Call for Papers: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015: Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity

Sep 14, 2014 | The World Bank

The World Bank is pleased to announce the 16th Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty being held from March 23 – 27, 2015 at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C. Participants include leaders and professionals from across governments, civil society, academia, the private sector and partners to interact and discuss innovative approaches to improving land governance. Last year’s conference attracted more than 1,000 participants from 101 countries; 60 percent of participants were from developing countries, about a fourth representing government officials and another fourth from international organizations.

The theme for 2015 is Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity. The topic highlights that while land tenure affects the distribution of assets between men and women, generations, and social groups, patterns of land use will have far-reaching implications for welfare and other socio-economic outcomes at household, community, or landscape level. Although they are by no means a silver bullet, recent innovations in geospatial technologies provide exciting opportunities to document and analyze determinants as well as impacts of land use change that are of great relevance for policy, projects, and research in this area.

Papers are invited for presentation at the conference for the following thematic areas:

  1. Land tenure, climate smart land use, and resilience.
  2. The role of land tenure in effecting urban form, density, and urban-rural linkages.
  3. Impacts of large scale land-based investment, implementation challenges, and policy implications.
  4. Scalable approaches to improving tenure security and their impacts.
  5. Using geospatial technologies to monitor land use, improve delivery of land services, and improve land governance.
  6. Harnessing the potential of open data for transparency.
  7. Advances with securing and protecting land rights from a gender perspective.
  8. Innovations on improving access to justice.
  9. Tenure security in conflict states and resource rich economies
  10. Benchmarking,  performance monitoring and policy dialogue: from local to global

Authors interested in presenting at the conference are requested to submit an initial 800 to 1,500 word abstract beforeOctober 31th 2014 using the online form. A technical committee will decide on paper acceptance and base these reviews on the following criteria:

  • Innovative nature and policy relevance
  • Contribution to the literature and general body of knowledge
  • Quality of methodology and analytical rigor
  • Links to capacity building and best practice exchange

Selection outcomes will be communicated by December 1st, 2014.

Authors of selected abstracts will need to register online by December 31st 2014 (incl. payment of a registration fee) and submit the final paper of between 6,000 and 12,000 words, together with a 200 word summary by January 31st 2015 and a power point for presentation at the conference by February 15, 2015.

Paper presenters are responsible to secure their funding for travel and accommodation at the conference (see the hotel page for details). Upon request, the conference organizers will be able to provide a letter of attestation to presenters in an effort to allow them to seek funding from other sources.