GLA published our Parcel Post Newsletter. Read more about topics like How to Scale-up and Automate GIS systems for Land Tenure Documentation: Lessons from Indonesia, Myanmar, and India, The Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitments Launched at COP30: What does that Mean and how GLA is Supporting, GLA Shaping Better Carbon Standards, GLA Operation in Europe

Estimates show that Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities customarily hold and manage least half of the world's land. Land tenure security underpins Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ ability to make decisions, adapt and sustainably manage natural resources and is today considered pivotal in the fight against climate change. Paradoxically, IPs and LCs land rights have come under increased threat through the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM).GLA believes it is crucial to collectively advance thinking, dialogue, and action on the role of land rights and tenure security to make the VCM, and other nature-based markets equitable, efficient and sustainable.

The governments launching the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment include countries from across four continents, brought together by the work of the Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP)  and led by Peru, Norway, and Brazil. The Commitment originated in the Indigenous People’s movement and built into dialogues organized between FCLP member states. A partnership between Global Land Alliance and Rights and Resources International (RRI) was established earlier in 2025 to officially support the collective ambition of FCLP. Through funding from UNOPS and The Land Facility, the partnership has been supporting the advancement of the land tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities within governments’ respective jurisdictions.

Around the world, efforts to document land and forest rights are routinely slowed by outdated systems that rely on paper sketch maps, handwritten forms, disconnected spreadsheets, and months or even years of manual digitization processes. According to recent global estimates, up to 90% of landholdings in developing countries remain undocumented. This gap is not due to a lack of evidence of people’s rights; rather, the systems responsible for capturing it cannot keep pace with demand. Through experience and collaboration with our alliance partners, GLA and Cadasta outline scalable, automation-driven GIS workflows designed to reduce errors, strengthen trust, and dramatically accelerate the path from field data collection to formal documentation.

Global Land Alliance is excited to share a growth in our operations with the launch of a European branch. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, the branch began operations in November 2025.

On March 5, 2025, the FAO and the Global Land Alliance launched an important study titled Collective Tenure Rights and Climate Action in sub-Saharan Africa. This study consolidates extensive research on how collective land tenure arrangements impact forest conditions, biodiversity, and the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples and local communities across the region. The findings are particularly relevant as climate action and sustainable development increasingly depend on securing land tenure rights for these communities.

When women face barriers to accessing, using or controlling land and other resources around the world, it not only puts them on an unequal footing in life, but it also restricts wider positive social, economic and environmental outcomes.

While fully acknowledging the recent challenges of the global foreign assistance scene, Cadasta Foundation and Global Land Alliance (GLA) see the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen the global land governance sector. This opportunity calls us to focus on what we see as the ‘next generation of land governance issues’ that both confront old challenges and present new opportunities to formalize and protect individual and community land tenure while developing pathways to ‘sustainable prosperity for people and places’. 

On March 5, from 15.00 to 16.30 CET, join the launch of a new study entitled “Collective Tenure Rights and Climate Action in sub-Saharan Africa”,  jointly produced by FAO and the Global Land Alliance, with the support of the AIM4Forests programme. This new research aims to consolidate and analyze current evidence on how tenure arrangements, especially collective ownership and management of forests operating in complex systems of contingent factors, impact forest conditions and livelihoods of forest dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on this evidence, it also provides guidance on climate actions and investments that can improve these environmental and livelihood outcomes in forest areas.

Global Land Alliance is thrilled to share “Collective tenure rights and climate action in sub-Saharan Africa: What are priority investments in rights to achieve long-term sustainability of forest areas?”, a joint publication with FAO. The study on collective tenure rights and climate action in sub-Saharan Africa aims to consolidate and analyse the state of the evidence on how tenure arrangements – in particular collective ownership and management of forests operating in complex systems of contingent factors – impact forest condition outcomes, as well as livelihood outcomes of forest dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rights to adequate housing and the peaceful enjoyment of private property are fundamental human rights, but the accessibility and security of these rights are far from equitable or sustainable at the global level. Understanding and delineating this has until now been difficult. But data from Prindex have provided the first global, comprehensive assessment about tenure forms (e.g. ownership, rental, use rights) and the perceptions of insecurity associated with them across countries and population groups.

Global Land Alliance’s October newsletter, our Parcel Post, shares the latest news from GLA including: A launch of a new GLA policy paper entitled: “Securing Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ Land Rights in the Voluntary Carbon Market: Key Actions and Considerations”; Registration and more information for the launch of a new Prindex report on tenure security and property rights; An announcement of two new members of Global Land Alliance’s board of director. We are excited to share articles on these subjects with you here:

Did you know that approximately 1.1 billion adults worldwide—23% of the global population—feel insecure about their rights to property or land? This number has risen significantly over the past four years. As we approach 2030 and the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, it’s crucial to ask: Are we truly advancing in securing equal land and housing rights for everyone? The new Prindex report dives deep into these critical questions and more.

In our 10^th year of operations, Global Land Alliance is excited to announce that Pranab Choudhury has joined the Global Land Alliance board of directors. Pranab has been working on interdisciplinary issues connecting natural resources, climate and local communities for more than three decades, with governments, civil society, academia and the private sector. Pranab Choudhury co-founded and leads Landstack, a global south think tank, that seeks to enrich and expand the land governance ecosystem with more information, institutions and innovations.

Global Land Alliance is proud to announce Faith Alubbe as the newest member of our board of directors. Faith is the CEO of the Kenya Land Alliance.  For the last 19 years, she has been working with marginalized Communities to support them to identify and claim their rights.

Global Land Alliance's Shahd Mustafa, Malcolm Childress and Cynthia Berning were published in this month's journal of "Reviving Aleppo". Their article, entitled "Perception of Tenure Security, a Helpful Tool in the Recovery and Rebuilding of Post-conflict Aleppo", discussed the potential benefits of using Prindex as a tool for rebuilding and recovering the post-conflict city.

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities across the world are affected by environmental, social and cultural degradation that are tied to the way land tenure is governed. In international discourse there has been an increasing focus to not just uplift the struggles of IPLC, but to make sure that their voices, sovereignty and knowledge have a seat at the table. The inclusion of Indigenous peoples in decision making processes and self-determination goes beyond consultation, the rights set forth under United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) obliges the free, prior and informed consent.

Today Malcolm Childress, GLA’s Executive Director and Audace Kubwimana, Africa Regional Coordinator of the International Land Coalition (ILC), signed a Memorandum of Understanding which makes official the organizations’ longstanding mutual effort to support and advocate for advancing gaps in land data and dialogues in the Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Last week, Prindex Co-Director Anna Locke attended the India Land and Development Conference 2023: Land - People Relations: Diversity and Transitions, cosponsored by Global Land Alliance. She reflects on the conference, people she met, and the future of land governance in India. Special thanks to the Center for Land Governance and Pranab Choudhury for convening an important space for dialogue and collaboration.

Global Land Alliance acknowledges that we, as individuals and as an organization, benefit from the traditional land of the Nacotchtank and the Piscataway Conoy People working in what is now known as Washington D.C. As a core value of our mission, we believe that the Indigenous knowledge is key to advancing rights to land and resources.