Promoting Transparency And Open Development In Land Governance

Since its inception, the International Land Coalition has been promoting transparency and accountability in land-related processes through a number of projects such as the Land Reporting Initiative, the CPL project, the Land Portal, the Land Observatory and the Land Matrix initiative. It has been clear from the start that lack of transparency on themes such as land tenure, property and ownership leads to inherent insecurity for those most vulnerable; transparency is a crucial step towards security and informed decision-making.

In recent times, the Open Knowledge model of free sharing and re-using of data for an improved global awareness started to make its way into advocacy, coalescing into the concept of Open Development: working for inclusive openness through action and advocacy (for a very effective overview watch this video by Open For Change, a network of organizations promoting open access in the global development sector).

We are experiencing a combined effort of NGOs, IGOs, CSOs and governments around the world to enable universal access to knowledge, so that it can be used and distributed freely; the World Bank, for example, openly offers their datasets in a freely accessible and reusable format. [...]