For the last decade, the international development community has – at great expense – repeatedly and unsuccessfully worked to create sustainable large-scale and cost-effective modern land tenure systems for emerging economies. In Ghana, the World Bank spent many millions building a land registry which was plagued by delays, costs overruns, and inefficiencies . In…

At the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, the pre-eminent event in the global land tenure sector, Cadasta staff will present three papers to conference attendees. The papers are: Thinking Local: Can Local Land Administration Systems Avoid the Pitfalls of National Land Systems Mapping as Empowerment: Lessons from a Year of Participatory Community Mapping…

An estimated 70 percent of land in emerging economies is undocumented. In rural areas, from Chad to Cambodia, a majority of smallholders farm without the security of having legal rights to their land. In urban areas, from Delhi to Durban, an estimated 25 percent of residents live in homes to which they have no documented legal right. The…

As more than 1,000 global leaders in land rights gather in Washington DC this week for the annual World Bank Land and Poverty conference , there will, no doubt, be much discussion focused on gathering data to measure global progress towards documenting and strengthening land rights for all women and men. But it is…

A functioning land administration sector is the foundation of a national economy, critical for economic growth. Unfortunately, effective land registry and cadastral systems with national coverage exist in only a fraction of the world’s countries. Without accurate information regarding land rights, many development goals – food security, sustainable resource management, climate change mitigation and equal…

Are you tech savvy and interested in gaining experience in the open source movement? Apply for Cadasta Foundation's 12-week paid internship. Cadasta is a global network of tech and land rights experts who put their skills to work to make the world a better place. Learn more about our work . Join us…

One-third of people on the planet don't have documented rights to the land on which they rely. The Cadasta Foundation creates tech to allow communities to document their land rights. By helping groups document the evidence of their individual and community rights to the land on which they depend, they can eventually obtain legal recognition of…

From now until January 2017, you can join individuals and organisations around the world in assessing the quality and availability of data from national governments. The Open Knowledge International (OKI) Global Open Data Index 2016  survey is now open. This annual index has been measuring the state of open government data throughout the world since 2013. This year,…

Dozens of the world’s experts on land and open data participated in an on-line discussion aimed at raising awareness of the relationship between open data and land governance, exploring the the links between transparency and poverty alleviation and food security in September 2016. The Cadasta Foundation and the LandPortal Foundation , which…

  The palm oil sector is at a crossroads. Despite growing awareness of its massive effects on deforestation, the  largely unregulated and decentralized industry  has struggled to adopt, follow, and document rigorous sustainable sourcing standards. An area equivalent to 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared every hour to make way for palm oil production,  according…