Princetonlaan 8a, 3584 CB, Utrecht landac.geo@uu.nl

Land Portal | Let Data Speak by Submitting Your Data Story for the Land Portal’s Data Story Contest

Data scientists and those working with data in general, often struggle to communicate how and why data are essential and potentially life changing.  The word data often conjures up notions of difficult to understand numbers or facts, information that is out of reach for the general population, meant for data scientists or those carrying out work that requires a certain level of expertise. This is where we feel data stories can be of great use. Data stories provide an opportunity to reflect that data is not sterile and difficult to understand , but part of wider, participatory process.

It is with this in mind Land Portal is launching their first Data Stories Contest!

Data stories can include text, interviews, videos, infographics and maps to tell a narrative in a compelling way, based on what is deemed appropriate on a case by case basis. By telling the story behind data, Land Portal wants to empower much more people to become part of the data revolution and ensure that data does not remain just an empty statistic – but is used to invoke positive change!

We invite you to submit your story by April 30th 2019!  See bellow flyer for more details on how to submit your data story and the website for more information.

Download the flyer here

Website: https://landportal.org/news/2019/03/let-data-speak-submitting-your-data-story-land-portal%E2%80%99s-data-story-contest

 

Wageningen University | PhD Workshop: SMART Political Ecologies? On the Nature and Power of Environmental Technologies and their Implications for Just Futures (4 ECTS)

The Six-day intensive PhD workshop ‘SMART Political Ecologies? On the Nature and Power of Environmental Technologies and their Implications for Just Futures’ will be held from 27 June – 3 July 2019 in Wageningen, the Netherlands.
The workshop gives motivated PhD candidates the chance to deepen their knowledge on how the field of political ecology is adapting to the contemporary era of multiplying, intensifying and proliferating environmental technologies. On the one hand, this refers to governmental technologies in the Foucauldian sense, where new techniques, politics and forms of governmental oversight, intervention and management are rapidly changing human-nature relations and access to and control over nonhuman natures. On the other hand, we have seen the rapid emergence of a host of new technologies in the material sense, driven by the Internet-of-Things, new SMART technologies, and social media platforms, among others. These technological developments and their integrated possibilities are further changing environmental governance and politics around the planet. Environmental studies and political ecology scholars have started to register these developments yet have only begun to investigate and understand their implications. The 2019 Wageningen Political Ecology Summer school focuses on these two sides of ‘environmental technologies’ and welcomes PhD candidates to join a great line-up of speakers to discuss their implications for political ecology and just futures.

LANDac | Guatemala Blog Series #7: Some land governance institutions in Guatemala and their performance

The seventh blog in our Guatemala Blog Series by Jur Schuurman is out:

It will be no surprise to the readers of this blog that the institutional environment for land governance in Guatemala has its shortcomings. In the previous instalment I wrote about a massive land fraud in the Petén department, perpetrated with active participation of staff of FONTIERRA, the fund that was created in 1997 in order to address land tenure inequality and to facilitate the access of landless labourers and small farmers to (more) land. The involvement of its personnel in illegal activities makes one less than optimistic about FONTIERRAS’ general performance, and indeed, the available literature confirms as much. In a comprehensive evaluation of rural land governance after the peace agreements of 1996,[1] the authors conclude that the results have been disappointing: FONTIERRAS’ slow bureaucracy, fundamental flaws in its setup and widespread corruption have meant that the main beneficiaries of the ‘market-assisted land reform’ that the Fund was supposed to enable were the big landowners. They could take advantage of the high demand for land by smallholders, and sold the low-quality portions of their properties, frequently overvaluing them in the process, to FONTIERRA. The ultimate consequence is the high degree of indebtedness of the buyers, who cannot produce enough to repay the loan they got from the Fund.

Read Blog #7 here!

LAND Special Issue | How Far Does the European Union Reach? Foreign Land Acquisitions and the Boundaries of Political Communities

Check out the latest publication in the LANDac Special Issue in Land, an open access MDPI journal, by Torsten Menge from the Northwestern University in Qatar.

How Far Does the European Union Reach? Foreign Land Acquisitions and the Boundaries of Political Communities – Torsten Menge

The recent global surge in large-scale foreign land acquisitions marks a radical transformation of the global economic and political landscape. Since land that attracts capital often becomes the site of expulsions and displacement, it also leads to new forms of migration. In this paper, I explore this connection from the perspective of a political philosopher. I argue that changes in global land governance unsettle the congruence of political community and bounded territory that we often take for granted. As a case study, I discuss the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive as a significant driver of foreign land acquisitions. Using its global power, the European Union (EU) is effectively governing land far outside of its international borders and with it the people who live on this land or are expelled from it. As a result, EU citizens ought to consider such people fellow members of their political community. This has implications for normative debates about immigration and, in particular, for arguments that appeal to collective self-determination to justify a right of political communities to exclude newcomers. The political community to which EU citizens belong reaches far beyond the EU’s official borders.

An overview of all LANDac Special Issue papers is available on the Land website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land/special_issues/LANDac

RVO | Programma-adviseur afdeling Internationale Ontwikkeling

[in Dutch]

Vacature voor Programma-adviseur afdeling Internationale Ontwikkeling bij Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO)

Betere landrechten zijn cruciaal voor resultaten op verschillende ontwikkelingssamenwerkingsthema’s zoals voedselzekerheid, integraal waterbeheer, klimaatadaptatie en duurzaam bos- en grondstoffenbeheer, maar ook voor het bevorderen van inclusieve economische groei en betere vrouwenrechten. Jij zet als programma-adviseur jouw expertise in bij ons team Mondiale Vraagstukken Voedselzekerheid, Energie en Klimaat, onderdeel van de afdeling Internationale Ontwikkeling.

Ons team voert diverse programma’s uit voor de ministeries van Buitenlandse Zaken en Infrastructuur en Waterstaat. Deze programma’s richten zich op armoedebestrijding, onder andere door toegang te creëren tot energie en voedselzekerheid. Jij draagt als programma-adviseur van de faciliteit Land@Scale bij aan de realisatie van de doelstelling van het programma: het versterken van essentiële land-governancecomponenten die aantoonbaar potentie hebben om bij te dragen aan structurele veranderingen in focus- en partnerlanden.

De faciliteit werkt programmatisch en maakt het mogelijk om gevalideerde aanvragen voor technische assistentie en strategische investeringen te ondersteunen. Het Land@Scale-programma bestaat uit het versterken van essentiële componenten voor landbestuur voor mannen, vrouwen en jongeren die kunnen bijdragen aan structurele, rechtvaardige en inclusieve veranderingen in ontwikkelingslanden.

Als programma-adviseur draag je zorg voor het synthetiseren en uitdragen van resultaten en geleerde lessen. Om de impact van projecten te vergroten, faciliteer je door de inzet van middelen en het netwerk verschillende partijen zoals bedrijven, (lokale) overheden, ngo’s en kennisinstellingen. Zo draag je bij aan het formuleren van landrechtenprojecten. Ook zie je toe op een goede uitvoering van de projecten.

Je hebt intensief contact met overheidsinstanties in de betrokken landen, de ambassades, bedrijven, kennisinstellingen en ngo’s die de projecten uitvoeren. Je verdiept je in de positie van de opdrachtgever en opdrachtnemers, richt je op verbetering en onderneemt klantgerichte acties als dat nodig is. Ook bezoek je regelmatig deze landen, waar je toeziet op de uitvoering van de projecten.

  • Stand­plaats Den Haag of Utrecht
  • Contractduur 1 jaar, met optie tot verlenging
  • Uren per week 32 – 36
  • Maand­salaris €3.130 – €4.809
  • Salaris­ niveauschaal 11
  • Niveau Master / doctoraal
  • Vakgebied Sociaal  /  maatschappelijk  /  welzijn, Agrarisch, Natuur  /  milieu
  • Reageren voor 15 maart
  • Vacature­nummer RVO_20190124_11
  • Plaatsingsdatum 1 maart 2019
  • Dienst­verband Tijdelijke aanstelling voor de duur van project  /  traject  /  werkzaamheden

Voor meer informatie zie https://www.werkenvoornederland.nl/vacatures/detail/programma-adviseur-afdeling-internationale-ontwikkeling-RVO-2019-0017

Studium Generale | Who’s got the right to water? with Daphina Misiedjan

How do we distribute water in a fair and sustainable way? Does nature also have the right to water? With human rights scholar Dr Daphina Misiedjan. This Studium Generale lecture is part of a Dutch series on the sustainable development goals of the UN. Met het doel voor ogen – wat is er tot nu toe eigenlijk van de duurzame doelen terechtgekomen? Daphina Misiedjan is an assistant professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights and researcher at the Utrecht Center for Oceans, Water and Sustainability Law (UCWOSL). She specializes in issues concerning human rights (in particular economic, social and cultural rights) and the environment. 

For more information click here.

ILC | Save the date: ILC launches LANDex @ World Bank Conference

Introducing LANDex

LANDex, an evolution of ILC’s Dashboard, uses common indicators and methodologies to promote people-centred land governance monitoring. In preparation for its LAUNCH, we gave the Dashboard an overhaul – new name and look!
Join us at the 2019 World Bank Land & Poverty Conference for the big reveal and results of its first pilot country, Senegal.

SAVE THE DATE

WHEN: Thursday 28 March 2019, 6:30 to 8:30pm

WHERE: Meridian Institute, 1800 M Street, NW, Suite 400N – Washington, DC

*Drinks and food will be served in a relaxed atmosphere.

Please R.S.V.P by 15 March to w.anseeuw@landcoalition.org

Land Portal | Webinar: Realizing women’s land rights in Africa

In October 2016, women farmers from 22 countries across Africa climbed the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro to claim women’s rights for access to and control over land and natural resources. This event coincided with the launch of a campaign of the African Land Policy Centre (ALPC) to reach the target of having 30 percent of all registered land in the name of women by 2025 and to embed women’s land rights into the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In line with these initiatives, there has been increased attention for women’s land rights by grassroots movements, local governments, civil society organisations, academics, and international organisations. Nonetheless, despite progressive policies, legal frameworks, and strong civil society engagement in many countries, there is still a lot to be done to feel a real impact on the ground.

This webinar will feature experiences from several grassroots initiatives and highlight how they fight for women’s improved access to and control over land and other natural resources and to scale up women’s land rights. The webinar is co-hosted by Acção Académica Para O Desenvolvimento Das Comunidades Rurai (ADECRU) (Mozambique), Both ENDS, ENDA Pronat (Senegal), Fórum Mulher (Mozambique), GROOTS Kenya, LANDac, the Land Portal Foundation and OXFAM Novib.

Register here.

ActionAid | Stronger together: Peasants from Malawi and the Netherlands share knowledge

For a farmer, access to land is crucial, but this access is not self-evident for many women. In December 2018, peasant women from Malawi and the Netherlands came together to exchange their knowledge and experience. The exchange showed that the struggle of women worldwide has many similarities and that the importance of social movements and international knowledge exchange cannot be overestimated.

Read more here (in Dutch).