Supporting liveable climate sensitive cities through integrated urban land management

In January 2025 I flew to Jakarta and was struck by the seemingly endless spread of the city while enjoying the bird’s eye view – with mass skyscrapers stretching well beyond my little plane window. This glimpse of Jakarta from above gave credence to statistics from the World Bank that between 1980 and 2002, almost one-quarter of the land area of Jakarta was converted from non-urban uses (e.g. agriculture, wetlands) to urban uses for industry, commerce and housing.

Hosted by the Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project – implemented by Land Equity International and GRET – the Forum marked both a culmination of ten years of collaboration and an invitation to chart new trajectories for land, climate, and community resilience across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

TLI focuses on three interrelated pathways: investors, the national business ecosystem and the global and regional development community, employing a multi-tiered approach to change investor practices and enabling environments at all levels. The Project utilises a variety of tools and methods to do this including the development of tech tools like the Risk-Reward Model and regular cross-sectoral events, as Dr. Boupha references below. The end product of this is to promote and incentivise transformation and alignment with TLI practices.

On 17th December 2024 around midday, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck just 30 km away from Vanuatu’s capital city of Port Vila. No stranger to disasters, the nation has weathered three major cyclones in 2023 alone. But recovery from this impact has felt a little different. 14 people tragically lost their lives, and an estimated 80,000 people were impacted nationally. Some six months on, parts of the CBD still remain closed to the public as the reconstruction effort continues: many roads still require repair and demolition of unsafe buildings is ongoing. And new urban paradigms are emerging, with many businesses relocating ‘to the suburbs’ – with no intent to return. 

Thanks Naia.  The acronym VARS stands for the Vanuatu Affordable and Resilient Settlements Project and focuses on both existing settlement upgrades within the town of Port Vila and a new greenfield low-income subdivision that the Vanuatu Government is developing in its capacity as a developer.  Our consultancy team of Kate Fairlie (from LEI), Jennie Day and I are providing policy, legal, marketing and advisory services to support the development of the greenfield subdivision project.

Sustainable land management involves maintaining the balance between environmental, economic and social needs, ensuring that land use is both productive and resilient. It is key to ensuring that future generations can also utilise and benefit from this crucial resource. By ensuring that land ownership, rights, and responsibilities are clearly defined and registered, a government is taking the first steps toward the goal of sustainable land management. When done properly, land administration systems help to provide tenure security and maintain and protect equal land rights. It can also enhance transparency and accountability, which reduces disputes and promotes fair access to resources.

Please note that the names of those quoted in the article have been changed.

Finance for nature-based solutions is on the upswing. The voluntary carbon market (VCM) and carbon investments have seen remarkable growth, particularly for projects that incentivize protection of forests and other landscapes in carbon-rich regions such as the Mekong, and is projected to mobilize up to US$5 billion annually in the next decade. Yet, like any credible market, the VCM must be inclusive, grounded in an enabling policy environment, and with mutual benefits for people, nature, and climate. But the price of carbon has taken a plunge in recent years (Forest Trends 2024, World Bank 2024) as a result of a host of issues and concerns that are summarized as a lack of environmental and social “integrity.” Though not all forest-based carbon projects have come under scrutiny, they currently command weaker prices than many other sectors, signaling a lack of market confidence.  

Globally, women currently own and control less than 20% of the world’s land. In lower income (‘developing’) countries, this figure is as low as 10%. Low documentation levels are an exacerbating factor – 75% of the world’s population cannot prove they own the land on which they live and work, and it’s estimated that 90% of Africa’s land mass remains undocumented.  What this means is increased vulnerability for women – women who farm the land, live on the land, invest on the land, but who – without their rights recognised – ultimately have no control over the land.

In just a few days the World Bank’s newly relaunched Annual Land Conference will commence in Washington DC! The 2024 Conference, which has the theme Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action, aims to highlight effective strategies for securing land tenure and access in support of climate change mitigation and adaption.