“Welcome to the Mountain Kingdom” An Update on LEI Travel to Lesotho
Posted on July 18, 2024 by Rebecca Palmer
Why did three members of the LEI team travel to Lesotho in the last three months? Because we kicked off with our national and internationally staffed team, a five-year contract by the US-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation to support the modernisation of the Rural Land Registration System in Lesotho, with a particular emphasis on supporting the accessibility and inclusiveness of that system for women! Our contract is called the Land and Gender (L&G) consultancy.
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Project Update – Vanuatu Affordable and Resilient Settlements (VARS) Project
Posted on July 18, 2024 by Rebecca Palmer
Planning and governance challenges within Vanuatu’s urban population are significant. Port Vila City Council has never adopted a master or local plan to guide and control urban expansion or land use. Likewise, there is no clear government agency responsible for land identification and infrastructure development to meet Port Vila’s growing needs. In one respect Port Vila is in a strong position – there is land that is available for development. But the majority of development to date has been private sector-led, targeting high-income bracket earners, and even this development has been limited by regulatory uncertainty and outdated land administration processes. In the 25-year period between 1996-2020 only 4,100 new residential lots were approved in Greater Port Vila – an average of just 170 new lots per year. The majority of these have targeted high-income households, with varying levels of infrastructure (that is, roads, electricity, water) provided by developers. Affordable housing units for those on lower wages are largely absent on the private market.
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LEI are attending the World Bank’s Annual Land Conference, 13-17 May 2024
Posted on May 11, 2024 by Rebecca Palmer
In just a few days the World Bank’s newly relaunched Annual Land Conference will commence in Washington DC! The 2024 Conference, which has the theme Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action, aims to highlight effective strategies for securing land tenure and access in support of climate change mitigation and adaption.
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What’s gender got to do with the governance of land? A recap of the recent Land Portal-MRLG webinar on gender equitable land governance in the Mekong region
Posted on March 4, 2024 by Rebecca Palmer
Thursday’s inaugural session, “Women’s Participation in Land Governance in the Mekong: Moving Beyond Quotas to Meaningful Inputs and Influence” was moderated by Dr. Elizabeth Daley, Chair of the Land Portal Foundation. The two-hour session involved interventions from six panelists, with representation from Myanmar, Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam and the MRLG Team. The impetus for this webinar was the release of two new publications by MRLG – MRLG’s flagship publication on gender and land governance, the Outlook on Gender and Land in the Mekong Region and a specific thematic study, Towards Gender-Equitable Land Policy and Lawmaking in the Mekong Region.
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MRLG is seeking an experienced and dynamic Grants Manager. Sound like you? Read on!
Posted on February 15, 2024 by Rebecca Palmer
The Grant Facility of MRLG is the leading implementation facility for the four-country program working with more than 50 implementing partners in civil society, government, and academia.
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An Update from LEI
Posted on December 19, 2023 by Rebecca Palmer
The LEI team have managed, collaborated and innovated throughout the past year across multiple projects in locations including the Mekong, Nauru, Bangladesh and Indonesia. We have also delved deeply with various partners bidding on projects in Africa. These have been exciting and rapid knowledge-juggling periods.
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Project Update – Insights from the Ground Up: Gender Equality and Responsible Agriculture Investment in Cambodia’s Rubber Sector
Posted on December 19, 2023 by Rebecca Palmer
With almost five years since the adoption of the ASEAN Guidelines, Renée Chartres recently travelled to Cambodia to examine their impact on the rubber sector.. She travelled with Asisah Man from Oxfam Cambodia to support Oxfam’s work under the Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) regional Responsible Agriculture Investment (RAI) activities focused on gender equality and RAI.. Below are her reflections on this experience.
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Featured Project – Spatial planning to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions in Indonesia
Posted on December 19, 2023 by Rebecca Palmer
We’ve developed a short clip detailing why continued efforts on spatial planning are needed, so please take a look. And read on below for some of the achievements and successes of this project.
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Our Land Thoughts – The ‘DOS’ and ‘DON’TS’ of the land acquisition processes: navigating a just path to sustainable investments
Posted on December 18, 2023 by Rebecca Palmer
National development agendas usually commit to the building of new infrastructure at a significant scale – promising upgraded or new roads, ports, airports, rail and energy infrastructure, housing, or urban development. With these commitments inevitably comes a demand for land. Although the land requirements for such investments will usually be context-specific, we know certain types of investments have enormous land requirements regardless of location. Utility scale solar or wind farms, for example, necessitate large surface areas to produce energy, particularly vis-à-vis traditional energy sources such as coal. Given the finite character of land, and the growing competition for different land uses, public land that is readily available for such investments is in diminishing supply.
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Signing of MOA between LEI and DIC, IPD, MPI for the Transformative Land Investment Project
Posted on October 4, 2023 by Rebecca Palmer
This Agreement signifies the importance of government’s endorsement towards responsible investments in Lao PDR. The TLI project team are providing significant technical support to pursue transformations in social inclusion, environmental stewardship, governance and societal principles for land-based investments. Transformations are necessary across all actors, through the enabling environment and particularly in the business practice space, and therefore, a multi-pronged approach is adopted. This will draw on regional and international standards, active investor partnerships, policy and legislative influencing and community-based capacity building.
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