From Building Data to Secure Land People Relations
Tenure security is often framed around a single goal: giving people ownership rights. The argument that drives its urgency is that around 70% of the world’s land is not formally recorded, unregistered or held under customary tenure without formal legal titles. But the real challenge is not just about recording ownership rights. It is about recording it in a way that reflects the land people's relations. Too often, discussions about land data focus narrowly on digitising government records or putting newly collected data online.
This track is grounded in two key arguments. First, it calls for rethinking land data beyond a narrow focus on ownership. It emphasises the need to capture the full diversity of how people hold, access, use, and relate to land, ranging from customary claims and communal arrangements to overlapping use rights, as well as the tenure realities of women, tenants, pastoralists, and tribal communities. These forms of land relations are widely present on the ground but remain largely absent from formal records. Second, the track recognises that a significant amount of such data already exists across governments, civil society organisations, community institutions, researchers, and the private sector. However, this data is often fragmented, held in silos, and not systematically brought together or integrated into mainstream decision-making.
Building on these arguments, the track brings together diverse experiences from rural, urban, forest, pasture, and conflict-affected contexts. It explores both how land data is being collected beyond ownership, participatory and community-driven approaches and how existing data across stakeholders can be better collated, connected, and leveraged, which can be meaningful and trusted.
The track invites sessions that cover:
The types of land related data being collected across diverse contexts, going beyond formal records to capture tenure in its full continuum.
Methodologies and approaches used, especially those that are participatory, community led, or co created with local actors.
How such data has informed policy, strengthened rights, and land management, planning and benefited different stakeholders across the tenure continuum?
How emerging datasets challenge, complement, or expose the limits of conventional land administration systems?