Fifth ILDC 2021 is being organized amidst the pandemic crisis. We have rescheduled the event to November and decided to go for a hybrid mode to continue instituting the event every calendar year since its inception, as per the decision of the Organizing Committee. Adapting to the context, this year’s theme has been agreed as ‘Land Security for Peace and Resilience’
ILDC2021 will continue to extend platforms for enriching and interdisciplinary land conversations in form of sessions for presentations, panel discussions, round tables as well as avenues like master classes, lightening talks and focussed conclaves. We invite presentations and conversations on, good and not so practices, scalable as well as downsized models, techniques and innovations in India and learnings, issues and challenges across land domain from India, South Asia as well as from around the globe. ILDC 2021 hopes to promote data and evidence based, practicum oriented, academic research, action research, entrepreneurial ideas and achievements as well as activists and advocacy propositions around disciplines and cross cutting fields connecting land and development. As the world is dealing with a pandemic, its repercussions being reflected in India as well, along with an economic crisis and mass reverse migration which has significantly impacted lives and livelihoods of people across sectors, ILDC2021 invites attention to the relevance and threats of land security, in the context of inclusive and sustainable development with inbuilt resilience to future shocks. Land being a solid form of physical and cultural capital in India, land tenure security and its potential impacts on livelihood security, food and nutritional Security, health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities are worth exploring especially in the pandemic context. Furthering inclusion has been an agenda of ILDC and how diverse tenure regimes around different land uses influence land rights of marginalized groups with a special focus on women’s land rights, indigenous rights and customary tenure regimes, farmers and pastoralists etc. will be preferred for deliberation this year. Of particular interest to this year’s conference is also the assessment of potentials, preparedness and pathways with respect to the land tenure issues and options in the UN decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021 - 2030), starting this year. ILDC as a platform seeks to trigger intensification and diversification of meaningful and strategic land engagements by land actors within and across pillars of Samaj (Society), Sarkar (Government), Khabar (Media) and Bazaar (Market) and therefore experiences, cases, reviews and debates on how these stakeholders interact among and with each other to engage with land tenure security are welcome. ILDC 2021 seeks to also highlight Land and Technology Interface and encourages conversations on relevant ideas, pilots, good practices and failures, as India goes digital aiming conclusive tilting and open land market relying on drones, satellite imageries, block chains, AL and ML to map, document, update and seamlessly link land records. Private sector Influence on land is now substantive and transcends across land uses and tenures with ambition for growth, achievement of Net Zero targets and attention for sustainability, both steadfastly increasing. While conflicts, alienation and exclusion often attributed to it, sporadic examples around land responsible-investments and innovative win-win engagements have started upcoming. ILDC 2021, seeks to expand private sector interactions, particularly around cases and willingness related responsible-investment, technology innovation not only as CSR and R&R, but also as a core strategy of corporate governance, underlining the criticality of land as key investment crucible. Cultural and artistic expressions around land has been part of our culture, literature, dance forms, films and storey telling. Along with intellectual deliberations, political discourses and social narratives, they subtly yet substantially influence and impact land awareness, engagements and trigger changes. This ILDC onwards, we provision space for sharing and display of such expressions as a lighter yet impactful medium of communicating land.
ILDC2021 will have following cross-cutting TRACKs, around which, we invite proposals for sessions, presentations, ideas and deliberations, that also addresses this year’s theme of ‘Land Security for Peace and Resilience’
1. Impacts of Pandemic and Relevance of Land Tenure Security in a Post Pandemic World
COVID 19 pandemic has exposed systemic failures, which proved fatal to millions of people, with marginalised groups being the worst affected. The pandemic saw loss of lives and livelihoods, resulting in mass reverse migration with significant impacts across sectors.
The sub-themes on this track may include
2. Inclusive Land Tenure Security
Inclusive Land Tenure Security is the goal for land right actors and land tenure professionals. This is key to sustainable and equitable development. Proposals/submissions are invited on inquiries, investigations and analysis of land tenure of these marginal group across land-uses viz. agriculture, homestead, forest, pasture, coastal, urban and common lands. Inclusion theme of ILDC2021 will be deliberated in sessions with conversations on including the excluded and addressing the land rights-apartheid: women, landless, homesteadless, farmers, particularly share-croppers and tenants, slum-dwellers, dalits and indigenous communities, forest dwellers, pastoralists and coastal communities.
3. Land and Technology Interface
Examining the ever-growing role of technology in the land domain through examples on impacts, failures and ideas around use of information technology, GIS, machine learning and mobile and drone technology innovations etc. esp. those with future scope and demonstrated potential to reduce cost and time, augment efficiency, enhance local capacity and participation and promote decentralization of land administration and make land tenure more secure and inclusive.
Contributions around innovations in the following areas are welcome, though landscape of innovations remain open for other ideas and experiences:
4. UN decade of Ecosystem Restoration and Land Rights
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021 2030), also the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. It can help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent a mass extinction. It will only succeed if everyone plays a part and required land is available without conflict affecting existing rights and tenures.
We hope to check the status of SDG goals, measures to prevent climate change, scalable models towards attaining SDG’s 1(No Poverty), 2(Zero Hunger) , 5 (gender equality) ,8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) ,10 (reduced inequality), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 13 (Climate Action ), 16 (Peace and Justice Strong Institutions ) and understand the need for tenure security to further ecosystem restoration across open access resources, commons or private land.
5. Interactions : Sarkar (Government), Bazaar (Market), Khabar (Media) and Samaj (Society) and Zameen (Land)
The focus would be on rationale, role and potential of partnerships to ensure and enhance land tenure security and to overcome land sector limitations around resources, knowledge and innovations.
We are more keenly looking at experiences and arguments around inter-sectoral/multi-level/innovative partnerships with impactful or potentially disruptive change in addressing chronic and critical problems in land sector esp. around land administration/governance, land information and data and land-technologies and innovations. While we are open to new ideas around partnerships, some potential sub-themes could be Land relations are dynamic and have evolved and shaped through interaction with society, government and market. Submissions under this thread are expected to look at how state, civil society and market interacts with and change land tenure and if and how these interactions can improve land tenure security.
6.Land Administration and Governance Reforms
1.0 Land Laws, Administration and Reforms :
1. State experiences on Land administrations and potential learnings / best practices 4. Forest Rights Reforms: experiences and learning around implementation, role and contribution of stakeholders 2.0 Land and investments 1. Land Acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation: Experiences around mining, power, infrastructure, real estate; land banks, SEZs, 3.0 Land and Civil Society 1. Land as a discipline/inter-discipline in academia : Universities, B-Schools
2. Land leasing reform, consolidation: Arguments for and against leasing reforms, experiences from the pioneering states, lessons, good practices
3. Land Record Reforms: Achievements and learning from State-led reform around DILRMP and conclusive titling, sporadic non-state innovations.
5. Urban land and housing reforms: State innovations around slum dwellers’ right, affordable housing, addressing informalities
6. Decentralization and localization of land governance
7. Land laws and legal reforms
8. Land administration and institutional reforms
2. Responsible and Sustainable Land Investments: Cases, experiences and attempts by the public sector, linear infrastructure, private sectors, civil society; Land engagements as part of CSR, R&R and Corporate Governance
2. Land Rights actions and advocacy : NGOs and Networks
3. Media and land rights reporting
7. Land Information and Data
Relevance, status, impacts and contribution of Land Information in informing and improving land governance and tenure security and in monitoring and evaluation as well as in assessing impact of land-interventions. Of particular interest are open data and standards, transparency and access, monitoring of global (viz. SDG, VGGT, GLII etc.) and local (viz. DILRMP land indicators, Women Land Rights, Landlessness etc.) land indicators, land datasets including online and geo-spatial databases; status and contribution of land-data stakeholders; methodologies in collecting and reporting land information etc.
- Land open data, standards and access to land information
- Land Indicators, methodologies, data sets and actors
- Preparedness for reporting SDG land indicators