A Global Guide for Access to Land for Climate Action and Infrastructure

A project funded by The World Bank

Summary:

The Global Guide for Access to Land for Climate Action and Infrastructure is funded by the World Bank, who are working in collaboration with our Unimelb team to develop a Global Program focused on governing land to facilitate Paris Agreement implementation, climate actions and infrastructure investments.

The objective of the project is to develop the linkages between land, people and climate actions and connect these to data and tools to support countries’ abilities to understand the land implications of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) commitments.

The project is motivated by the recognition that a limited understanding of the role land plays in current climate actions hinders development investments. For example, the 2022 Land Gap Report demonstrates that few – if any – countries have confronted the realities of how land is related to carbon-related climate actions in their NDCs. Further, the transborder nature of the ‘net zero’ discourse compounds land decision-making and there remains limited global oversight.

This gap presents an opportunity for the World Bank land program, which has been working in the area of land administration for a significant period as a development intervention to alleviate poverty. By analysing the Bank’s experiences, this project will play a pivotal role in convening stakeholders to identify immediate opportunities and actions to accelerate existing land and climate initiatives. This includes facilitating large-scale implementation as part of a global program framework or within the Bank’s lending portfolio. Such buy-in and action on well-defined integrated targets could unlock substantial investment financing from the World Bank’s internal resources, global environmental funds, and national budgets, and mobilize capital, including potentially private financing. This would offer additional resourcing modalities for countries to meet their defined commitments under the NDCs.