Every year the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty brings together representatives from governments, civil society, academia, the development community, and the private sector to discuss issues of concern to communities, land practitioners and policymakers worldwide. The conference aims to foster dialogue and the sharing of best practices on the diversity of reforms, approaches and experiences that are being implemented in the land sector around the world (see the 2013 conference website for more details and the papers presented last year).
As part of this Conference, the World Bank's Kathrine Kelm will join the Food and Agriculture Organization's Rumyana Tonchovska on March 25, 2014 for a panel exploring "Land and gender – Improving data availability and use in the Western Balkans." The event will be part of the Gendered Control of Land and Agricultural Development Interventions panel, to be held in the Preston Auditorium in the Main Complex of the World Bank starting at 08:30.
Under the theme of “Integrating Land Governance into the Post-2015 Agenda: Harnessing Synergies for Implementation and Monitoring Impact”, the 2014 conference will focus on building a shared understanding of best practices in land governance. By providing an opportunity to strengthen collaboration between diverse experts in land governance, the conference aims to put stakeholders at the country level in a position to address this key development issue.
Papers are invited for presentations at the conference in seven thematic areas:
- Securing and protecting land rights from a gender perspective
- Managing urban landscapes
- Attracting responsible land-based investment for local benefits and common resource management
- Maximizing benefits from spatial data
- Strengthening country level institutions
- Fostering transparency in land ownership, use, and administration
- Research on key aspects of land governance