As people across the globe turn to information and communication technologies (ICT’s) in their everyday lives, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are also utilizing innovative solutions. Increasingly, communities are integrating their traditional knowledge, skills and values with digital and satellite tools that support them in their efforts to secure their ancestral territories.
While the use of digital tools has the potential to contribute to improving land governance, there are also considerable risks. A 2020 study from FIAN shows that, despite promises to fix unjust land governance, digital technologies can further land grabbing and inequality. Although land is recognized as a human right and is essential for the lives of rural people, digitization projects are often implemented with no human rights safeguards. As many discuss “Tech for Good”, this research has revealed how digital technologies have in fact become new tools for land grabs and sources of profit. In short, one of the persistent criticisms of using digitalization in this sphere is that digitizing land rights can reproduce, consolidate, and even exacerbate existing forms of exclusion and marginalization and is not grounded in a human rights approach.
Some of the main questions which this webinar can address is where does technology meet land rights? And once it does, what are the potential benefits and drawbacks? While we can all agree that tech can be used for good, but what are the outliers and risks? More specifically, is technology and date sharing a viable, practical, and sensitive way for Indigenous communities to fight for their land rights?
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Where Technology Meets Land Rights: Utilizing Technologies to Support Land Governance
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