From Evidence to Action: Giving Land Rights a Stronger Voice on the Global Agenda

Editorial – About a year ago, when I decided to produce the mini-documentary 'Solid Ground: How Land Is Shaping Tomorrow,' I began with a simple conviction: Land deserves a more prominent place in the conversations shaping our collective future.

https://youtu.be/Spl6RR-EJgI?si=9835PKycsG7ZIaCh

Importantly, we are not referring to land here merely as territory, property or a physical asset. But land as the place where rights, livelihoods, identity, investment, food systems, climate action, housing, infrastructure, technology, peace and human security intersect.

I wanted Solid Ground to make that connection visible.

The documentary opens with the words, “Land. It’s where every story begins.”

That statement captures something I have come to believe even more strongly through years of working on housing, land and property rights, development policy, communications and advocacy. Whether we are discussing climate change, food security, urban resilience, environmental justice, economic growth, displacement, the rule of law or international peace and security, land is rarely far from the centre of the equation.

The evidence supports that proposition.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) describes tenure as crucial to the livelihoods of billions of people and connects responsible tenure governance with food security, poverty reduction, sustainable livelihoods, social stability, housing security, environmental protection and sustainable economic development.

The World Bank similarly places land at the centre of major development challenges, connecting land and property rights with economic growth, urbanisation, jobs, gender equality, climate action, social cohesion and conflict risk.

Yet therein lies an important paradox.

We have spent decades building the evidence for land rights. We now need to become equally sophisticated at building the case for action.

The visibility gap

The global land community has produced an extraordinary body of research, data, policy frameworks, methodologies, technical guidance and practical experience.

That work remains indispensable.

Indeed, FAO's 2026 assessment of land tenure and governance brings together data from governments, civil society and academia specifically to strengthen the evidence base for action across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other international frameworks. The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGTs), endorsed in 2012, meanwhile established the first comprehensive global instrument on tenure developed through intergovernmental negotiations.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply an absence of evidence. It is what happens between evidence and action.

Data does not automatically create political priority. Research does not automatically produce public understanding. Technical consensus does not automatically mobilise investment. And evidence, however compelling, does not automatically create the coalitions required to turn an issue into a sustained global priority.

That requires communication. It requires advocacy. It requires partnerships.

And increasingly, it requires the strategic use of digital platforms, audience intelligence, compelling storytelling, coalition-building and the techniques that organisations outside international development have long used to move people from awareness to engagement and from engagement to action.

This is the space in which I believe the land sector must now invest much more deliberately.

We should not communicate land. We should communicate what land makes possible.

One of the difficulties facing the land rights agenda is the way we sometimes frame the issue itself.

Land-at-Scale in Mozambique is just one of many programmes with a clear track record of results that directly impact local communities, while helping to improve the operations and processes of local and national institutions of government and civil society. This is the lens through which the land agenda must be consistently seen. (Photo: Mozambique Terra Firma)

For specialists, concepts such as tenure security, cadastral systems, fit-for-purpose land administration, customary tenure and land governance carry considerable meaning. For many decision-makers outside the sector, however, those terms can appear highly specialised.

The opportunity is not to abandon technical language or dilute complex issues. It is to translate them.

A finance minister may need to understand land through investment, taxation, infrastructure and economic productivity.

A climate negotiator may need to see it through adaptation, mitigation, land restoration and community resilience.

A humanitarian leader may encounter land through displacement, return, housing and property restitution.

A mayor may see it through housing, informal settlements, planning, infrastructure and municipal finance.

A farmer experiences it through access, tenure security, productivity and inheritance.

An Indigenous community may experience it through territory, culture, identity, stewardship and self-determination.

A woman without recognised tenure rights may experience land through economic security, bargaining power, inheritance, housing and protection from dispossession.

These are not separate agendas with an occasional connection to land. They demonstrate why land is fundamentally interconnected with many of the world's most consequential policy challenges.

FAO, for example, explicitly identifies responsible tenure governance as an enabling condition for land degradation neutrality because access, use and management rights affect sustainable land and water management decisions. Its broader tenure work similarly identifies equitable access to land and tenure security as fundamental to sustainable food systems transformation and the SDGs.

Our communications therefore need to make those connections impossible to overlook.

A new communications architecture for land rights

At LPN Global, the direction we envisage is built around a relatively straightforward proposition:

This does not mean communications becomes an accessory added at the end of a research project.

It means communications becomes part of the strategy from the beginning.

I believe this requires at least six interconnected shifts.

First, we must move from disseminating information to influencing agendas.

Publishing a report is an output. Securing attention to its implications among the institutions and individuals capable of acting on it is a strategic objective.

Every major piece of land research should therefore ask not only, What have we learned? but also: Who needs to know? Why should they care? What decision can this evidence inform? Who can influence that decision? What narrative will resonate with them? And what do we want them to do next?

That changes communications from distribution to strategy.

Second, we must build narratives around people, not only systems.

Land governance can become extraordinarily technical. But ultimately, land rights concern people.

They concern the farmer deciding whether it is safe to invest in her land. The family living with the possibility of eviction. The displaced person hoping to return home. The Indigenous community protecting ancestral territory. The entrepreneur seeking collateral or a secure location from which to build a business. The community attempting to rebuild after a disaster.

The numbers tell us the scale of the challenge. Human stories tell us what those numbers mean.

The strongest advocacy combines both.

Third, we must connect land deliberately to the agendas already commanding global attention - and it is quite encouraging to see some rather deliberate efforts in this regard.

Rather than repeatedly asking policymakers to enter a standalone conversation about land, the land community should increasingly enter the conversations policymakers are already having.

Climate finance. Artificial intelligence. Food security. Migration and displacement. Urbanisation. Biodiversity. Renewable energy. Gender equality. Conflict prevention. Housing affordability. Infrastructure. Economic resilience.

In each case, the question should be: Where is the land dimension, and what happens if it is ignored?

That approach can expand the constituency for land rights far beyond the traditional land sector.

Fourth, we need to borrow intelligently from modern marketing.

International development has sometimes been uncomfortable with the language of marketing. It should not be.

Strategic marketing begins with understanding audiences - their motivations, behaviours, information environments, barriers and triggers for action.

The same principles can strengthen advocacy.

Different audiences require different propositions, messengers, formats and channels. A 120-page technical report, a ministerial briefing, a two-minute film, an interactive map, a LinkedIn campaign, a community radio programme and a closed-door policy dialogue can all communicate the same underlying evidence while serving entirely different purposes.

Digital analytics can then help us understand what is reaching people, what is resonating and where engagement is translating into action.

The objective is not visibility for visibility's sake.

It is purposeful visibility.

Fifth, partnerships must become part of the communications model.

No organisation can reposition the global land agenda alone.

The sector needs coalitions extending beyond traditional land institutions to climate organisations, financial institutions, technology companies, universities, urban networks, humanitarian organisations, environmental movements, women's organisations, Indigenous organisations, youth networks, media organisations and the private sector.

These should not merely be implementation partnerships. They can become advocacy partnerships.

The question is no longer simply, Who can fund this work?

It is also, Who can carry this message into rooms we cannot reach ourselves?

That is how an issue begins to move across institutional boundaries.

Sixth, we must measure action - not simply attention.

Communications measurement must evolve accordingly.

Reach matters. Website traffic matters. Media coverage matters. Engagement matters.

But those should be intermediate indicators.

The deeper questions are whether communications and advocacy contributed to land being incorporated into a national strategy; whether a government changed policy; whether a donor funded an intervention; whether a new coalition formed; whether land rights entered a climate plan; whether communities gained greater voice in decision-making; or ultimately whether more people enjoyed secure and equitable rights.

That requires connecting communications metrics with policy and programme outcomes.

From a communications funnel to an impact pathway

I see this as a deliberate change process. Evidence creates credibility. Credibility, communicated effectively, creates understanding.

Understanding, when connected to people's priorities, creates relevance. Relevance, amplified through trusted messengers and strategic partnerships, creates attention and engagement.

Sustained engagement can build constituencies and coalitions. Coalitions can generate advocacy and political momentum.

And political momentum, connected to viable policy and investment options, can contribute to action.

The pathway can therefore be understood as:

Evidence → Understanding → Relevance → Visibility → Engagement → Coalition → Advocacy → Action → Impact.

Not every policy process will move neatly through those stages. But thinking this way forces us to ask an important question at every point: What must happen next for this evidence to matter?

That is a very different question from, How many people downloaded the report?

'Solid Ground' and the story we need to tell

This thinking sits behind 'Solid Ground: How Land Is Shaping Tomorrow.'

The film deliberately moves beyond conventional representations of land administration.

It considers regenerative agriculture and carbon capture. Renewable energy and agrivoltaics. Urban planning and green infrastructure. Vertical farming and water conservation. Geospatial technologies, artificial intelligence and GIS. Indigenous rights, women's rights and the rights of people without formally recognised tenure. Policy reform, community stewardship, development finance and public-private partnerships.

Its central argument is that land is not simply the ground beneath our feet.

It is infrastructure for human development.

And how societies govern access to, use of and control over it will profoundly influence the future they build.

Solid Ground: From Evidence to Action. Land sits at the intersection of some of the defining challenges of our time. Unlocking its potential requires connecting evidence, people, partnerships and advocacy to move land rights from importance to priority. (Illustration: LPN Global)

The evidence base already exists to make much of this case. Globally, FAO reports that roughly 1.1 billion adults feel insecure about their land rights, while only about 35 per cent of land is formally documented. These are not merely statistics for the land sector. They point towards questions of development, governance, investment, inequality and human security.

Our task is to ensure that decision-makers understand those connections.

Building a movement around the evidence

This is ultimately where LPN Global's communications and advocacy work must go.

I do not want us to contribute to a false choice between rigorous evidence and compelling communications. We need both.

We need researchers producing credible evidence.

We need land professionals developing workable solutions.

We need communities shaping the decisions affecting their rights.

We need policymakers capable of converting recommendations into institutional reform.

We need advocates building coalitions.

We need communicators translating complexity into meaning.

We need storytellers making the consequences human.

We need digital strategists finding and engaging new audiences.

And we need partnerships capable of carrying the agenda into spaces where land has historically been peripheral.

The next frontier for the land rights agenda may therefore be less about proving, yet again, that land matters.

It may be about becoming far better at showing why it matters to everyone else.

Because evidence is essential, but evidence sitting on a shelf changes very little.

Evidence understood can change minds.

Evidence connected to people's priorities can build constituencies.

Evidence amplified through communications, advocacy and partnerships can influence agendas.

And evidence converted into collective action can change lives.

That is the opportunity before us.

Land deserves its place at the table - not because those of us working in the sector believe it does, but because the connections between land and some of the defining challenges of our time are increasingly difficult to ignore.

Our responsibility now is to make those connections visible, understandable and actionable.

That, for me, is how we begin moving the global land rights agenda from evidence to action - and from importance to priority.