How to build on more-than-human connections with lands, rivers, trees, and other voiceless actors like future generations to deepen social justice? How to avoid separating human and non-human actors in the politics of fair transitions? And how to strengthen voices from the Global South in academia, activism and art? What does it take to decolonize the debate?
5. Ecocide and social justice
How do we think about guilt, liability and the duty of care in the context of irreversible biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, deforestation? How do we determine who is responsible and how do we hold them to account? What is the power of a legal concept such as ecocide?
6. Rethinking democracy and the politics of knowledge
What new visions of democracy are needed for fair transitions and giving voice to more-than-humans? What kinds of democratic alternatives and experiments are already being practiced, and what can be learned from them? How can marginalized ways of knowing be brought into the conversation; who can claim to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?
For a complete overview of the sessions and their descriptions, click here.
Conference Format
The event will be held on site, with a limited number of hybrid possibilities. On the first two days, a limited number of sessions will be allowing speakers to join online; session organisers will be hosting the session in-person, in Utrecht. Please consult the Overview of Sessions 2024 to find which sessions allow online presentation.
Keynote sessions will be streamed and accessible online free of cost. A link to distribute in your networks will be shared ahead of the conference. The Summit, on the third day of the event, will be on site only. The conference dinner will be held on the second day of the conference. Please note, that the cost of dinner is to be borne by conference participants, in addition to the participation fee.
Practical Information
We want to make your attendance to the conference and your stay at Utrecht as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. Please find below a link to a welcome package with practical information regarding directions, venues, hotels and tips on where to eat out or enjoy a drink while in Utrecht.
Below you can find the hotels and hostels that have agreed to partner with us and have provided us with booking codes and discounts:
Park Plaza Utrecht
Description: You will find Park Plaza Utrecht in the heart of the center of Utrecht. A city with many restaurants, cafes and picturesque canals. You are within walking distance of the Dom, Utrecht Central Station, the Jaarbeurs and last but not least: one of the largest shopping centers in the Netherlands (Hoog Catharijne).
Booking instructions and further info: Park Plaza is offering conference attendees a 10% discount on accommodation. You can find this offer here: Discount Link
Description: What was once a 14th-century monastery and served as accommodation for knights & priests is now a luxury five-star hotel in the centre of Utrecht.
Booking instructions and further info: Karel V is offering a 15% discount on their Flexible Rates. Rooms can be booked mentioning Utrecht University and the Conference via reservations@karelv.nl.
Description: Inntel Hotels Utrecht Center, standing at 11-storeys is connected to Utrecht Central Station.
Thanks to its medieval setting with unique vaults and winding canals, the creative, dynamic city of Utrecht still exudes peace and security.
The hotel’s location at an inspiring junction in the center of Utrecht makes it a unique location to meet, spend the night, hold meetings and relax. The bright meeting rooms located on the top floor offer a beautiful view of the monumental city.
Booking instructions and further info: Inntel Hotels is offering a 10-20% discount on rooms during these dates. You can access this discount via the following link: Discount
Description: Warm and nightly. Romantic and distinctive… The Nox Hotel Utrecht. Enter the unique building that was built in the 17th century and be enchanted by the deep blue color of the night. This boutique hotel allows you to escape the hectic pace of everyday life, and you will find yourself in a world full of design, luxury, excellent service, and international allure. The Nox Hotel Utrecht is located a stone’s throw away from the Dom Tower, like a hidden treasure. In the middle of the city center, yet outside the bustle.
Booking instructions and further info: The Nox hotel is offering a 10% discount on rooms during these dates on their Non-Refundable rates. The code is: Utrecht-university and can be used up until the 7th of July.
Description: Bunk Hostel is a trendy and affordable hostel located in a historic building (old church) in the heart of Utrecht. With a range of dormitory and private rooms, Bunk Hostel offers comfortable and stylish accommodation for budget-conscious travellers. The hostel also features a restaurant and bar, as well as a shared kitchen and lounge areas.
Booking instructions and further info: Bunk Hostel is offering a 10% discount on rooms during these dates. Discount Code will be provided in the coming days, in the interim bookings can be coordinated with Nick Polson via n.l.c.polson@uu.nl
Description: Stayokay Hostel is a budget-friendly option for travellers looking for affordable accommodation in Utrecht. The hostel offers dormitory rooms as well as private rooms, all equipped with modern amenities such as free WiFi. Guests can also enjoy the hostel’s communal kitchen and lounge areas.
Booking instructions and further info: Stayokay Hostel is offering a 10% discount on all rooms during these dates. The code is: UU and can be used up until the 7th of July.
Please find our conference map below to view our main conference locations and the hotels mentioned above. This map will continue to be updated as we approach the conference with more specific details.
Curated conference report
For the LAND-at-scale knowledge programme a curated conference report reflects on the key take-aways from the conference that are relevant to LAND-at-scale.
Nick Polson (coordinator IOS FT), Janwillem Liebrand (IOS FT), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Julia Tschersich (IOS FT), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac-LAND-at-scale), Harrison Awuh (IDS-UU), Joanny Belair (LANDac), Barbara Codispoti (Oxfam).
Summer School: Land Governance for Development
The conference takes place back-to-back with the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School Land Governance and the Politics of Fair Transitions, which will take place 8-19 July 2024 in Utrecht. For m ore information and to register, please visit the Utrecht Summer School website.
Summer School participants pay a reduced conference fee of €50. Kindly send an email to ft.landac2024@gmail.com to apply for this reduction.
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Call for Abstracts Closed
As our Call for Abstracts closes, we are happy to announce that the IOS Fair Transitions / LANDac Conference & Summit 2024 is now open for registration! You can view our registration fees and register below.
We are calling upon practitioners, policy makers and scholars from a wide variety of fields (humanities, geosciences, law, governance and those involved in issues of sustainability) to join us for our second joint Conference, which will this year have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We will hold panel sessions and round tables over the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit.
Registration
Registration for the conference is now open and closes end-June. We are happy to offer an early bird fee of €175 (open until 15 May). The regular fee for participation after 15 May is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. Online presentation is free of charge. On Thursday evening we will host a 3-course Conference dinner at an iconic venue in the city centre of Utrecht.
You can now register for both the conference and the dinner here:
Our conference assistant will be in touch with you within 3 working days. Requests for letters for visa applications are also handled upon registration. We are not able to provide sponsorships or financial support to attend the event.
Lastly, we have been made aware that there is some miscommunication being circulated online regarding an extension to the Call for Abstracts. We can confirm that the Call has been closed as of 15 March. Moving forward, to ensure you have the latest and correct information regarding the conference please check the IOS Fair Transitions website or the LANDac website. These two page pages will contain any official updates and announcements.
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Closes March 15, 2024!
Building on the successful collaboration in last year’s Annual Conference, the IoS Fair Transitions Platform (UU) and LANDac are pleased to launch this Call for Abstracts for a second joint Conference, which will have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We have made the selection for the panel sessions and round tables for the first two days. We now invite all interested to submit abstracts for these sessions. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than-human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
The starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead, they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it risks being stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Keynote speakers
We are pleased to announce that amongst our special guests this year will be:
Professor Frances Cleaver, Chair in Political Ecology, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University
Professor Bram Büscher, Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group, Wageningen University
Dr Kumi Naidoo, Human Rights and Climate Justice Activist
More information and other keynote speakers will be announced shortly.
Conference format
The event will be held on site, with a limited number of hybrid possibilities. On the first two days, a limited number of sessions will be allowing speakers to join online; session organisers will be hosting the session in-person, in Utrecht. Please consult the Overview of Sessions 2024 to find which sessions allow online presentation.
Keynote sessions will be streamed and accessible online free of cost. A link to distribute in your networks will be shared ahead of the conference.
The Summit, on the third day of the event, will be on site only.
The conference dinner will be held on the second day of the conference. Please note, that the cost of dinner is to be borne by conference participants, in addition to the participation fee.
For a complete overview of the sessions and their descriptions, click here or click on the themes below. More information on the submission guidelines can be found below. The below list of sessions, as well as the Overview of Sessions can be subject to change. Please consult the IOS Fair Transitions and LANDac websites for the most recent versions.
What is happening to safeguards to rights to land, water, and forests under the current climate imperative as well as the claiming of spaces for massive city and infrastructure development, and food production? What are innovative ways in which land governance actors and land rights activists and advocates seek to ensure due diligence in the context of growing inequality? What lessons can be learned from ongoing experiences in land governance, land administration, and urban planning?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Climate change, Lost rights to land or Rights to lost land?
How and to what extent does land tenure influence the staying motivations of the people in vulnerable delta locales?
Environmental and human-rights risks in global supply chains
European Environmental Policies impact on local communities, land governance and deforestation in the Global South
Land governance in dynamic contexts: how can formalisation of land rights do justice to informal right holders?
Exposing Land Corruption: Strengthening Solidarities for Justice
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Addressing Ecological Crises or Natural Resources Rush: Political Ecology of Peasant Struggles for Access to Natural Resources in the Great Lakes Region of Africa
Land Rights for Sustainable Development: The Role of Data
Integrating Women’s Land Rights and Transformative Leadership Effectively into Land Programming, Policy and Partnerships
Safeguards for responsible land governance – exploring ways to safeguard land and resource rights in land-based restoration and resilience projects
Southern urban justice roundtable: challenges for just urban transitions in the Global Southern cities
What are the (land governance) challenges of the rush for carbon credits and the spatial claims derived from renewable energy sources in different parts of the world? How could these challenges be met? What would it take to democratize participation in carbon markets and renewable energy and make new value chains more inclusive? And what about geopolitics: what is the role of control over land and natural resources in re-shaping international relations?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Land-based carbon projects: New approaches for social and environmental success
Winners and losers in climate crisis’ demands on lands: linking Indigenous women’s land and resource rights and livelihoods to net-zero and climate mitigation plans
Protecting Land Rights in the Era of Green Grabbing
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Inclusive Carbon Markets: Co-Creating Solutions for Smallholder Empowerment
How can land governance serve a broader understanding of justice beyond protection of rights through recognition and formalization? Could/should we move beyond narrow conceptualizations of property rights as individual and instrumental? What might be valuable examples of re-commoning, and regenerative or conservation agriculture? What can we learn from ‘lived resilience’ experiences of marginalized people?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Women’s right to land and the climate crisis
Widening the search for social justice through “earth justice”: the Igbo-Ala case in discussion with other experiences
Conflict resolution and mediation practices in areas of return in Burundi, Iraq, Somalia and Uganda: innovations, lessons learned and best practices
Polycrises, critical island studies, and climate cultures: new bottom-up perspectives
Peoples’ Landscape Approach, restoring and re-commoning natural resources in the Rangoon Watershed in Nepal
From Too Little to Too Much: the ‘last true nomads’ of Africa or the ‘climate refugees’ of today?
Can the search for social justice build on more-than-human solidarities? What contributions can be made by the Rights of Nature movement? How to build on more-than-human connections with lands, rivers, trees, and other voiceless actors like future generations to deepen social justice? How to avoid separating human and non-human actors in the politics of fair transitions? And how to strengthen voices from the Global South in academia, activism and art? What does it take to decolonize the debate?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Promoting forms of interspecies care to heal with nature in the Anthropocene
Land and natural resources between heritage protection and development
Perspectives on the recognition of a human right to land: challenges and possibilities to move forward
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Building more-than-human solidarities or how to build the Buen Vivir
How do we think about guilt, liability and the duty of care in the context of irreversible biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, deforestation? How do we determine who is responsible and how do we hold them to account? What is the power of a legal concept such as ecocide?
The following sessions are not open for abstract submissions:
The Concept of Ecocide: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
What new visions of democracy are needed for fair transitions and giving voice to more-than-humans? What kinds of democratic alternatives and experiments are already being practiced, and what can be learned from them? How can marginalized ways of knowing be brought into the conversation; who can claim to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Reversing the flow? The politics of knowledge co-creation on flooding and land subsidence in the South
Indigenous Research Methods’ Contribution to Social Justice in Land and Natural Resources Governance
Democratising local voices in donor-funded interventions
Multistakeholder dialogues: unpacking facts and fables
Contesting regulations: Unpacking European farmer protests to European Union environmental reforms
Submitting an abstract
We now invite abstract submissions for the IOS Fair Transitions – LANDac Conference & Summit 2024. IOS Fair Transitions and LANDac invite you to review the collection of conference sessions and submit your abstract to your preferred session. Abstract submissions should use the Abstract Submission Form, and include:
Title and code of the panel the abstract is submitted to
Title of the abstract
Your name(s) and affiliation(s)
Your contact details
Abstract of max. 250 words (or follow the alternative instructions of the session you are submitting your abstract to)
Important! Abstracts should be submitted by 15 March 2024, in English and using theAbstract Submission Form. Please submit your abstractas a word filedirectly to the contact person of your preferred session and with ft.landac2024@gmail.comin CC. The session organisers and Organising Committee will review all submissions. Notification on acceptance of abstracts will be done in the beginning of April. Please consult the detailed list of sessions and session organizers about the format of your session (hybrid/in-person). Kindly use the code of your session in all your communication.
Registration and fees
Registration for the conference will open soon and closes end-June. We are happy to offer an early-bird fee of €175 (open until 15 May). The regular fee for participation after 15 May is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. Please send an email to ft.landac2024@gmail.com to apply for this reduction.
Summer School: Land Governance and the Politics of Fair Transitions
The conference takes place back-to-back with the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School Land Governance and the Politics of Fair Transitions, which will take place 8-19 July 2024 in Utrecht. For m ore information and to register, please visit the Utrecht Summer School website. Summer School participants pay a reduced conference fee of €50. Kindly send an email to ft.landac2024@gmail.com to apply for this reduction.
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Call for sessions – Closes February 15, 2024!
Building on the successful collaboration in last year’s Annual Conference, the IoS Fair Transitions Platform (UU) and LANDac are pleased to launch this Call for a second joint Conference, which will have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We welcome your suggestions for panel sessions and round tables for the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
The starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead, they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it risks being stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Themes of the Conference & Summit
We welcome empirical, theoretical, and philosophical contributions as well practical and impact-oriented ones, in the Global South as well as North. We now invite session proposals on the following themes (please consult the instructions for submission below).
Land governance: safeguards and the defense of rights – What is happening to safeguards to rights to land, water, and forests under the current climate imperative as well as the claiming of spaces for massive city and infrastructure development, and food production? What are innovative ways in which land governance actors and land rights activists and advocates seek to ensure due diligence in the context of growing inequality? What lessons can be learned from ongoing experiences in land governance, land administration, and urban planning?
Carbon colonialism: A new scramble for land in the name of the climate?- What are the (land governance) challenges of the rush for carbon credits and the spatial claims derived from renewable energy sources in different parts of the world? How could these challenges be met? What would it take to democratize participation in carbon markets and renewable energy and make new value chains more inclusive? And what about geopolitics: what is the role of control over land and natural resources in re-shaping international relations?
Justice as restoring, re-claiming, re-commoning– How can land governance serve a broader understanding of justice beyond protection of rights through recognition and formalization? Could/should we move beyond narrow conceptualizations of property rights as individual and instrumental? What might be valuable examples of re-commoning, and regenerative or conservation agriculture? What can we learn from ‘lived resilience’ experiences of marginalized people?
Building more-than-human solidarities in the search for social justice- Can the search for social justice build on more-than-human solidarities? What contributions can be made by the Rights of Nature movement? How to build on more-than-human connections with lands, rivers, trees, and other voiceless actors like future generations to deepen social justice? How to avoid separating human and non-human actors in the politics of fair transitions? And how to strengthen voices from the Global South in academia, activism and art? What does it take to decolonize the debate?
Ecocide and social justice– How do we think about guilt, liability and the duty of care in the context of irreversible biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, deforestation? How do we determine who is responsible and how do we hold them to account? What is the power of a legal concept such as ecocide?
Rethinking democracy and the politics of knowledge: What new visions of democracy are needed for fair transitions and giving voice to more-than-humans? What kinds of democratic alternatives and experiments are already being practiced, and what can be learned from them? How can marginalized ways of knowing be brought into the conversation; who can claim to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?
Key dates
The conference & Summit take place on 3, 4 and 5 July 2024. The Call for sessions will open on January 16 and close on February 15,2024. Accepted sessions will be published and call for abstracts for papers will open on February 22 and close on March 15, 2024. Acceptance of papers will be communicated by April 1.
The Annual Summer School will take place from 8 to 19 July 2024.
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise to start booking an appointment well ahead of time.
Conference format
The conference will be concentrated on-site, in Utrecht city centre. We aim to stream keynote sessions. We will have the possibility to host a limited number of sessions in hybrid format.
The first two days of the conference will include plenary keynote sessions and a range of parallel sessions in 1,5 hour slots. As in previous editions of the conference, we welcome a variety of formats: paper presentations, panel discussions, round tables. The sessions of the first two days will contribute to the Summit of the last day.
Regular updates on keynote speakers, accepted sessions, and other details on the programme will be shared through the LANDac and IoS Fair Transitions websites.
Submitting session proposals
The window for submitting session proposals is now open and closes by February 15. Session proposals must be submitted in English using the submission form which you can download here. Email the completed form to: ft.landac2024@gmail.com.
Please note that we will only consider proposals using the format, indicating title, contact person, which of the themes the session relates to; what will be the format of the session; and if they open up to submission of abstracts or select all presenters themselves. The organisers should also indicate if they would want to host the session in hybrid format, please note that this would require one of the session organisers to be physically present.
Session organisers, please note: even though we will offer some opportunity for online presentations, the session organiser commits to being present in Utrecht and taking responsibility for hosting the session. We also expect session organisers to contribute actively to the Summit on day three.
Registration and fees
Registration for the conference will open in February-March and close end of June 2024.
Fees: Early Bird fee: 175 Euro (before May 15); Fee after May 15: 225 Euro. Details about student rate and the conference dinner will be communicated shortly.
Contact: ft.landac2024@gmail.com
Updates on the programme and the Summer School will be published through the LANDac and IOS Fair Transitions websites.
Nick Polson (coordinator IOS FT), Janwillem Liebrand (IOS FT), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Julia Tschersich (IOS FT), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac – LAND-at-scale), Harrison Awuh (IDS-UU), Joanny Belair (LANDac), Barbara Codispoti (Oxfam).
Summer School: Land Governance for Development
The conference takes place back-to-back with the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School Land Governance for Development, which will take place 8-19 July 2024 in Utrecht. For more information and to register, please visit the Utrecht Summer School website. Summer School participants may join the conference free of cost.
Conference & Summit: Land governance and the politics of fair transitions: Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024 Save-the-date and announcing the Call for sessions
Building on the successful collaboration in last year’s Annual Conference, the IoS Fair Transitions Platform (UU) and LANDac are pleased to launch this Call for a second joint Conference, which will have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We welcome your suggestions for panel sessions and round tables for the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
Starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it seems to be stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Themes of the Conference & Summit
We welcome empirical, theoretical, and philosophical contributions as well practical and impact-oriented ones. A tentative list of themes has been defined for now and is to be updated in our Call for Sessions.
• Carbon colonialism: A new scramble for Africa (and beyond)?– What are the (land governance) challenges of the rush for carbon credits, how could these be met, and what would it take to democratize participation in carbon markets?
• Safeguards and the defense of rights – What is happening to safeguards to rights under the current climate imperative, what are innovative ways in which land governance actors and land rights activists seek to ensure some level of due diligence?
• Justice as restoring, re-claiming, re-commoning– How can land governance serve a broader understanding of justice beyond protection, could/should we move beyond narrow conceptualisations of property rights as individual and instrumental?
• Building more-than-human solidarities in the search for social justice– How to build on more-than-human connections with lands, rivers, trees, and other voiceless actors like future generations in the politics of fair transitions? And, how to avoid separating human and non-human actors in deepening the search for social justice?
• Ecocide and social justice– How do we think about guilt, liability and the duty of care in the context of irreversible biodiversity loss? How do we determine who is responsible and how do we hold them to account? What is the power of a legal concept as ecocide?
• The politics of knowledge and the politics of representation– How can marginalized ways of knowing be brought into the conversation, who can claim to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?
Key dates
The conference & Summit take place on 3, 4 and 5 July 2024. The Call for sessions will open on 15 January and close on February 15, 2024. Submission of abstracts for papers/contributions opens Feb 22 and closes on March 15, 2024.
The Annual Summer school will take place from 8 to 19 July 2024.
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise to start booking an appointment well ahead of time.
Contact: FT.landac2024@gmail.com
Updates on the programme and the Summerschool will be published through the LANDac and IOS Fair Transitions websites.
https://www.uu.nl/en/research/institutions-for-open-societies/interdisciplinary-research/academic-foundations/fair-transitions
Organising committee
Nick Polson (coordinator IOS FT), Janwillem Liebrand (IOS FT), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac), Julia Tschersich (IOS FT), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac-Land-at-Scale), Harrison Awuh (IDS-UU), Joanny Belair (LANDac).
Last Updated: 27th March 2025 by Coordinator
New publication Seven reasons why climate-induced land grabbing requires significant changes in land governance
By Annelies Zoomers and Kei Otsuki
Two decades after the start of the debate on land grabbing, scholarly and policy attention is shifting from ‘how to stop land grabbing’ to ‘how to use land to combat climate change’. In this trend, the climate-induced land grabbing is deepening for production of renewables, carbon trades and nature conservation, whereas the concept of climate justice is not sufficiently incorporated in the agenda against the land grabbing. In this article, we discuss seven reasons why we need significant changes in land governance to prioritise climate justice and address the overlooked inequalities caused by climate policies in a rapidly changing context.
Read the full article on https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2025.2474523
Posted: 19th December 2024 by Coordinator
LANDac Year closing & Happy Holidays
With the Call for Sessions for the 2025 LANDac Annual Conference just out, the LANDac team is happy to close the year 2024 putting some of our founders into the spotlight. We could say we are closing an era… In 2024, we said goodbye first to Guus van Westen, then to Annelies Zoomers (both IDS, UU) and just recently to Frits van der Wal (MFA), all three of them moving into a next phase of life: retirement. All three were key in developing LANDac from the very beginning, from the very first idea of creating a “ Academy on land governance for equitable and sustainable development”, to making it the lively network (and, we hope, reference point), it is today. Here are some words of appreciation for each of them, in chronological order. Thank you all three for your hard work, bright ideas, and commitment, not just to LANDac as such, but to the cause of land rights for those who most need them, as a key building block in constructing social and environmental justice.
Guus van Westen:
Guus, we said goodbye to you in May. From the start of the idea of LANDac (even before it was a reality), you were invaluable as the sidekick to Annelies. You brought in expertise on a range of topics, including (peri-)urban land issues, food systems transformation, but your most important contribution to LANDac was around responsible investment, always appreciative of the challenges private sector actors may face when trying to do “the right thing” but not hesitant to put the finger on the sore spots. Many in the network will remember and appreciate your tireless efforts in support of the LAND dialogue. You took up as a co-chair in 2019 (with Gemma van der Haar as the other half of this “tandem”) for what turned out to be a bumpy ride: first, the challenging period of COVID, then the adventure of developing the LAND-at-scale knowledge management programme. In the last years, you became very interested in land registration and land tenure security and contributed to opening the space to discuss these issues critically. Thank you for all this, Guus!
Annelies Zoomers:
Annelies, as the “founding mother” of LANDac, you leave a big hole. You effectively brought together a great range of people to put in the bid for LANDac. The rest is history…. Your efforts to put land on the agenda go back a long time, with a conference and two books at the end of the 1990s. You were ahead of your time: colleagues would tell us at the time that land was “out of fashion”. They were wrong. That conference was a success and ten years later the “land grab debate” took off with full force, motivating the creation of LANDac. In this debate you were always alert to new opportunities, which allowed LANDac to grow and build not only a network worldwide but also to build the expertise of many who today are working in the land and development sector in the Netherlands and beyond. Your primary commitment throughout has been with pro-poor land rights. You have remained critical of “false solutions” that look good on paper but fail to protect people on the ground. Thank you Annelies, we need this kind of tenacity!
Frits van der Wal:
Frits, we now also say goodbye to our “founding father”. This really means the closing of an era. You and Annelies were a powerful team, bringing what was necessary to not only conceive of the idea of LANDac, but to bring it to life. Throughout, you remained the pater familias. With your expertise and energy you were an invaluable ally in the Ministry. After paving the way for LANDac, you initiated the LAND dialogue and, next, you masterminded the “next generation” of Dutch land policy: the LAND- at-Scale programme. This created a “family”, of people who developed their talents and found their way to the Ministry, to RVO, to NGOs… You were tireless in connecting people, signaling new trends, creating enthusiasm, drawing up catchy phrases… One of these was: “Be with the troops and ahead of the troops”. This is a great motto for LANDac in the years to come. Thank you Frits for the productive collaboration!
To conclude:
Guus, Annelies, Frits: Your expertise and commitment has been invaluable in the development of LANDac. We plan to bring this legacy forward in the coming years: to keep building connections, to keep asking the questions that need to be asked, and to keep inspiring through our Annual conferences. We wish you all the best in this new phase of your lives. Let’s hope our paths will continue to cross. Safe journey!
On behalf of the LANDac team and network,
Gemma van der Haar
Last Updated: 22nd May 2025 by Coordinator
LANDac Annual Conference 2025
REGISTER NOW
Plurality of Knowledge:
The Future of Land Governance in Shifting Glocal Contexts
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 2-4 July 2025
As the LANDac contribution to the LAND-at-scale knowledge management programme draws to a close, we are pleased to use our Annual Conference 2025 as a space to share the rich learnings over five years of collaboration, and to use these learnings to inform how land governance can contribute towards equality and justice in an increasingly polarising world. We will offer two days of thought inspiring keynotes, panel sessions, round tables and other sessions for which we welcome your suggestions. Prior to the conference, on 2 July, we host a pre-event with an educational focus, providing space for PhD and MSc students to present and exchange their work.
Contents
Registration and Fees
Registration for the conference is now open and closes 29 June. We are happy to offer an early bird fee of €175 (open until 17 April). The regular fee for participation after 17 April is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. There is no additional fee for the Early Career Researchers Day. Online presentation is free of charge.
Our conference team will send you a payment link within 3 working days. Registration is confirmed after your payment has been received. Requests for letters for visa applications are also handled upon registration. We are not able to provide sponsorships or financial support to attend the event.
Registration fees for the Conference:
• Early Bird fee: €175 (before 17 April 2025)
• Regular fee: €225 (from 17 April 2025)
• PhD students: €100
• MSc students: €50
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise to start booking an appointment well ahead of time.
Conference Programme
Please note that the programme is provisional and thus is subject to change. For the latest version of the programme, please regularly check the Conference Page. Times are displayed in CEST (Central European Summer Time).
Format
The 2-day conference kick-offs on Thursday morning 3 July with a plenary session with prominent keynote speakers. This is followed by several rounds of parallel sessions in 1,5 hour slots on Thursday and Friday 4 July. The conference closes on Friday afternoon with a keynote plenary. As in previous editions of the conference, we welcome a variety of formats: paper presentations, panel discussions, round tables for these two days. On 3 July we will close the day with drinks and snacks, offering ample opportunities for networking.
Prior to conference, on 2 July, we host a pre-event for early career researchers, providing space for PhDs and MSc students to share their knowledge, think about how to present this knowledge to other stakeholders, and to inspire each other.
The conference will be concentrated on-site, at Janskerkhof 2-3 Utrecht. We aim to stream keynote sessions. We will have the possibility to host a limited number of sessions in hybrid format.
Keynote speakers
Opening Plenary Day 1
Esther Mwaura-Muiru
Esther Mwaura-Muiru is currently the Global Advocacy Director for the Stand For Her Land (S4HL) Campaign at Landesa. Previously she worked at the International Land Coalition as the Global Women Land Rights Manager. Esther is also the Founder of GROOTS Kenya (Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood), a grassroots women movement of more than 3000 organised groups from rural and urban communities living in poverty across Kenya. Over the years, Esther has demonstrated deep expertise in development and management of initiatives that influence good governance and delivery of public services in sectors like health, housing, land, water, climate change and agriculture. “Transformative development is only possible if those impacted by inequality and oppressive systems are on the leadership and at the centre of the solutions towards a positive change”.
Raymond Cardinal
Ray Cardinal grew up in Alberta, primarily at Sucker Creek First Nation. One of six children, he is the son of the late Harold Cardinal and Maisie Cardinal. Ray earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Saskatchewan and his Master of Arts at the University of Arizona. A proud father to one son, his professional passions include monitoring, engagement, workforce training, and emergency preparedness. Ray holds leadership roles in several organizations, including Indigenous Chair of IAMC-TMX and member of the IAIA-WNC Executive Committee. He is also a proud member of Sucker Creek First Nation.
An Ansoms
An Ansoms, professor at UCLouvain, leads research on environmental and climate change in Central and Eastern Africa. Her team explores climate and resource conflicts using interdisciplinary, art-based, action-oriented methods. Working in DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi, she also specializes in research ethics, focusing on emotional and ethical dilemmas in challenging field contexts.
Closing Plenary Day 2
Jahin Shams Sakkhar
Jahin Shams Sakkhar is a PhD researcher at the University of East Anglia’s School of Global Development, specializing in land rights, gender equity, and climate resilience. His research investigates whether the transfer of Khasland (public land) to women in Bangladesh can enhance their adaptive capacity, strengthen their agency and build resilience in the face of social and environmental change. With over a decade of experience in the NGO sector, Jahin worked with Uttaran, a grass-roots NGO in Bangladesh, where he led climate change and humanitarian programs in Bangladesh. His initiatives focused on water governance, Tidal River Management, Landscape governance, land rights, nature-based solutions, agro-ecology, climate change resilience, disaster risk reduction and humanitarian aid. His impactful work in the field earned him the Change Maker Award from the Start Network. Jahin is also involved in the CLARE SURF-IT project, which uses AI and satellite data to improve early flood warning systems, supporting his commitment to integrating technology into climate adaptation strategies.
Elizabeth Daley
Dr Elizabeth Daley works as Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) Advisor of the Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises (SPARC) programme. She is also Chair of the Board of the Land Portal Foundation and has worked as an independent consultant on land tenure, gender equity and social inclusion for over 20 years, including as Team Leader and instigator of the WOLTS (Women’s Land Tenure Security) project since its inception in 2015. Elizabeth has worked with multilateral and bilateral development partner agencies, international and national NGOs, and national governments, philanthropists, private sector companies and local communities. Her roles have included legal and policy reviews, project and programme evaluations, design and implementation of training and capacity building programmes, technical advisory inputs to land administration projects, and rigorous academic and technical fieldwork-based research on a host of land-related issues. As GESI Advisor for SPARC, Elizabeth supports local researchers across the consortium to elevate gender issues and strengthen understandings of normative change in pastoralist communities, for improved resilience and empowerment outcomes. See https://www.sparc-knowledge.org.
Conference Description
Over the five year period, we have seen changes in global and local contexts. Complex and interrelated crises threaten development achievements and challenge the resilience of people and governance agents. Themes central to the LAND-at-scale learning agenda have seen shifts: land and housing rights are increasingly insecure (2024 PRIndex Report), climate change more and more affects people’s ability to build livelihoods from their land, increasing numbers of people are displaced due to conflict, violence, political or economic instability, and despite many efforts, women still experience inequality when it comes to their rights to land and resources. In recent times the Global North is starting to renege on its efforts to curb climate change, its (financial) support to the Global South, and anti-immigration voices are getting stronger. Democracies and human rights are under pressure, across the globe. In a connected world, such global shifts have impact at local levels. In this rather grim reality, how can we, as academics, practitioners, CSO’s and policy makers, as human beings, contribute with our plurality of knowing, of seeing, of imagining, to a more just, inclusive and sustainable land governance?
Knowledge management is a way to bring these different stakeholders together with the aim to strengthen the implementation of land governance projects and programmes and inform policy in both the Global South and North. Dedicated components aim to work on generating, managing, disseminating, and using knowledge, with a focus on learning and adaptive programme management. This conference will zoom in on how plurality of knowledges have shaped and changed the implementation of land governance activities. With an integrated KM-strategy, implemented with and by LANDac and its partners, knowledge management and learning have been at the heart of the LAND-at-scale programme since its inception. The aim was to contribute towards the impact both at global programme level, and of the local in-country projects. The LAND-at-scale knowledge management programme brought together academia, practitioners, CSOs, policy makers and donors. This has taken shape in several collaborations such as between LANDac partners and the donor, and between the knowledge management partners and implementing organisations across the different countries. At country level, practitioners from different backgrounds and with different ways of thinking jointly worked towards shared outcomes. At the LANDac conference, we want to reflect on: What lessons can be learned from such collaborations, what has been the impact? At the same time, we want to look forward to see how these experiences can inform future land governance interventions in a glocal world where interconnected global and local issues are being reshaped.
Conference Themes & Sessions
The themes of the 2025 conference align with the objectives and themes of the LAND-at-scale knowledge management programme. In addition to the themes outlined below, cross-cutting themes are tenure security, gender and climate change in both rural and urban contexts. We welcome empirical, theoretical and philosophical contributions as well as practical and impact-oriented ones in the Global South and North. We now invite abstract submissions for those sessions open to abstracts on the following themes (please consult the instructions for submission below).
For a complete overview of the sessions and their descriptions, click here or click on the themes below. More information on the submission guidelines can be found below. The below list of sessions, as well as the Overview of Sessions can be subject to change. Please consult the LANDac website for the most recent version.
Working towards a fairer world involves addressing challenges at multiple scales and domains. Collaborations across different social and geographical spaces, disciplines, and positionalities might offer ways to address interconnected issues, but such collaborations come with challenges of their own. For this theme, we are interested in understanding the negotiation of power and knowledge in such collaborations and the transformative potential that might or might not be generated. We welcome sessions that discuss experiences of collaboration, how these engage with difference and plurality, and the (dis-) encounters involved. (How) can co-creation work? How to deal with different views on what is “just” and how to get there? How to translate lessons from one experience of collaboration to the next? Is collaboration always better than no collaboration?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
To effectively address the complex challenges of good land governance, knowledge management increasingly operates at the intersection of legal, social, economic, and environmental dimensions, while striving to integrate diverse sources of knowledge. Within this theme, we seek to deepen our understanding of how integrating diverse knowledge sources can create meaningful impact. We welcome contributions that address the following key questions. What is the influence of various knowledge sources on policy and practice in the field of land rights and governance, and how do policy and practice, in turn, shape these sources? What are the pathways through which such impacts are achieved? Moreover, what lessons can we draw from these pathways to optimise the use of diverse knowledge sources?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The following session is not open for abstracts:
Land and housing rights are increasingly insecure. New approaches and thinking have been implemented to strengthen land governance. One line of development focuses on new technologies, while another approach focuses on new collaborations and policy instruments directed at fit-for-purpose or bottom-up and community-based initiatives. What have we learned from such new methods and approaches? (How) can these be scaled responsibly to different contexts? And how to ensure institutionalisation for durable solutions and long-term sustainability?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Debates on land politics and migration have conventionally focused on fixing people to a particular space by regularising land tenure, containing migrants within a territory, and enforcing boundaries against outsiders. In these debates, little attention has been paid to how land and human mobilities are mutually linked – how land politics and governance arrangements shape migration, and how mobilities influence land use and access to land for different groups of people. As increasing numbers of people are on the move due to conflict, to climate change, to build livelihoods and seek opportunities; or many people are also immobile despite risks, we need new insights into the question whether the focus on fixing people in a place or securing land titles helps people – especially when we pay attention to intersectional gender inequalities and power relations – to prosper in the increasingly volatile world. Given the salience of mobility and immobility worldwide, this theme invites contributions to the question how to make land governance – traditionally geared towards sedentarism – better prepared for future migration/mobility?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Violent conflicts tend to seriously influence land and property-related issues, due to protracted displacement and partial return, irregular war-related acquisitions, and erosion of land governance capacity and legitimacy. What is the role of land governance and its reform in post-conflict period? How does it help rebuild war-torn societies or instead cause new conflict? How to deal with overlapping land rights due to government endorsed, but contested reallocation, long-term occupation of land by refugees, or competing tenure systems? To what extent can reform programmes from less conflictive settings inspire post-conflict reforms?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The world is interconnected, people engage across places. In recent times of geopolitical shifts and increased nationalism – while global interconnectedness has not weakened – land governance at local levels faces new challenges. Under this theme we want to explore the following questions: What is the space for local ways of land governance and climate resilience particularly when financed by Western (donor) funds? What is the role of international relations in re-shaping control over land and natural resources and ‘vice versa’? How does decolonisation play out within land governance, and with new geo-political actors entering the scene? And how can local voices and knowledges be better represented in global value chains, trade agreements, and international policies for food security and climate change?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Pre-event: Early Career Researchers Day
Are you an early career researcher working on topics related to land governance, justice, and sustainability? As part of the LANDac Annual Conference 2025, we are pleased to announce the Early Career Researchers Day, dedicated to supporting and showcasing the work of PhD and MSc students. This day is open to early career researchers attending the conference, with a focus on fostering meaningful discussions and collaborations.
The Early Career Researchers Day will take place on Wednesday 2 July 2025, immediately prior to the LANDac Annual Conference. This special day is dedicated to providing a platform for early career researchers to share their work, exchange ideas, and receive constructive feedback in an interactive and supportive environment. You will focus particularly on translating your research findings into a useful product and format for non-academic (e.g. policy, practitioner, activist) audiences. To participate on this day, you will need to submit a contribution (see below) outlining your research and the target audience you want to reach.
What to expect of the day:
If you would like to participate in the Early Career Researchers Day, please submit the Contribution Form where you can provide:
Send your Contribution directly to landac2025@gmail.com.
Accommodation
Below you can find the hotels and hostels that have agreed to partner with us and have provided us with booking codes and discounts:
NH Hotel
The NH Utrecht hotel sits right in the heart of this historic city. It’s very near to Utrecht Central train station, and is about a 10 minute walk from the conference location. The hotel is one of the highest buildings in Utrecht – it’s 21 stories high and enjoys fabulous views over the city.
NH Utrecht offers a rate of €145 per night for a single person, including breakfast. This special rate is available from 1-5 July. You can find this offer here.
Inntel Hotels Utrecht Centre
The 11-storey Inntel Hotels Utrecht Centre is connected to the Central Station. The hotel is centrally located in Utrecht in an inspiring hub to meet, stay, and relax.
Inntel Hotels Utrecht Centre offers a 15% discount on rooms for 2 and 3 July. Use this link to access this discount.
Bunk Hostel
Bunk Hostel is a trendy and affordable hostel located in a historic building (old church) in the heart of Utrecht. With a range of dormitory and private rooms, Bunk Hostel offers comfortable and stylish accommodation for budget-conscious travelers. The hostel also features a restaurant and bar, as well as a shared kitchen and lounge areas.
Bunk offers LANDac a 10% discount. When booking, enter promo code UU25.
Stayokay Hostel Utrecht
Stayokay Hostel is a budget-friendly option for travelers looking for affordable accommodation in Utrecht. The hostel offers dormitory rooms as well as private rooms, all equipped with modern amenities such as free WiFi. Guests can also enjoy the hostel’s communal kitchen and lounge areas.
To use the special LANDac rate, enter coupon code UU25 after filling out your personal details.
Contact
Contact the conference organisers by email: landac2025@gmail.com
Updates on the programme will be published on the LANDac website.
Organising Committee
Kei Otsuki (IDS-UU, co-chair), Femke van Noorloos (IDS-UU, co-chair), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac/LAND-at-scale), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Marja Spierenburg (Leiden University), Dimo Todorovski (ITC-University of Twente), Gemma Betsema (RVO LAND-at-scale), Mathijs van Leeuwen (Radboud University), Bertus Wennink (KIT Institute), Brent Sandtke (IDS-UU).
Supported by
Summer School
The conference forms part of the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School. This Summer School takes place from 30 June – 11 July. Titled “Fair Land Governance and the Politics of Competing Claims”, it offers a space to explore the multiple and competing claims of various actors on land, how these are framed and how they can be understood. For more information and to register, visit the Utrecht Summer School website. For enquiries, contact landac2025@gmail.com.
Last Updated: 30th September 2024 by Coordinator
Towards Disability Inclusive Land Rights session
On World Food Day, the 16th of October DCDD, We Are Able! in cooperation with LANDac, are organizing a parallel session on Disability Inclusive Land Rights during the Annual Netherlands Food Partnership WORLD FOOD DAY event.
We are happy to invite you to join this side-event on disability-inclusive land rights!
Discover how ensuring land rights for persons with disabilities can help achieve Zero Hunger. Get insight in the barriers persons with disabilities face in accessing land and how these barriers can be overcome.
Expect interactive activities, insightful presentations, videos and discussions.
PROGRAMME
Join the YouTube Livestream
Not based in the Netherlands? We invite you to participate in our workshop via YouTube Livestreaming. Live captioning will be available during the live-stream. You can register for the Liveastream via this registration link.
Join the session in Amersfoort
Are you based in the Netherlands? Come and join the World Food Day event in Amersfoort! This year’s edition of NFP’s WORD FOOD DAY event offers a dynamic program packed with activities including expert speakers, talk shows and presentations on trends and solutions shaping the future of food systems. Right after the Disability Inclusive Land Rights workshop there will be a plenary closing session followed by drinks and time for networking.
Please confirm your participation by:
All WORLD FOOD DAY participants will receive further instructions closer to the event date. Registration and participation is free.
We look forward to your participation!
Last Updated: 30th August 2024 by Coordinator
Conference & Summit 2024
We welcome you on Wednesday 3 July 9:00 at Bibliotheek Neude, Neude 11.
REGISTER NOW!!!
Conference & Summit
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Early Bird tickets are available until May 15
We are calling upon practitioners, policy makers and scholars from a wide variety of fields (humanities, geosciences, law, governance and those involved in issues of sustainability) to join us for our second joint Conference, which will this year have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We will hold panel sessions and round tables over the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
Explore the sections below for further details on registration, conference themes, programme highlights, practical information, and more. Don’t forget to secure your early bird ticket before May 15th!
Contents
Registration
Registration for the conference is now open and closes end-June. We are happy to offer an early bird fee of €175 (open until 15 May). The regular fee for participation after 15 May is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. Online presentation is free of charge. On Thursday evening we will host a 3-course Conference dinner at an iconic venue in the city centre of Utrecht.
You can now register for both the conference and the dinner here:
Registration Fees
Our conference assistant will be in touch with you within 3 working days. Requests for letters for visa applications are also handled upon registration. We are not able to provide sponsorships or financial support to attend the event.
Conference Programme
Please note that the following programme is provisional and thus is subject to change. For the latest version of the programme, please regularly check the Conference Page. Times are displayed in CEST (Central European Summer Time).
Wednesday 3 July 9:00 Bibliotheek Neude, Neude 11
Thursday 4 July 9:00 Janskerkhof 2-3
Friday 5 July 9:00 Zalen van Zeven, Boothstraat 7
Plenary Session #1: Keynote Dialogue
Moderator:
Liz Alden Wily
Liz Alden Wily (PhD) is an independent political economist specialising in land tenure, associated with the Van Vollenhoven Institute as an affiliated researcher. Liz works in Africa and less frequently in Central Asia and Asia. Since the 1980s Liz has provided land policy guidance (e.g. Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia, Ghana, Cameroon, Gabon, Nepal, Afghanistan), conducting research, and designing and technically guiding projects on a learning by doing basis to practically guide policy and law-land and forest law making. This work has been driven by urgent post-conflict requirements in Uganda, Sudan/South Sudan, Liberia, Nepal and Afghanistan. Liz is also closely engaged with the forest and climate change sector, playing an active role since the 1990s in the development of community owned protected forests, especially in Tanzania.
Liz’s research continues to arise directly from social change and governance requirements as affecting the majority rural land dependent sector. Her core focus is towards improved national law status of customary/indigenous land interests (‘community land rights’), as informally held by more than 2.5 million contemporary land and resource dependants around the world. Her principal interest in supporting legal recognition of the collective ownership of commons, the several billion hectares of forest/woodlands, arid/semi-arid rangelands and swamplands held in common by communities under customary, neo-customary, or increasingly, hybrid statutory-customary laws. Liz has worked directly towards policy and, forest and rangeland law reforms in 12 states, and contributed in as many others. Since 2021, her research and practitioner work has focuses upon on critiquing existing community conservation initiatives to remove legal and other impediments which limit the right and capacity of communities to establish and sustain Community Protected Areas. Liz is periodically requested to provide expert affidavits in litigation brought by communities seeking secure tenure over specific state/public resource lands.
Listen to Liz Alden Wily why this conference is important to her in this video.
Presenters:
Bram Büscher
Bram Büscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University and Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg. His research and writing revolve around the political economy of environment and development with specific interests in biodiversity, conservation, new media and digitalization, violence and extraction. His broader theoretical project seeks to bring biodiversity, human-nonhuman relations and conservation deeper into our understanding of the historical and contemporary trajectories of global capitalism.
Bram has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and is the author of Transforming the Frontier. Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa (Duke University Press, 2013). Together with Robert Fletcher, he authored The Conservation Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond The Anthropocene. This 2020 book was published by Verso and has been translated into Spanish, German and French, with Italian forthcoming. His most recent book, The Truth About Nature. Environmentalism in the Era of Post-Truth Politics and Platform Capitalism was published by the University of California Press in 2021. Bram is one of the senior editors of the open-access journal Conservation & Society (www.conservationandsociety.org).
Get to know Bram and his work, and listen why he thinks the IoS Fair Transtions/LANDac conference is important in this video.
Morgan Ody
Morgan Ody is the General Coordinator of La Via Campesina and a small-scale vegetable farmer in Brittany, France. Via Campesina is a worldwide movement defending access to land, water, and territories, food sovereignty, agroecology, climate and environmental justice, as well as dignity for migrant and waged workers in agriculture. During the European farmers’ protests earlier this Spring, Megan Ody pressed the European Commission to create the conditions for an agroecological transition, in solidarity with the Global South.
Frances Cleaver
Frances Cleaver is Professor and Chair in Political Ecology at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. Her research is concerned with how we can understand natural resource governance in order to inform progressive social change. Institutions really matter in social and political life – they are the rules (often implicit) and arrangements through which people organize their lives, access resources and give order and meaning to their world. Critically, they are also channels through which power is exercised, reproduced and challenged. Working from a political ecology perspective, Frances is particularly interested in how institutions shape the governance of water, land and forests, and impact on people’s livelihoods.
Plenary Session #2: Women’s Land Rights as A Pathway to Social, Economic and Climate Justice
There is a widespread recognition of the importance of land tenure rights in addressing the global challenges of climate change, gender inequality and unsustainable food systems. Remarkable progress has specifically been made in the context of key international frameworks such as the Beijing Platform for Action, 2030 Agenda, the three Rio Conventions (UNFCCC, CBD and UNCCD) as well as the UN Decade on Family Farming, all of which acknowledge the critical role of land tenure security in the context of climate change solutions and food security. However, a huge challenge continues to persist as far as the implementation of these frameworks and commitments at national and
local level is concerned.
Although women bear the greatest brunt of the double crisis of climate change and land degradation, gender inequality in the control, access, use and ownership of land is yet a battle to be won. At the same time, while emerging climate solutions such as renewable energy have the potential to bring numerous benefits to Africa, they equally pose a risk to women’s land rights if a gender perspective is not taken into consideration. This plenary session will therefore aim to engage in a candid dialogue that addresses the following themes and objectives:
This session will be hosted by the Stand for Her Land Campaign and co-organised by ILC Africa, Landesa, IDLO, REN21, GROOTS Kenya, UCOBAC, and UN Habitat/GLTN.
Presenters
Frances Birungi Odong – UCOBAC
Nupur Prakash – IDLO
Ngone Ngom – CICODEV
Annabel Kennedy – WECF
Jane Njeri – International Land Coalition (ILC)
Moderated by Simon Peter Mwesigye – UNHabitat/GLTN
Stand for Her Land
The Stand for Her Land Campaign is closing the implementation gap for women’s land rights: the gulf between the strong standards in place to protect women’s rights to land, and the realization of those rights in practice, so that millions of women can realize the transformational power of rights to land.
Plenary Session #3: Imagining the Possible
Presenters:
Kumi Naidoo
For over 40 years, Kumi Naidoo has been a voice amongst many for social, economic and environmental justice. From his humble township upbringing in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, to his work as an anti-Apartheid activist, to his leadership of international NGOs, Kumi has remained rooted in Martin Luther King’s Creative Maladjustment principles – refusing to normalize inequality and devoting himself to exposing injustice.
Kumi serves as the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, and Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, and a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and Honorary Fellow at Magdalen College. He also is a Senior Advisor for the Community Arts Network (CAN) and Special Advisor to the Green Economy Coalition.
Kumi was International Executive Director of Greenpeace International, from 2009-2015, and Secretary General of Amnesty International, from 2018-2020. As of June 2020, he is Global Ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace & Dignity. He has served as the Secretary-General of Civicus, an international alliance for citizen participation, from 1998 to 2008. Kumi has also served the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and the Global Call for Climate Action (Tcktcktck.org), which brings together environmental aid, religious and human rights groups, labour unions, scientists and others and has organised mass demonstrations around climate negotiations.
In this next chapter of his activism journey, Kumi is dedicating himself to getting back to his ‘roots’, with a focus on contributing more to the growth of activism movements and organisations, academia, as well as paving the way forward for a new generation of activists.
Peter Akkerman
Peter Akkerman works passionately for our beautiful planet. He grew up in the forests of the eastern Netherlands and has a background in international relations. Already from a young age he was a volunteer for the state forest agency, actively participated in the drinkingwaterproject of his father in a wide variety of African countries and started his carrier at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
For almost ten years he has worked on environment, climate, and biodiversity at a variety of different ministries. Currently he is project leader for the National Climate week at the Dutch Government. Next to his work he is the founder of the Youth Environment Council, NGO “Bos dat van Zichzelf is” (forest that owns itself) and organizer of a variety of green conferences. He travels throughout Europe to speak about rights for nature, youth participation and leadership in starting green initiatives. For Peter it is important to bring people into nature, to let them experience the importance of our ecosystem and to coach young people to take action on the positive change they want to make in the world.
Xandra van der Eijk
Xandra van der Eijk is a Dutch artist, researcher, and educator. Their practice is situated in the field of ecological art and ecocriticism, with a specific interest in the influence of the technosphere on evolutionary processes and methods of attunement, particularly to matter and their situated and networked lives.
The artistic practice is research-driven and finds its voice in developing and exhibiting artwork, writing, curating and developing education. For the past 4,5 years Xandra has pioneered ecological art in the field of education, by founding and developing a new master’s program “Ecology Futures” at the Master Institute of Visual Cultures of Avans University of Applied Sciences, that puts the exploration and invention of artistic-scientific methods at the forefront of practicing ecocritical theory in the field, aiming to find new ways of (co)generating practice-led knowledge in the process. Ecology Futures is the first MA program on ecological art in the Netherlands, as well as the first MA art program in the Netherlands to center, facilitate and teach biotechnological methodologies. The latter was developed from their position as a researcher in the affiliated Biobased Art&Design Research group (CARADT) and in the newly installed Material Incubator Lab & Project Space.
Over the years Xandra has been involved with numerous institutions and initiatives, often leading to longstanding collaborations and multiple roles, such as with MU Hybrid Art House and the Bio Art & Design Award, Embassy of the North Sea, FIBER and ZKM/Driving the Human and is co-leading the discussion group “Planetary Ecologies” as an associated researcher at Critical Media Lab (FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, CH). Their work is exhibited worldwide, most recently at the Biennale of Sydney, ZKM Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe and MUDAC Lausanne.
Summit
On the final day of our conference (July 5th) we invite you to participate in a Summit – a more-than-human exploration at the intersection of academia, activism, and the arts. We aim to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice by challenging conventional methodologies and foster creative avenues in our research. Together, we will tackle the question: How can art and the more-than-human deepen our understanding of social justice? Drawing on techniques such as counter-mapping, visual representations, storytelling, and even performance art, we will challenge traditional boundaries of academic inquiry.
Presenters:
Agata Nguyen Chuong
Agata Nguyen Chuong (she/her) is an advanced researcher at Forensic Architecture, born in Warsaw and based in London, UK. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Bath and MA at the Royal College of Art.
She currently coordinates FA’s multi-year investigation into the colonial genocide perpetrated against the Nama and Ovaherero in today’s Namibia. A Royal College of Art graduate, she was previously involved in projects about land dispossession in Colombia, illegal gold mining in the Amazon and the Nebelivka Hypothesis, shown at the 2023 Biennale of Architecture in Venice.
Agata’s research has focused on environmental violence, land dispossession, migrations and landscapes of extraction, including a master thesis formulated with ADS7 around the changing territories of the indigenous Evenki people impacted by diamond mining in Siberia. She works primarily with worldbuilding and geospatial analysis.
Lisette Ma Neza
Lisette Ma Neza is known for her sharp pen, soft voice and poetic performances. In 2017, Ma Neza became the first Dutch speaker, first woman and first person of color to win the Belgian Championship in Poetry Slam. In 2024, she has been chosen as Brussels’ first ever city poet, a position which she will hold for two years beginning on 21 March.
She then traveled to different parts of the world as a troubadour. With poetry; written and slammed, she now navigates through Brussels and Breda. In her writing, music and filmmaking she searches for her own language, to translate all feelings into words, images and melodies. In this way she searches for the untold story of humanity.
Lucas van der Velden
Lucas van der Velden is the director of Sonic Acts, an Amsterdam-based organisation and festival operating at the intersections of art, science, music, and technology.
Van der Velden studied at the Interfaculty of Image and Sound at the Royal Conservatory and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. He is also a co-founder of Telcosystems, an experimental art collective dedicated to audiovisual installations, films, videos, soundtracks, and live performances.
Dr. Rick Dolphijn
Dr. Rick Dolphijn is a writer, educator, and curator, serving as an associate professor at Media and Culture Studies, Humanities, Utrecht University. He published widely on continental philosophy (Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres) and the contemporary arts. He studies posthumanism, new materialism, material culture (food studies), and ecology. He coordinates the Humanities Honours Program, is involved in interfaculty cooperation concerning Community Based Research, Open Cities, and COVID-19.
Since 2015 he runs an undergraduate exchange with the University of Hong Kong (themed “The More-Than-Human City”), a graduate exchange (themed “The Lives of the Delta”) commenced in 2021. Rick Dolphijn is an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong (2017-2026) and a Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona (2019/2020). In 2024 he is Vice Chacellors Visiting Professor at the University of Gdansk. His books include Foodscapes (Eburon/University of Chicago Press 2004), New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (Open Humanities Press 2012, with Iris van der Tuin).
Movie screening
Conference Description
The starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead, they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it risks being stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Conference Themes
What is happening to safeguards to rights to land, water, and forests under the current climate imperative as well as the claiming of spaces for massive city and infrastructure development, and food production? What are innovative ways in which land governance actors and land rights activists and advocates seek to ensure due diligence in the context of growing inequality? What lessons can be learned from ongoing experiences in land governance, land administration, and urban planning?
What are the (land governance) challenges of the rush for carbon credits and the spatial claims derived from renewable energy sources in different parts of the world? How could these challenges be met? What would it take to democratize participation in carbon markets and renewable energy and make new value chains more inclusive? And what about geopolitics: what is the role of control over land and natural resources in re-shaping international relations?
How can land governance serve a broader understanding of justice beyond protection of rights through recognition and formalization? Could/should we move beyond narrow conceptualizations of property rights as individual and instrumental? What might be valuable examples of re-commoning, and regenerative or conservation agriculture? What can we learn from ‘lived resilience’ experiences of marginalized people?
Can the search for social justice build on more-than-human solidarities? What contributions can be made by the Rights of Nature movement? How to build on more-than-human connections with lands, rivers, trees, and other voiceless actors like future generations to deepen social justice? How to avoid separating human and non-human actors in the politics of fair transitions? And how to strengthen voices from the Global South in academia, activism and art? What does it take to decolonize the debate?
How do we think about guilt, liability and the duty of care in the context of irreversible biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, deforestation? How do we determine who is responsible and how do we hold them to account? What is the power of a legal concept such as ecocide?
What new visions of democracy are needed for fair transitions and giving voice to more-than-humans? What kinds of democratic alternatives and experiments are already being practiced, and what can be learned from them? How can marginalized ways of knowing be brought into the conversation; who can claim to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?
For a complete overview of the sessions and their descriptions, click here.
Conference Format
The event will be held on site, with a limited number of hybrid possibilities. On the first two days, a limited number of sessions will be allowing speakers to join online; session organisers will be hosting the session in-person, in Utrecht. Please consult the Overview of Sessions 2024 to find which sessions allow online presentation.
Keynote sessions will be streamed and accessible online free of cost. A link to distribute in your networks will be shared ahead of the conference. The Summit, on the third day of the event, will be on site only. The conference dinner will be held on the second day of the conference. Please note, that the cost of dinner is to be borne by conference participants, in addition to the participation fee.
Practical Information
We want to make your attendance to the conference and your stay at Utrecht as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. Please find below a link to a welcome package with practical information regarding directions, venues, hotels and tips on where to eat out or enjoy a drink while in Utrecht.
Accommodation
Below you can find the hotels and hostels that have agreed to partner with us and have provided us with booking codes and discounts:
Park Plaza Utrecht
Description: You will find Park Plaza Utrecht in the heart of the center of Utrecht. A city with many restaurants, cafes and picturesque canals. You are within walking distance of the Dom, Utrecht Central Station, the Jaarbeurs and last but not least: one of the largest shopping centers in the Netherlands (Hoog Catharijne).
Booking instructions and further info: Park Plaza is offering conference attendees a 10% discount on accommodation. You can find this offer here: Discount Link
Website: https://www.parkplazautrecht.nl/
Grand Hotel Karel V
Description: What was once a 14th-century monastery and served as accommodation for knights & priests is now a luxury five-star hotel in the centre of Utrecht.
Booking instructions and further info: Karel V is offering a 15% discount on their Flexible Rates. Rooms can be booked mentioning Utrecht University and the Conference via reservations@karelv.nl.
Website: https://www.karelv.nl/en/
The NInntel Hotels Utrecht Center
Description: Inntel Hotels Utrecht Center, standing at 11-storeys is connected to Utrecht Central Station.
Thanks to its medieval setting with unique vaults and winding canals, the creative, dynamic city of Utrecht still exudes peace and security.
The hotel’s location at an inspiring junction in the center of Utrecht makes it a unique location to meet, spend the night, hold meetings and relax. The bright meeting rooms located on the top floor offer a beautiful view of the monumental city.
Booking instructions and further info: Inntel Hotels is offering a 10-20% discount on rooms during these dates. You can access this discount via the following link: Discount
Website: https://www.inntelhotelsutrechtcentre.nl/
The Nox
Description: Warm and nightly. Romantic and distinctive… The Nox Hotel Utrecht. Enter the unique building that was built in the 17th century and be enchanted by the deep blue color of the night. This boutique hotel allows you to escape the hectic pace of everyday life, and you will find yourself in a world full of design, luxury, excellent service, and international allure. The Nox Hotel Utrecht is located a stone’s throw away from the Dom Tower, like a hidden treasure. In the middle of the city center, yet outside the bustle.
Booking instructions and further info: The Nox hotel is offering a 10% discount on rooms during these dates on their Non-Refundable rates. The code is: Utrecht-university and can be used up until the 7th of July.
Website: https://www.thenoxhotel.com/en/
Bunk Hostel
Description: Bunk Hostel is a trendy and affordable hostel located in a historic building (old church) in the heart of Utrecht. With a range of dormitory and private rooms, Bunk Hostel offers comfortable and stylish accommodation for budget-conscious travellers. The hostel also features a restaurant and bar, as well as a shared kitchen and lounge areas.
Booking instructions and further info: Bunk Hostel is offering a 10% discount on rooms during these dates. Discount Code will be provided in the coming days, in the interim bookings can be coordinated with Nick Polson via n.l.c.polson@uu.nl
Website: https://wearebunk.com/utrecht/
Stayokay Hostel
Description: Stayokay Hostel is a budget-friendly option for travellers looking for affordable accommodation in Utrecht. The hostel offers dormitory rooms as well as private rooms, all equipped with modern amenities such as free WiFi. Guests can also enjoy the hostel’s communal kitchen and lounge areas.
Booking instructions and further info: Stayokay Hostel is offering a 10% discount on all rooms during these dates. The code is: UU and can be used up until the 7th of July.
Website: https://www.stayokay.com/en/hostel/utrecht-centrum
Map
Please find our conference map below to view our main conference locations and the hotels mentioned above. This map will continue to be updated as we approach the conference with more specific details.
Curated conference report
For the LAND-at-scale knowledge programme a curated conference report reflects on the key take-aways from the conference that are relevant to LAND-at-scale.
For All Enquiries
Supported By
Organizing Committee
Nick Polson (coordinator IOS FT), Janwillem Liebrand (IOS FT), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Julia Tschersich (IOS FT), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac-LAND-at-scale), Harrison Awuh (IDS-UU), Joanny Belair (LANDac), Barbara Codispoti (Oxfam).
Summer School: Land Governance for Development
The conference takes place back-to-back with the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School Land Governance and the Politics of Fair Transitions, which will take place 8-19 July 2024 in Utrecht. For m ore information and to register, please visit the Utrecht Summer School website.
Summer School participants pay a reduced conference fee of €50. Kindly send an email to ft.landac2024@gmail.com to apply for this reduction.
Last Updated: 13th May 2024 by Coordinator
Registration Open Now!!! – Conference & Summit 2024 – Call for Abstracts Closed
REGISTRATION OPEN NOW!!!
Conference & Summit
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Call for Abstracts Closed
As our Call for Abstracts closes, we are happy to announce that the IOS Fair Transitions / LANDac Conference & Summit 2024 is now open for registration! You can view our registration fees and register below.
We are calling upon practitioners, policy makers and scholars from a wide variety of fields (humanities, geosciences, law, governance and those involved in issues of sustainability) to join us for our second joint Conference, which will this year have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We will hold panel sessions and round tables over the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit.
Registration
Registration for the conference is now open and closes end-June. We are happy to offer an early bird fee of €175 (open until 15 May). The regular fee for participation after 15 May is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. Online presentation is free of charge. On Thursday evening we will host a 3-course Conference dinner at an iconic venue in the city centre of Utrecht.
You can now register for both the conference and the dinner here:
Registration Fees
Our conference assistant will be in touch with you within 3 working days. Requests for letters for visa applications are also handled upon registration. We are not able to provide sponsorships or financial support to attend the event.
Lastly, we have been made aware that there is some miscommunication being circulated online regarding an extension to the Call for Abstracts. We can confirm that the Call has been closed as of 15 March. Moving forward, to ensure you have the latest and correct information regarding the conference please check the IOS Fair Transitions website or the LANDac website. These two page pages will contain any official updates and announcements.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Best wishes,
The IOS Fair Transitions / LANDac Conference team
Last Updated: 18th March 2024 by Coordinator
Call for Abstracts – Conference & Summit 2024
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Conference & Summit
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Closes March 15, 2024!
Building on the successful collaboration in last year’s Annual Conference, the IoS Fair Transitions Platform (UU) and LANDac are pleased to launch this Call for Abstracts for a second joint Conference, which will have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We have made the selection for the panel sessions and round tables for the first two days. We now invite all interested to submit abstracts for these sessions. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than-human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
The starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead, they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it risks being stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Keynote speakers
We are pleased to announce that amongst our special guests this year will be:
More information and other keynote speakers will be announced shortly.
Conference format
The event will be held on site, with a limited number of hybrid possibilities. On the first two days, a limited number of sessions will be allowing speakers to join online; session organisers will be hosting the session in-person, in Utrecht. Please consult the Overview of Sessions 2024 to find which sessions allow online presentation.
Keynote sessions will be streamed and accessible online free of cost. A link to distribute in your networks will be shared ahead of the conference.
The Summit, on the third day of the event, will be on site only.
The conference dinner will be held on the second day of the conference. Please note, that the cost of dinner is to be borne by conference participants, in addition to the participation fee.
Conference themes
For a complete overview of the sessions and their descriptions, click here or click on the themes below. More information on the submission guidelines can be found below. The below list of sessions, as well as the Overview of Sessions can be subject to change. Please consult the IOS Fair Transitions and LANDac websites for the most recent versions.
Land governance: safeguards and the defence of rights
What is happening to safeguards to rights to land, water, and forests under the current climate imperative as well as the claiming of spaces for massive city and infrastructure development, and food production? What are innovative ways in which land governance actors and land rights activists and advocates seek to ensure due diligence in the context of growing inequality? What lessons can be learned from ongoing experiences in land governance, land administration, and urban planning?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Carbon colonialism: A new scramble for land in the name of the climate?
What are the (land governance) challenges of the rush for carbon credits and the spatial claims derived from renewable energy sources in different parts of the world? How could these challenges be met? What would it take to democratize participation in carbon markets and renewable energy and make new value chains more inclusive? And what about geopolitics: what is the role of control over land and natural resources in re-shaping international relations?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Justice as restoring, re-claiming, re-commoning
How can land governance serve a broader understanding of justice beyond protection of rights through recognition and formalization? Could/should we move beyond narrow conceptualizations of property rights as individual and instrumental? What might be valuable examples of re-commoning, and regenerative or conservation agriculture? What can we learn from ‘lived resilience’ experiences of marginalized people?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Building more-than-human solidarities in the search for social justice
Can the search for social justice build on more-than-human solidarities? What contributions can be made by the Rights of Nature movement? How to build on more-than-human connections with lands, rivers, trees, and other voiceless actors like future generations to deepen social justice? How to avoid separating human and non-human actors in the politics of fair transitions? And how to strengthen voices from the Global South in academia, activism and art? What does it take to decolonize the debate?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
The following sessions are not open for abstracts:
Ecocide and social justice
How do we think about guilt, liability and the duty of care in the context of irreversible biodiversity loss, land degradation, desertification, deforestation? How do we determine who is responsible and how do we hold them to account? What is the power of a legal concept such as ecocide?
The following sessions are not open for abstract submissions:
Rethinking democracy and the politics of knowledge
What new visions of democracy are needed for fair transitions and giving voice to more-than-humans? What kinds of democratic alternatives and experiments are already being practiced, and what can be learned from them? How can marginalized ways of knowing be brought into the conversation; who can claim to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?
The following sessions are open for abstract submissions:
Submitting an abstract
We now invite abstract submissions for the IOS Fair Transitions – LANDac Conference & Summit 2024. IOS Fair Transitions and LANDac invite you to review the collection of conference sessions and submit your abstract to your preferred session. Abstract submissions should use the Abstract Submission Form, and include:
Important! Abstracts should be submitted by 15 March 2024, in English and using the Abstract Submission Form. Please submit your abstractas a word file directly to the contact person of your preferred session and with ft.landac2024@gmail.com in CC. The session organisers and Organising Committee will review all submissions. Notification on acceptance of abstracts will be done in the beginning of April. Please consult the detailed list of sessions and session organizers about the format of your session (hybrid/in-person). Kindly use the code of your session in all your communication.
Registration and fees
Registration for the conference will open soon and closes end-June. We are happy to offer an early-bird fee of €175 (open until 15 May). The regular fee for participation after 15 May is €225. Reduced fees are available for students: €100 for PhD students and €50 for Master students. Please send an email to ft.landac2024@gmail.com to apply for this reduction.
Summer School: Land Governance and the Politics of Fair Transitions
The conference takes place back-to-back with the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School Land Governance and the Politics of Fair Transitions, which will take place 8-19 July 2024 in Utrecht. For m ore information and to register, please visit the Utrecht Summer School website. Summer School participants pay a reduced conference fee of €50. Kindly send an email to ft.landac2024@gmail.com to apply for this reduction.
Posted: 16th January 2024 by Coordinator
Call for Sessions – Conference & Summit 2024
CALL FOR SESSIONS
Conference & Summit
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Call for sessions – Closes February 15, 2024!
Building on the successful collaboration in last year’s Annual Conference, the IoS Fair Transitions Platform (UU) and LANDac are pleased to launch this Call for a second joint Conference, which will have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We welcome your suggestions for panel sessions and round tables for the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
The starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead, they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it risks being stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Themes of the Conference & Summit
We welcome empirical, theoretical, and philosophical contributions as well practical and impact-oriented ones, in the Global South as well as North. We now invite session proposals on the following themes (please consult the instructions for submission below).
Key dates
The conference & Summit take place on 3, 4 and 5 July 2024. The Call for sessions will open on January 16 and close on February 15, 2024. Accepted sessions will be published and call for abstracts for papers will open on February 22 and close on March 15, 2024. Acceptance of papers will be communicated by April 1.
The Annual Summer School will take place from 8 to 19 July 2024.
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise to start booking an appointment well ahead of time.
Conference format
The conference will be concentrated on-site, in Utrecht city centre. We aim to stream keynote sessions. We will have the possibility to host a limited number of sessions in hybrid format.
The first two days of the conference will include plenary keynote sessions and a range of parallel sessions in 1,5 hour slots. As in previous editions of the conference, we welcome a variety of formats: paper presentations, panel discussions, round tables. The sessions of the first two days will contribute to the Summit of the last day.
Regular updates on keynote speakers, accepted sessions, and other details on the programme will be shared through the LANDac and IoS Fair Transitions websites.
Submitting session proposals
The window for submitting session proposals is now open and closes by February 15. Session proposals must be submitted in English using the submission form which you can download here. Email the completed form to: ft.landac2024@gmail.com.
Please note that we will only consider proposals using the format, indicating title, contact person, which of the themes the session relates to; what will be the format of the session; and if they open up to submission of abstracts or select all presenters themselves. The organisers should also indicate if they would want to host the session in hybrid format, please note that this would require one of the session organisers to be physically present.
Session organisers, please note: even though we will offer some opportunity for online presentations, the session organiser commits to being present in Utrecht and taking responsibility for hosting the session. We also expect session organisers to contribute actively to the Summit on day three.
Registration and fees
Registration for the conference will open in February-March and close end of June 2024.
Fees: Early Bird fee: 175 Euro (before May 15); Fee after May 15: 225 Euro. Details about student rate and the conference dinner will be communicated shortly.
Contact: ft.landac2024@gmail.com
Updates on the programme and the Summer School will be published through the LANDac and IOS Fair Transitions websites.
https://www.uu.nl/en/research/institutions-for-open-societies/interdisciplinary-research/academic-foundations/fair-transitions
https://landgovernance.org/
Organizing committee
Nick Polson (coordinator IOS FT), Janwillem Liebrand (IOS FT), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Julia Tschersich (IOS FT), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac – LAND-at-scale), Harrison Awuh (IDS-UU), Joanny Belair (LANDac), Barbara Codispoti (Oxfam).
Summer School: Land Governance for Development
The conference takes place back-to-back with the LANDac/Utrecht University Summer School Land Governance for Development, which will take place 8-19 July 2024 in Utrecht. For more information and to register, please visit the Utrecht Summer School website. Summer School participants may join the conference free of cost.
Last Updated: 19th December 2023 by Coordinator
Save the date: IOS Fair Transitions and LANDac conference and summit
Conference & Summit:
Land governance and the politics of fair transitions:
Deepening the search for social justice
IoS Fair Transitions Platform & LANDac
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 3-5 July 2024
Save-the-date and announcing the Call for sessions
Building on the successful collaboration in last year’s Annual Conference, the IoS Fair Transitions Platform (UU) and LANDac are pleased to launch this Call for a second joint Conference, which will have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We welcome your suggestions for panel sessions and round tables for the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.
Starting point for the Conference and Summit is the recognition that ongoing transitions in the name of climate change and clean energy are deeply unfair in multiple ways. The challenges involved in making these transitions ‘fair’ are enormous and some would say we are ‘beyond justice’ and can only limit damage. The picture is clear enough: climate policies and so-called green investments place huge burdens on people and spaces in the Global South as well as on areas inhabited by marginalized populations in countries of the Global North. Their rights are put under pressure, safeguards are lacking or not enforced, and the room to defend their lands, forests, pastures, and territories is constrained. Existing inequities are deepened.
In view of these challenges, how to do and think justice? Laws, regulations, and institutions that claim to make policies and investments more ‘inclusive’ often fail to do so. Instead they may be instrumentalized by elites, facilitate resource capture, and ‘green wash’ extractivism. The land grab debate has shown that technical and managerial approaches alone, without a commitment to justice, risk feeding into procedural dispossession rather than fair outcomes. And as ‘climate justice’ is becoming part of global transition parlance, it seems to be stripped of its emancipatory potential.
A first challenge is to uphold rights in view of the new wave of land and resource grabbing. For this, we can build on the experiences of those who have exposed land grabbing in its many guises and have protected and defended rights through land tenure reforms, advocacy, and grassroots activism. But how to think of social justice in the face of the high levels of destruction we are currently witnessing and how to face the issue of ‘extinguished’ rights? Can we extend our approach to justice to include not only protection but also restoration/regeneration and the reclaiming of vital spaces?
A second challenge is therefore to extend and deepen our understandings of social justice. There are interesting developments exploring more-than-human perspectives in debates on fair transitions. It is of particular urgency to strengthen solidarities and re-think justice in relation to past and future generations or along the lines of multispecies justice, which brings the moral obligation to consider the interests of those who cannot represent themselves in political deliberation. We propose to explore new narratives of more-than-human democracy, involving human connections with lands, natures, and their aspirations, and discuss how these could strengthen and deepen social justice. The Conference and Summit will explore both theoretical and practical implications from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Themes of the Conference & Summit
We welcome empirical, theoretical, and philosophical contributions as well practical and impact-oriented ones. A tentative list of themes has been defined for now and is to be updated in our Call for Sessions.
• Carbon colonialism: A new scramble for Africa (and beyond)?– What are the (land governance) challenges of the rush for carbon credits, how could these be met, and what would it take to democratize participation in carbon markets?
• Safeguards and the defense of rights – What is happening to safeguards to rights under the current climate imperative, what are innovative ways in which land governance actors and land rights activists seek to ensure some level of due diligence?
• Justice as restoring, re-claiming, re-commoning– How can land governance serve a broader understanding of justice beyond protection, could/should we move beyond narrow conceptualisations of property rights as individual and instrumental?
• Building more-than-human solidarities in the search for social justice– How to build on more-than-human connections with lands, rivers, trees, and other voiceless actors like future generations in the politics of fair transitions? And, how to avoid separating human and non-human actors in deepening the search for social justice?
• Ecocide and social justice– How do we think about guilt, liability and the duty of care in the context of irreversible biodiversity loss? How do we determine who is responsible and how do we hold them to account? What is the power of a legal concept as ecocide?
• The politics of knowledge and the politics of representation– How can marginalized ways of knowing be brought into the conversation, who can claim to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?
Key dates
The conference & Summit take place on 3, 4 and 5 July 2024. The Call for sessions will open on 15 January and close on February 15, 2024. Submission of abstracts for papers/contributions opens Feb 22 and closes on March 15, 2024.
The Annual Summer school will take place from 8 to 19 July 2024.
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise to start booking an appointment well ahead of time.
Contact: FT.landac2024@gmail.com
Updates on the programme and the Summerschool will be published through the LANDac and IOS Fair Transitions websites.
https://www.uu.nl/en/research/institutions-for-open-societies/interdisciplinary-research/academic-foundations/fair-transitions
Organising committee
Nick Polson (coordinator IOS FT), Janwillem Liebrand (IOS FT), Gemma van der Haar (LANDac), Julia Tschersich (IOS FT), Wytske Chamberlain (LANDac-Land-at-Scale), Harrison Awuh (IDS-UU), Joanny Belair (LANDac).
Posted: 18th December 2023 by Coordinator
Save-the-date: IOS Fair Transitions & LANDac conference and summit
FT-LANDac Conference2024-SavetheDate (002)