 My name is Julia Pamphill and I'm the Director of the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America. I'm so pleased to be with you here today and I would like to thank USAID for co-convening and co-hosting this important event with us. Ten years ago, donors from around the world came together to negotiate a first-of-its-kind agreement to strengthen and secure land rights in the context of food security. This agreement, the voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of land, forests, and fisheries, or the VGGT, was negotiated in a unique, inclusive process by the UN Committee on World Food Security. It included more than 100 UN member states, 30 civil society organizations, a private sector network, and numerous observers. After two years of intense negotiations, the VGGT was unanimously adopted in 2012. The arrival of the VGGT was hailed as a watershed moment for the land rights community and it prompted a flurry of activity and funding. Donors allocated billions of dollars to implement the principles enshrined in the VGGT across dozens of countries. Ten years later, we can look back and ask, what have we accomplished? What have we learned? And where do we go from here? I'm so thrilled to welcome you to this event where we will have a fantastic panel that will take stock of a decade of implementing the VGGT and discuss the future of this landmark agreement. Before the panel begins, we are so pleased to welcome Mr. Adriano Campalina, Senior Policy Officer at the UN FAO to provide a keynote address reflecting from the FAO's perspective on the 10 years of implementing the VGGT where we go from here and what's next. After Adriano is finished with his remarks, we will move into a panel discussion. I'll introduce the panelists just before the discussion. We will have about 35 to 40 minutes of discussion followed by a short audience Q&A and we will wrap at the top of the hour. Thank you again for joining us. You can submit your questions via the Q&A feature on the bottom of your screen. So please do participate and we welcome all of your comments and questions. And with that, I will welcome Adriano over to you. Thank you very much, Julia. And thank you so much for the invitation. Thanks, Carol. It's a great pleasure to be here and I think it's natural to have FAO being part of this panel as the VGGT has become one of the key programs of our organization. I'm very pleased to be part of these reflections because somehow I had a very interesting turn of points of view if you want or advantage points of view about the VGT because during the negotiations I was then a part of civil society. I was very involved in negotiations with Action8. Before the negotiations during the times of E-Card and other events, I was very, working very closely with produced organizations in Brazil and now I'm leading the LEN tenure team in FAO. So it's interesting to be able to reflect 10 years down the line and try to take advantage of these different advantage observation points about the VGT. So let me share my screen briefly. Please do confirm if you can see. Yes, we can see fine, Adriano. Great. Thank you so much. So let me, again, I'm Adriano Camponino, lead the LEN tenure team in FAO and the LEN tenure is part of the Inclusive Rural Transformation Generic Quality Division. What I will try to do briefly on the next 10 years is to do a bit of a reflection on the endorsement technical cooperation, the mode stakeholder platforms and capacity development about the VGT. Reflect a little bit on the adoption, implementation and impacts and try to identify some key challenges and opportunities for improving the governance of tenure in the future. So as far as the endorsement is, sorry, I think it stopped somehow. Can we just restart? Apologies for that. Give me just one second. My computer is playing games with me. Alrighty. Okay. I think we are back in. So one thing that's very important for us to reflect and to recognize is number one that the VGT has become a reference for minimum standards on LEN tenure governance by many international organizations through the endorsement of the guidelines on practice. That would go from G8 to G20 to the World Bank, so OECD. So having the VGT as a minimum standard had a very important, I would say, normative aspect of really giving the clear sense of direction when it comes to LEN tenure to a number of very important players on development. Second is to say that awareness raising and building support for governance of tenure and technical cooperation has had an important element of number one really mobilized across the world. A number of different stakeholders and building capacity on the governance of tenure. So we can go here from the awareness raising of LEN tenure rights holders, the awareness raise and capacity building of LEN officers in different governments around the world as well as civil society. So I think there has been an important increase on the number of people in different sectors that have become a lot more aware about the guidelines as well as have had their capacity built in a much more in depth way. For instance, the number of manual technical manuals that organizations as FAU and others have created about the VGT is extremely important. In our case, we're 12 technical manuals. We also see a number of initiatives to give visibility to LEN tenure related issues that has become extremely important as well as the creation of different types of coalitions that brought together many stakeholders to try to implement this jointly agreed and developed set of priorities. So for instance, the ILC that's here in the panel is a good example of that amongst others. The collaboration among stakeholders through the most stakeholder platforms is also something that was very important. FAU alone was involved on more than 30 mode stakeholder platforms in 15 countries. And that has a very important element because it's not just to create collaboration space, but it's also to create a space for negotiation in the space for collective action at two levels. At the level of the collective action amongst different types of stakeholders that come together to the table to negotiate the next steps on LEN tenure, either policymaking or policy implementation and so on and so forth, but also the collective action creating a space for a stronger ability to the collective action of the LEN tenure rights holders themselves. It's quite crucial to change the political or the power relations that govern the LEN tenure governance issues. So it creates a space or it creates a possibility of LEN tenure rights holders to get a stronger ability to influence and to hold to account that it matters when it comes to LEN tenure rights. And as I said, the capacity development has been extremely strong across the world with learning programs and tools for applying the VGT being developed and implemented in more than 60 countries. But having said that, it's important to also reflect and although FAU has an important mandate to implement this VGT program in the UN system, we also want to be able to be reflexive about that. So first of all, what is the level of impact in the incorporation of the VGT into national legal frameworks? So we have had the Sierra Leone national land policy in 2015. We have new laws developed in Malin, Liberia. We have the VGT principles incorporated into new or revised land laws on national land policies in Vietnam, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, Niger. And just to bring something very new last week, the Chad government has endorsed the process of starting a new land policy formulation. So it's still ongoing. But having said that, the number of countries in which we have achieved sufficient change on the national legal frameworks remains not as big. As one could have ambition for. And I think that's an interesting element for us to reflect together on why. Secondly, we have had the recognition and protection of legitimate tenure rights, especially costumery tenure and measurable improvements in land tenure security. In many countries we did achieve that. And I think one of the elements that probably comes across as the strongest one is the recognition of women tenure rights. So in the countries where we have achieved enough process of discussion of land tenure and the importance of the voluntary guidelines, that probably is the vulnerable group, if you want to people in a situation of vulnerability that have had a stronger recognition of rights across quite a number of countries. I would say less impact has been achieved when it comes to indigenous peoples. And I think that's an area of great concern for FAO as well as other groups in the situation of vulnerability. We have had examples of tenure rights of marginalized groups being recognized and advanced in countries such as Niger, Kenya, as well as Sierra Leone, Senegal, and many others. We have had an important element of the development of agreements around the responsible land-based investment. The right, the right, the responsible cultural investment, the CFS right was a very important instrument that was adopted, which showed the international community capacity to react after the incredible increase on land grabbing in the 2008 to 2010. So there has been an important element of a new agreement into that. And the last reflection, and I think maybe is the most important one, is that the real impact depends a lot on the political economy at the country level, not the VGT by itself. And I think it's important to recognize that. When you take a soft law, and many people in the panel were involved on the negotiation of that soft law, that comes with a limit of its own nature. What we have seen on the most recent FAO external evaluations of our program is that the ability to actually change the political economy around land is the most crucial element that can actually advance land rights. If we do not change power dynamics, it's very difficult to change actually the hard laws, as well as to make sure that the changed hard laws are implemented in a way that really advance the tenure rights of the most vulnerable. So I think here is probably a key reflection for today, 10 years down the line. What is it that we can do besides having what we believe in FAO as a very important framework for land tenure rights, besides building capacity, besides building awareness, besides building space for multi stakeholder dialogue, what else can we do that actually can change the core of the political economy around land and change the power dynamics at council level and at community level to make sure that the implementation happens in the most effective way. And in that sense, we do identify five key opportunities. And it's a bit of like a two sides of the same coin of opportunities and challenge. The first one is the more we try to say what is the level of success, what is the level of achievement of the BGT, we always get into one big challenge is the lack of sufficient and comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of the BGT across the world. So I think there is an analytical challenge and opportunity for all of us to put a lot more effort on implementing a comprehensive monitoring program and also recreating the political commitment and the political environment towards having countries reporting to the CFS on the progress on each one of the countries. As you know, on the very end of the BGT, that is the monitoring evaluation chapter, which we believe could be implementing a much stronger way creating a space for accountability. Second, there is still a lot of opportunity for us to improve coordination of initiatives and activities by various stakeholders, including donors to achieve change at scale. On our program, we have in many places realized that the level of coordination between different donors, between UN agencies, between civil society was a lot less than what could have done. And reversely, whenever we have had a sufficiently strong coordination, as well as long-term political will, that's where we got the best results. So although the policies where we have had a big change on policy, we're not that many, there is a lot of lessons we can learn from those. And one of those is this one, the ability to coordinate efforts, the ability of having political commitment and long-term political commitment. And thirdly, the ability to understand that changing the governance of land requires long-term commitment by all actors involved. It is an issue that's at the core of power relations and doesn't change from night to day. Sometimes we even change the policy, but the policy is not implemented. So there's an element here of long-term and very well-rooted collaboration to achieve change. Thirdly, is that we need to scale up and build upon what has worked well in the first decade. And particularly here, I want to emphasize the MSPs, not as a tokenistic element of bringing the stakeholders along, but as an opportunity for land tenure rights holders to have an increased ability to influence policymaking and to hold to account that it bears for the implementation of such changes. Fourthly, we like to focus more on securing legitimate tenure rights, especially costumary tenure. I think that's a lesson we are learning over that decade is the centrality of costumary tenure for advancing tenure rights of the most vulnerable, and there's a lot more work to be done about that. And finally, we have to do more than to apply the VGT beyond tenure. We believe that there's a huge space for us to really advance tenure rights across a number of other processes. The recent UNCCD COP is a great example of that. So there's an element of mainstreaming tenure on a number of other negotiations, particularly the ones involved involving environment and climate change that may create a great opportunity ahead of us to advance tenure rights. I thank you very much, and I hope that this will help our discussion come in. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Adriano, for those remarks. It was really interesting to hear from the FAO's perspective about some of the really vexing challenges, particularly the political challenges to implementing the VGT's and also some of the ways that you're thinking through addressing those challenges. So thank you very much. Now we will move into the panel discussion portion of this event, and I'm so pleased to have this fantastic panel with us. I will introduce the panelists. We'll have about half an hour of discussion and then move into Q&A. First, I'm thrilled to welcome Carol Boudreau, Senior Land and Resource Governance Advisor at USAID, then Michael Taylor, Secretariat Director for the International Land Coalition, Andres Lang, Advisor for Land Governance for GIZ, and finally, Gregory Meyers, former chair of the VGT negotiations and now an independent consultant. Gregory, I'd like to start with you. You were the chair of the VGT negotiations at the UN. If you could just give us a little bit of brief background, what was the motivation behind something like the VGT being proposed and what was the process like and the feeling in the land tenure community in the spring of 2012 once those negotiations were complete? Oh, good morning, everyone. Julie, I think this is an interesting question to start with, because many of the conditions or challenges that we were facing in 2008, 10, 11, and 12 are very similar to some of the challenges that we're facing right now. We have a food crisis on our hands with spiking food and fuel prices. We have financial crises around the world and some of those same issues that were pushing us to talk about addressing land challenges, we're still facing many of those same challenges today. But just in the interest of time, very quickly, what drove the decision to have the voluntary guidelines was really rooted in something that was happening back in 2008 with the then financial crisis. And there was a lot of concern about large-scale land takings or land grabbing, if you will, across the globe and particularly in Africa. And many governments themselves were accused of abetting in this process and it became of great concern as we saw this large-scale land acquisitions taking place. In parallel to that, there was a food crisis and food price shocks, etc., etc. And so there was some discussion about something that needed to be done about that. So in 2010, the World Bank, FAO, EFI, and UNTED came together and developed something that focused largely on principles for responsible agricultural investment, which was called the PRA, not to be confused with something that the CFS developed five years later. But that document seemed to have some problems and there were some concerns about the way in which that was developed, that it wasn't a very inclusive process and that civil society and the private sector were not involved. And so in some ways, that document was set aside and there was a discussion within the community, the development community and the land community, that maybe we needed to have something that was more inclusive, more open and transparent in the way it was negotiated. And it was decided that the best platform for that would be the CFS. And at that time, it was a discussion that maybe the document or maybe those ideas needed to be pulled apart into two different documents, one that would focus on guidelines for land tenure and one that would focus on guidelines for responsible investment, that they would be linked, but they would be two separate documents or two separate negotiations. So that's what led to, and then there was a decision that we would start with the land tenure guidelines. So we started with that in 2010 and in 2012, after two long years of negotiations, people who were there can remember this, we were able to agree on the guidelines that volunteered to be GTG. So you asked this question, yeah, so what was the feeling after the fact? So aside from exhaustion, I think there was a lot of concern about how this was going to be implemented and how that process was going to play out. And many of the questions that we're asking about it now were questions that we were kind of reflecting on in the sidelines then at that time. How is it going to be funded? What were the priorities going to be? Who was going to do the work? And who was going to monitor the work? And none of those things which were included in the formal negotiations. I myself at the time was a bit concerned about how countries who were part of the negotiations were going to communicate back to their capitals that they had agreed on this. And so what would that mean in terms of how they themselves would take this up? That also was not part of their conversation at that time. So soft law notwithstanding, many of us were really concerned. So how is this going to actually play out? So now we have 10 years of this process, and I think now we have a great opportunity to reflect on what has worked and what hasn't worked. And so I'm looking forward to this discussion now as we move forward. Thank you. Thanks so much, Gregory, for that background and setting us up for the next question, which I will pose to Carol, Mike and Andreas. What does it look like in each of your organizations to put these guidelines into practice? What have you observed over the last decade of trying to implement the VGT? And why don't we start with Carol, then move to Mike and then to Andreas. Thank you so much, Julia. And thanks to Adriano and Gregory for kicking us off. I would say on behalf of USA that we see the VGT as just an enormous legacy, given Gregory's participation and leadership in the process. And our strong uptake of the VGT, we're super excited to celebrate this anniversary and to report out on where we do see some progress. And I agree, I do definitely see progress. So for the sake of time, I'll be pretty quick and succinct. I absolutely see that we are making progress in terms of gender issues and women's land rights. I think donors, both bilateral and multilateral donors, but as well, some governments have really stepped up to the plate and are working to try to implement changes to legal frameworks to provide more equitable access to land and resources. There is clearly a lot more work to do to close an implementation gap and to ensure that gender norms align with legal frameworks, but I do see progress on this front. Adriano actually mentioned the issue of customary land areas. And I see this as an issue that we are making some progress on. USA, for example, has been working in a number of different countries to recognize, secure the legitimate land rights of people living in customary land areas, whether that's in Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique. And I think the results so far are encouraging. One of the great differences between today and 10 years ago is that we do have more fit for purpose technologies and approaches, participatory approaches that we can use on the ground with communities to try to collect information and recognize those rights. And maybe finally on the progress side, I'll say that one of the most important changes over the last 10 years is that we do increasingly have some data about the level of tenure security people, men, women feel with regard to their land and their housing. And so that's just something we didn't have a decade ago. So continuing to develop a really robust set of data and continuing to expand the evidence base to me feels like an enormous step forward. But of course, we have big challenges. I would say that ensuring the sustainability of land administration projects, particularly probe problems related to encouraging subsequent transactions, that's still a real sticking point for us. And something that we all need to work on. The issue of Indigenous peoples land rights has really come up as an incredibly important issue. And making sure that we can work with governments to address those political economy problems, Adriana pointed to in order to recognize and really secure those rights will be critical, not only for climate change goals, but for biodiversity goals. And then we need to make sure that we keep developing our set of compatible and comparable data over time. I think for those on the line who are familiar with it, the PRNDEX project is a really nice example of developing a data set. But we need to continue to collect the data and make sure that we're able to look over time and see what progress is being made. So monitoring of the DGGTs can take place in a number of ways and it's very exciting, I think to see not only the fact, not only found during monitoring, but other groups helping us understand what the status of tenure security is. Thank you, Yulia. I went on a bit, but floor back to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's really great to be part of this discussion and kudos to New America and to USAID for organizing it. It's really an honor to be reflecting on 10 years together with you of the BGGTs. The International Land Coalition was very much part of the negotiations that Gregory described. Many of our members were engaged and so it is a really, really important effort to try and set these principles that everybody could agree on what good land governance is. A year after they were adopted at the Committee for World Food Security, the ILC, the members of ILC put out the Antigua Declaration that came together in Antigua and Guatemala and adopted a set of 10 commitments, which was the way that the ILC membership read the voluntary guidelines. So they took out from the voluntary guidelines the 10 key areas that members coined the term people-centered land governance, that the BGGTs were a way of defining the kind of land governance we wanted to see and, in fact, even raised the bar higher and said, okay, this is what we will work for in the frame of a bunch of guidelines. And so all ILC members since 2012 have adhered to what you call the 10 commitments to people-centered land governance. And that really is the adoption, the integration of what the BGGTs put out into the world into not just what ILC stands for, but what ILC works for. And so it's our program of action. It has been for the last decade. So where have we got over the last decade? Maybe let me just share a couple of reflections from just over a week ago. Our membership came together at the Dead Sea in Jordan. And the Dead Sea Declaration, one of the first statements it makes, is celebrating the 10 years of the BGGTs and reaffirming that the BGGTs are as important and as relevant and as much in needs today as they ever were. One of the reflections I have from sitting in the sessions of the Global Land Forum was listening to a number of government, senior government officials. We were privileged to have a special session with about 15 senior government officials from about 15 countries. And one after the other, they each stood up and they said, we can't push these land reform programs in our countries by ourselves. We need civil society. There are things that civil society can do that we can't do. And it really struck me as an expression of how the principles put out in the BGGTs have become part of our normal discourse. That wasn't the case for those of us that were working in these kind of circles before the BGGTs. There was so much suspicion in many countries between civil society and their governments. And now it's just accepted. And the partnerships, the model of good land governance, which is inclusive participatory that the BGG puts out, is really part of of what we see embraced in many, many countries, including by government officials. And I think that's really, really significant. My last thought comes from a report that we recently put out with the land matrix on trying to assess quantitatively the extent to which the voluntary guidelines have shaped large-scale land-based investments. And unfortunately, the answer is not very well. 78% of all deals assessed by the land matrix for this report showed inadequate attention to the key principles of the voluntary guidelines. So while we have made enormous progress in terms of building a common vision of what good land governance should be in terms of building trust, building partnerships on the ground, still we don't see the kind of the reality of the BGGTs on the ground. And I think in conclusion that really points to what all the speakers before me have said. And that's that unless we get serious about shifting power, we know that the bad land governance we see is beneficial to some people. It's in the interest of some people in power not to be building good land governance models. And so our challenge really is if we want to close that gap between aspiration and reality, then shifting power is really going to be something we're going to have to be seriously. And that's why talking more about Indigenous peoples being in the leadership of securing their land rights is very much what we need to be not just talking about but also doing better and certainly as I will see that's part of our commitment. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, let me thank you Julia and Carol for having GIZ on this panel. And let me try to add a couple of points in addition to what was already mentioned. I think really the BGGTs have really put land on the agenda and we have seen such a spike in investment since 2010. And not only investments but we have also seen a spike in learning. So there's a lot of studies that came out. We have seen a lot of evidence that was actually created. And I think that is very crucial to understand or for us to understand how we can move forward for Germany. And I'm speaking from an implementer's perspective for Germany. Since 2010 there has been a tremendous increase in funding. There's two flexure programs at the moment that GIZ is implementing on behalf of the federal government. And so this is really extraordinary I would say since then. And so the land question and the understanding sort of why land is important really has I think also increased on the part of the donors and of the international discussion. We also have seen in Germany a very vibrant civil society engagement. The federal government itself engages with a lot of civil society groups in Germany. There's a standing working group on VGGT questions. So I think that's also quite crucial to have that conversation within the country. Let me add one thing. In Germany we also have and that's quite interesting also not only the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development working in that field but also the Ministry of Agriculture that's also quite active. So that's also quite interesting. So you see how different parts of the government are actually working with the soft law that we have already talked about. Let me mention two or three things that I find important from an implementer's perspective and what we have learned and from the VGGT. So first of all I'd say the VGGT are really a great guideline when you design programs and I think it was also mentioned by Adriana earlier the concept of working with multi-stakeholder platforms bringing actors together, engaging civil society. It's crucial and these multi-stakeholder platforms they have so many functions to create evidence, they create learnings, they create understanding for each other, you can use them in policy dialogue. I think it's quite a crucial element of technical cooperation which GIZ also uses a lot. And one thing that was mentioned but I want to mention it again I think that's really a milestone I would say that the VGGT have really promoted. That is that we have to combine the traditional and the modern land law and it sounds easy but when you look at implementation actually it's not so easy and you will find a lot of discussions also in the partner countries how to go about it and I think one of the good examples is probably Uganda. Uganda was also mentioned by Adriana earlier. There are some countries that are really innovating and I think that's important and I'm happy to share some links with you later on how GIZ was also able to help a little bit having that conversation and providing some solutions how traditional, securing traditional land rights and securing modern land rights can coexist really well. Last remark, I think the VGGTs also show us that we need to work really at the policy level with our partner countries but we also need to sort of bring in the local experience so the implementation experience and that multi-level approach I think is quite crucial and it's quite maybe not necessarily new for technical cooperation agencies but I think the VGGT really underlines it. It has to go together so you have to work at national level and also at regional local level and yeah these are just some of the some of the experiences I wanted to share and I'm heading back to Yulia. Thank you very much Andres and thank you to the panelists for a really rich set of experiences you know I'm hearing about the critical importance of civil society of working both at the policy level and locally and perhaps some of the shortcomings from you know observed from the participation of the private sector really going back to the principles behind the formation of the VGGTs as an inclusive multi-stakeholder process. So I want to go back to a point that Adriana raised and that Gregory alluded to as well which is around country adoption of the VGGT and this is a question for everyone. What have you observed as to why some countries are adopting the VGGT and some aren't and what are some of the successful ways that you found to encourage that adoption? Yulia maybe I'll kick us off and I'll be very brief I think I appreciated Adriana's pointing to the political economy challenges of adoption of the voluntary guidelines. So he rightly pointed out that there are in countries where the VGGTs are not adopted and where land governance systems are not accountable transparent and responsive to the people there are folks in power who benefit from that situation and so we should all recognize that right and understand that the VGGT may not be adopted if people perceive that the benefits are not adopting them or not outweighed by the costs associated with adopting the guidelines. The guidelines are voluntary they do set a standard that we'd like to see countries address but yeah we need to recognize that that political economy reality is one we have to deal with personally. I think that one really excellent way to deal with that challenge is by engaging in the kinds of network building and advocacy efforts that groups like the ILC engage in. So making sure that local people are clearly articulating what their desires and demands are from their government and backing up those efforts with support from other portions of society can be a really powerful combination. Advocacy efforts I think are critical to shifting the conditions on the ground and and encouraging adoption but I definitely do not want to say that I think this is easy in some countries this is just going to continue to be very difficult over. Thank you Yulia. Yulia let me just jump in here for a second because I'd like to I know we're going to run out of time and I'd like to take the conversation in a slightly different direction. I think it's really important for us to talk about the positive things that have happened right in the the landmark nature of the voluntary guidelines but I think we also need to ask the question have we made how much progress that we've made and could we have made more progress or what could we do differently to make more progress. I think Jolyne Sanjak and I recently published a paper on this trying to triangulate and look at data to ask the question just how many people's property rights have been recognized and or improved or registered as a result of this landmark agreement and we couldn't find data that would link an improvement of property rights to the voluntary guidelines and so that led us to ask a lot of questions around you know monitoring and evaluation and thinking about the way in which we could improve the implementation of this landmark agreement and and when we talk to experts in our field off the record they will say things like you know it's dead nobody cares about it it's you know it's yesterday's news and and that's a little bit concerning because what I see happening is that we had a really big bang in 2012 and then maybe that big bang is starting to dwindle over time right and that we because we were invested in the voluntary guidelines we have one view of it and others have a different view right then maybe it's it's not doing the work that we need to do and when I look at the at the country level right the number of people who still do not have property rights or don't have strong property rights whether it's women or indigenous communities or just you know rural folk it's still a very small number right and they're still subject to having their land taken away from them either by the private sector or by the state or other players and so I think we need to really ask hard questions about so how do we reverse that trend what do we need to do differently that would perhaps improve the application of the voluntary guidelines and this is the question that Jolyon and I asked in this paper and one of those things that we raised was you know maybe we should think about doing business differently maybe you in some ways we need to throw out the baby and the bathwater maybe the way we're doing business now you know bilaterals and multilaterals etc doing our own thing maybe this is not giving us enough momentum and energy to really grapple with the issue and maybe we need to look at other sectors around the world who are also grappling with complex issues and how they've developed different mechanisms different approaches for for dealing with those complex issues so something that's very very different a very different approach the way in which money is raised the way in which money is managed the way in which money is utilized the way in which priorities are selected the way in which we engage with countries so I think that that's the future of the discussion around the voluntary guidelines thinking very differently about the way we're doing the work and the way we're doing the work collectively right so I would really like to hear the other panelists thoughts about the future and how we maybe re-energize this work and maybe try to to build on what we've accomplished so far in a much more significant way thank you. Thanks Gregory and I see Andreas has his hand up over to you Andreas. Thanks I didn't want to be the first one but okay yeah it's an important question I think it points down to really what kind of sustainable financing models we can also think about and let me just say that I think there's also some countries when we say adopting VGGT we actually see a few countries that have their own land laws that were made independently I would say from the VGGTs like Benin for example where I have some experience so there are actually some countries that have laws in place that are not necessarily connected to the VGGTs but that maybe or may have to be part of a more comprehensive study as Gregory was suggesting I think one of the crucial issues is really how can countries first of all what evidence can we create that registering land and the countryside is beneficial and and then how do you afford it and what could be the what could be a financing model behind this and I know not a lot of good examples but I think what I know from Uganda is Uganda has tried to really build this national registry around urban areas around the greater Kampala area and then has started with the help of the World Bank to spread it into the regions and that's building sort of a modern registry so using sort of starting in an urban area and spreading it to regions and then spreading out to rural areas I think is quite an interesting thought I'm not sure if there are other similar or different examples of countries that have developed such models but I think yeah this is this is absolutely central and I would be happy to to learn more about this maybe from the other panelists back to you. Thanks Andreas. Anyone else want to jump in either on the question of you know country implementation or adoption of the VGGT or on Gregory's point of where do we go from here? Julia I think transitioning to where do we go from here is a great idea and also appreciate Gregory's challenges on Andreas's point yeah I think this is part of it's thought to be part of the future how do we identify innovative approaches that are going to meet demand? First of all how do we understand demand from people? Demand in urban areas is very different from demand in some rural areas and so we can't provide the same solution to those different constituents so understanding demand and then providing the appropriate innovative fit-for-purpose approaches to securing tenure is going to work in some places it's going to be more difficult in other places for a variety of concerns. I mean for me I think looking forward one of the critical issues I'm going to part back to something I said a moment ago is that we really need to be focused on ensuring that we are working with local organizations local advocacy networks and government as Mike said at multiple levels local regional national levels to try to come to consensus about what can be done and to provide the evidence base around what works. One of the great developments of the last 10 years is that we do have a growing evidence base a base of rigorous evidence that's been conducted through impact evaluations and through other rigorous means to show us what's the connection between land tenure interventions and increased investment land tenure interventions and women's economic empowerment land tenure interventions and natural improved natural resource management so that's an important piece of the puzzle will we still have societies or countries where your people in leadership positions are not going to want to improve the land governance situation yeah probably so so that's the really challenging question what do you do in the countries what can you do in the countries where leadership is benefiting from dysfunctional systems and how can you encourage change in those situations I think Gregory's right we need to think hard and differently about those challenges thank you Yuli. If I could just jump in Yuli on that point because I think that's absolutely critical and just to reinforce that the amount of innovation we've seen has been tremendous if you have a look on the ILC website at the database of good practice we've compiled since the VGGs came in a database with over 100 practices focused on building people-centered land governance that are not theoretical but based on what the members of ILC are doing and they're great and you know in many ways Africa is at the head of the innovation you know what we see in so many land policy reforms in Africa is tremendous but that's what we're suffering from now is not the lack of good examples it's the political will to get these aspirations or these policies or these guidelines onto the ground and that's why I think it keeps coming back to really what is the center of the VGGs and it's interesting listening to each of the panelists talk as each of us have talked about the VGGs the VGGs is sometimes easy to forget it's a big document it encapsulates so many different aspects of land governance but what we almost always talk about is multi-stakeholder platforms that good land governance is a multi-stakeholder process and that really is at the heart of the VGGs and if we keep coming back to that heart and we focus our efforts on building supporting processes in countries that really the land uses themselves women's organizations indigenous people's organizations farmers organizations young people's organizations are at the helm of then I think looking to the future I have a lot of hope because these are the engines within the countries that will hold their old and government's accountable that will that will keep pushing processes and in those countries where we see progress on the VGGs I think that's a critical success factor I would also just lastly like to give a shout out to the donors that continue to fund land governance reform because as we as we observe there are not many countries that put their own budgets significant budgets of their own into it and and on this panel we have to we have BMZ and we have USA that are real real champions of funding land governance reform and we need we need more of them because because without the funding it's not going to happen thank you so much Mike and thank you Gregory for turning us as you always do towards the future and where do we go from here so we just have a few minutes left for audience Q&A so I'll turn to asking a couple of questions the first one is to Adriano the question is at the end of your remarks you mentioned a point about you know what we can do to do more to apply the VGGT beyond tenure what did you mean by that thanks Julia for I think my video is not is not allowed as yet yeah you cannot start because the host has stopped at it so I don't know if you can allow the video but in the interest of time let me go straight to the to the response basically what what I mean by that is that we should not take a silo approach to land tenure so besides what happens on on the remit of land policy negotiations there's a number of other policymaking that involves land tenure that can be absolutely opportunistic and can bring a lot of new elements two examples we have had the UN Convention on Desertification Combat of Desertification that a couple of years ago have identified land tenure as a fundamental element for land degradation neutrality that's generated recently on this crop that happened a month ago a new manual and a new mandate as well on land tenure and combat to desertification so that's a new avenue of advancing land tenure beyond but in connection with land policy reports another example on the COP26 of on climate when we had the announcement of the pledge of 1.7 billion for indigenous peoples and local communities which I'm very glad to see a number of the signatories of the pledge here us Germany for instance was a historical moment because when when that pledge was made it was very clear that it should focus on indigenous peoples and local communities tenure rights as a fundamental element of stopping deforestation that's again a great avenue to advance tenure rights through those negotiations that's what I mean going beyond but having said that I cannot escape the temptation to go back to Gregory's question looking at the future I think there is a crucial element of really be innovative without losing the core and I think the core the fundamental change that the BGT process has brought is the ability to empower and enable local land land right holders groups and civil society to have a long-term process of holding that iberias to account through the MSPs and through all the process of dialogue so we cannot lose that into lose perspective from that as much as we innovate we need to innovate without losing the ability to strengthen the agency of land tenure rights holders uh on holding the iberias to account because that's what by the end of the day gives a sustainable a sustainability perspective on policy change that you have a group of people that will constantly be able to claim for their rights to hold people to account and to increase their own agency on promoting change on the ground because without that we know that land is very political and it tends to be dominated by the more powerful groups in society thank you thank you Adriano and we'll have time for just one more question that I think we can pose first to Andreas but if Andreas if you'd like to answer quickly and if anyone else would like to jump in that would be fantastic so the question that came in from the audience is specific to Mali and I'll read it I want to understand how the new land law of Mali in 2020 incorporates the principles of the VGGT given the fact that this land incorporates compulsory customary land tenure in the government domain but let me expand that because you had also touched on Uganda and frame the question a little bit more broadly how do you see the interface between the VGGT incorporating customary tenure thank you Julia I cannot say much about Mali honestly for Uganda I think it's crucial here that Uganda has recognized that in different regions of the country you have different types of land of land sort of customs and also requirements of what what people are willing to do and interested to do whether it's going more into a customary way of registering land or you have areas where you have leases so I think and and that's where the VGGTs I think come in the sort of the recognition of the diversity of the country where a country stands at a certain point in time and how then sort of law should react to to that situation to move forward on the land question I think that's crucial and that's what the VGGTs are promoting so I think that's why they really play a very strong role I'm sorry I can't say much about Mali back to you Julia I know we're basically out of time but I'll say very quickly I think a lot of great work has been done in terms of working with customary communities leaders particularly in a country like Zambia USA has been working very closely with the House of Chiefs to promote innovative approaches to registering customary lands and actually working with the Chiefs to promote women's land rights in those areas so more examples like that that can adopt the inclusive participatory approaches that we've all been talking about around implementing the VGGTs I think are important and I wanted to thank all my fellow panelists today and Adriana for being with us I'll turn the floor back to you Julia as we come to the end of our time thank you very much Carol I would like to sincerely thank all of our panelists for a really fantastic discussion you know it's amazing to reflect on a decade of implementing this really landmark agreement and I'll leave you with a you know question that I didn't get a chance to ask because we ran out of time but maybe something for us to ponder which is you know is it time for a VGG 2.0 or a new agreement or you know a modified agreement and what can we do to increase the participation in implementing this really landmark soft law moving forward something for us all to ponder but in the meantime I wish everyone a wonderful day thank you again for joining us and goodbye