Material #19: Land and the future
Last fall, NYU’s Center for Global Rights and Justice hosted a conference called FORGE: The Future of Rights and Governance. The conference was committed to “proposing new ideas and strategies for the next generation of global rights and justice thinkers and doers.” I’ve contributed to an article series that followed the conference, with the piece: “Land as a lens for future-facing human rights advocacy.”
Within any change in the ownership of land lies a story about the kind of future being built and who gets to be a part of it. The dynamics of land use and ownership have material implications across the spectrum of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, and the rights of nature.
The article argues that two dimensions are important:
Strengthening transparency and accountability of ownership patterns. This opens up opportunities for collaboration, for example between groups working on anti-corruption, the right to adequate housing, and the right to a healthy environment.
And challenging the status quo—advancing creative new approaches to how humans value and imagine our relationship to land.
With escalating climate change, urbanization, and conflict, the finiteness of the World's land is more apparent by the day. The article links throughout to innovation that’s underway: read it in full here.
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