Takeaways on turning risk intelligence into action for rights-based land governance

Speakers: Liam Bailey, Geospatial Analyst, WWF Risk Filter Suite, Charl-Thom Bayer, Managing Director at the Land Portal Foundation.

Moderator: Romy Sato, Research & Knowledge Manager at the Land Portal Foundation.

Risk data is more available than ever, yet the places where land and environmental risks are highest are often where regulation is weakest and land information is hardest to find. On 29 October 2026, the Forum's Land Corruption & Rights Working Group asked how practitioners can turn that risk intelligence into action that protects land rights, people and nature.

The session was the first under the working group's new co-leadership by WWF and the Land Portal Foundation.

The discussion followed three questions: why does the regulatory framework matter, which tools can help, and how to apply them in practice.

Why does the regulatory framework matter?

Risk intelligence is the capacity to gather information, turn it into strategic knowledge and use it for adaptive decision-making in order to achieve a specific outcome. It operates within formal and informal rules that define what is permitted, what is protected and what counts as a risk. Understanding the regulatory framework is necessary for managing operational, environmental, social and corruption risks, not only a compliance issue.

Three questions test whether a framework truly protects people and nature. Transparency and accessibility: are laws and procedures published and understandable, so communities know their rights and decisions on land allocation, permits and concessions can be scrutinised? Quality and adequacy: are the rules fit for purpose, with strong safeguards and recognition of the customary rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, or do gaps and ambiguities leave room for discretion and corruption? Application and enforcement: are the rules applied consistently and fairly, without favouring elites close to a sector? Even strong laws fail if not consistently and effectively enforced.

For companies, this leads to an uncomfortable truth: compliance is not the same as low risk. Where regulation is weak, there is little to comply with, so compliance risk looks low while real exposure is high. This regulatory deficiency risk is concrete. It can bring liability in other jurisdictions, as in 2021, when Dutch and UK courts took up claims against Shell over oil spills in the Niger Delta. It can mean loss of social licence to operate, as at the Newmont Mining Corp. The Conga project, whose government-approved impact assessment failed to satisfy local communities, was abandoned after a US$1.7 billion investment. And it can create future environmental risk, such as unchecked deforestation leading to more frequent floods or landslides.

The lesson: legal does not automatically mean just or safe. A project can follow the letter of the law and still cause serious harm if the law itself offers too little protection.

Which tools can help?

A growing set of free, open tools can help to reveal where regulatory and transparency gaps lie. But they provide evidence, not verdicts. A real risk assessment also depends on factors internal to each organisation, such as its capacity, resources and appetite for risk, which no external tool can capture. Missing information is itself a risk signal. Where land data is incomplete, outdated or closed, it is harder to verify claims, spot inconsistencies and hold decision-makers to account. The State of Land Information Index (SOLIndex) measures how complete and open public-sector land data is in each country, providing a benchmark and diagnostic tool linked to the underlying data sources. The Land Projects Database complements this by showing who funds which land-governance initiatives and where, helping donors, governments and civil society spot overlaps, coordinate opportunities and identify neglected areas.

Regulations should also be benchmarked against best practice, not just checked for existence. The WWF Risk Filter Suite now includes regulatory deficiency risk in its Water and Biodiversity Risk Filter tools, comparing national laws against expert-defined best practice on more than 30 topics for each, scored from 1 (close to best practice) to 5 (absent). On biodiversity data, for instance, Pakistan has no requirement to collect and share data, while India requires publication but not sharing between agencies: both fall short, in different ways.

Whatever the tool, look behind the number. A precise-looking score is only as useful as the data and method behind it. Its meaning depends on the context in which it is used and the decisions it is meant to inform. Understanding these factors is essential to interpreting the results and subsequent actions.

How can the tools be used in practice?

The goal is not a score but a better decision. No organisation, company, or government can act everywhere at once, so tools first help prioritise where to focus. The next step is to dig deeper, using detailed legal analysis and local knowledge to understand what is actually driving the risk.

Consider an importer checking whether coffee from Ghana can meet the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). It can start by assessing the state of land information to see whether the data needed for due diligence is likely to exist. It then combines that with its own traceability data, deforestation monitoring, local information and evidence of legal compliance. With a clearer picture, it can prioritise further verification and work with suppliers on the weaknesses found. The same logic applies to any supply chain.

Where regulation is weak, organisations can go beyond the law. Strong voluntary measures, developed with local communities, industry peers and local authorities, can fill the gap in the short term. Closing it requires public policy engagement, ideally through collective action, to push for better rules. Crucially, the answer to high risk is to improve governance where you operate, not to relocate, which only shifts the problem elsewhere. The same intelligence also serves civil society, journalists, governments and donors, who can use it to expose transparency gaps and direct investment towards land-information systems, accountability and land rights.

Above all, data availability is not accountability. Information must be accurate, current and usable by those who need it, and national indicators cannot capture local power dynamics or communities' lived experience. Tools only matter if their findings change decisions about how projects are designed, where resources go and how institutions are held to account.

Useful resources presented in the session (all free):

• State of Land Information Index (SOLIndex) dashboard – openness of public-sector land data by country, with links to source data.
• SOLI country reports – in-depth national analyses of land information.
• Land Projects and Programmes Database – land-governance projects and funding worldwide.
• WWF Risk Filter Suite – Water and Biodiversity Risk Filters, now with Regulatory Deficiency Risk layers. See the map gallery and data and methods.
• Legal Atlas platform – detailed assessments of the legislation behind the regulatory scores.

The recording of the presentations from the 29 October Land Corruption and Rights Working Group meeting is available here: