Post COP26 Reflections: A Focus on Opportunities for Customary Land Rights

2021 was a year of big promises concerning tenure rights. At COP26, an unprecedented 1.7 billion dollar pledge was made in support of ancestral community land rights, aiming to place IPLCs rights central to global policy-making and discourse. The questions remain; when and how funding will reach communities and how it will be used effectively.

This first webinar of the 2022 Land Dialogues series brings forth reflections and discussions concerning this and other current events revolving around land rights. Rises in geopolitical tensions seen this year have left the world scrambling to find ways to wean itself off of a heavy reliance on Russian gas and the reality of a post-pandemic world. The worry amongst many in the climate change community is that, if not handled properly, the world’s response to the energy crisis will threaten the COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact and its subsequent global targets.

• Fred Pearce, Freelance journalist and author on the environment and science (Moderator) Fred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in London. A former news editor of New Scientist magazine, he has been its environment consultant since 1992, reporting from more than 80 countries. He also writes regularly for the Yale e360 web site in the US, and the Guardian and other newspapers in the UK.
• Dr. Myrna Cunningham Kain, President FILAC, is a teacher and physician who has been working for over two decades to advance the rights of indigenous women and knowledge on indigenous peoples and the impacts of climate change.
• Victoria Stanley, Senior Land Administration Specialist, has worked across the Europe and Central Asia and Latin America and Caribbean Regions on land administration and management projects, as well as on rural municipal development.  She has extensive experience in the areas of land administration, land management, rural development and gender issues.
• Dr. Jon Unruh, Associate Professor Human geography and international development McGill University, has over 20 years experience in designing and implementing development, research, and post-war recovery projects on land tenure, food security, natural resources and agriculture, in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
• Dr. Konrad Hentze, GIS expert Land Portal, is interested in the use of GIS and Remote Sensing in the dispute of conservation, agricultural development and equal land rights. Currently, he is focussing on normative aspects and narratives within Geospatial analysis for interdisciplinary land science.