Arab Knowledge Sovereignty
Climate & Social Justice
Productive Food Sovereignty
Justice-Oriented Science
About AILC
A Sovereign Knowledge Platform in Service of Land & People
Vision
A Leading Arab Reference for Climate Justice and Resource Sovereignty
To become, by 2030, the Arab region’s leading intellectual and applied reference for climate justice and resource sovereignty, and a globally recognized center of expertise shaping pathways from dependency toward sovereign resilience. (comment)
Mission
The Production of critical and applied knowledge grounded in scientific rigor and participatory research, and field realities, connecting land, climate, and social justice issues. The institute develops policy frameworks and future-oriented scenarios that support decision-makers, institutions, and communities in understanding climate transformations and guiding responses that protect land, strengthen food sovereignty, and uphold the rights of people and farmers.
“We do not inherit the land from our fathers, we borrow it from our children”
The Arab Institute for Land and Climate (AILC) is a regional knowledge, policy and public intervention platform based in Ramallah, Palestine, with a mandate extending across the Arab region. AILC works at the intersection of land sovereignty, climate justice, food sovereignty, agroecology, resource governance, and community rooted knowledge. It produces critical and applied knowledge that supports farmers, herders, rural communities, researchers, movements, institutions, and decision-makers in confronting the interconnected crises of land dispossession, climate change, food dependency, environmental injustice, and unequal development.
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While the Institute begins today as an institution, its intellectual roots were formed years ago through dialogue, debate, and practice. The Institute was established in response to a growing gap in the fields of development and climate: a gap between the abundance of theoretical analysis on the one hand, and the absence of an understanding rooted in land and people on the other. Across much of Palestine and the Arab region, climate, land, and agricultural policies are often formulated far from farmers, rural communities, and the local knowledge accumulated through generations of direct engagement with the land.
AILC begins from the conviction that land is not a neutral resource, and that climate is not an isolated natural phenomenon outside politics; both are spaces of struggle, negotiation, identity, vulnerability, and resilience.
Based in Palestine, AILC treats Palestine not as an exceptional or symbolic case, but as an intensified context that reveals the links between land control, resource deprivation, climate vulnerability, and political-economic marginalization. From this starting point, the Institute engages across the wider Arab region and with other contexts facing similar ecological, social, and economic vulnerabilities. Rather than treating these crises as isolated challenges, AILC works to develop grounded knowledge, practical alternatives, and policy pathways that strengthen the sovereignty and resilience of communities across the region.
Guiding Principles
Equity & Justice
Every analysis is grounded in justice and stands with the most vulnerable communities.
Excellence & Quality
Every research output is grounded in scientific rigor, methodological clarity, and critical analysis.
Genuine Partnership
Farmers, herders and local communities are recognized as co-producers of knowledge.
Accountability & Learning
AILC is accountable to the communities it serves and upholds transparency, responsibility, and continuous learning in its work.
Regional Reach and Partnerships
While rooted in Palestine, AILC is designed to work across borders by building connections between local knowledge, regional expertise, and international partnerships. The Institute seeks to expand its presence and collaborations across the Arab region, through institutional registration and partnerships in Tunisia and Egypt.
Through a wide network of governmental institutions, civil society organizations, research centers, academic institutions, funders, and international partners, AILC works to enable the exchange of knowledge, resources, experiences, and applied models. These partnerships aim to strengthen cooperation on issues of land, climate, and development, while ensuring that research remains connected to practice and responsive to local realities.
Strategic Areas
Four Pillars of Sovereign Resilience
These four areas form an integrated framework: land governance, food sovereignty, climate justice, and future thinking are treated as interconnected questions rather than separate fields.
Area 01
Land, Power and Resource Governance
Examining land relations, territorial control, access to resources, and the political economy of land use in the Arab region.
Land Sovereignty
Area 02
Climate, Agriculture and Food Sovereignty
Exploring how climate change, agriculture systems, food dependency, and ecological transition shape the future of rural communities and food systems.
Food Sovereignty
Area 03
Climate Policy, Inequality and Green Colonialism
Critically analyzing how dominant climate policies, carbon markets, green investment models, and externally imposed transitions may reproduce inequality, independency, and new forms of green colonialism.
Climate Justice
AREA 04
Sovereign Foresight: Futures Thinking in Unequal Contexts
Developing future scenarios for Arab cities and communities toward 2050 by linking climate projections with locally grounded visions of survival, adaptation and development. This area moves beyond reactive planning toward what AILC calls ‘sovereignty over time’.
Sovereign Foresight
Our Approach
From Field Reality to Strategic Intervention
AILC’s approach is rooted in applied critique: knowledge is treated an end in itself, but as a tool for justice, policy transformation, and community power.
Situated knowledge
AILC recognizes that knowledge is never produced outside context. Every analysis begins from a reading of historical, political, social, and environmental realities, and from listening to the experiences of people and farmers.
Critical Reading of Dominant Narratives
AILC examines the language of climate and development policies through its real effects on land, resources, and vulnerable communities. It asks when concepts such as resilience, adaptation, and sustainability reproduce inequality instead of solving it.
Participatory Knowledge
AILC treats field experience and local knowledge as primary sources of analysis, not as background cases. The Institute brings the results of its field interventions back to the field by adapting proposals to realities on the ground, following up on their actual impact, and adjusting pathways based on feedback from communities and their experiences. The goal is not to close the loop, but to keep it open and receptive to continuous feedback from reality and engagement with it.
Contextual Critical Diagnosis
AILC analyzes the roots of land, climate, and food crises by asking how policies are produced, who shapes them, who is excluded, who benefits, and who carries the cost.
Building Community Alliances
AILC turns analysis into dialogue and collective learning with farmers, rural communities, civil society, researchers, and institutional partners .
Policy Frameworks and Strategic Outputs
AILC translates analysis into usable outputs: policy papers, contextual studies, conceptual frameworks, strategic interventions, and dialogue platforms that can inform decision-makers and public debate.
Policy influence and Public Engagement
AILC moves knowledge from research outputs into decision-making spaces, while strengthening public and community debate around land, climate, agriculture, and food sovereignty.
Feedback, Learning, and Capacity Building
AILC returns the results of its interventions to the field, adapts proposals based on community feedback, and builds internal traditions of peer review, open debate, and collective learning.
Strategic Roadmap
Three Phases Toward Regional Leadership
A defined timeline linking institutional founding to maturity and sustainability, aligned with SDGs 2030 and carbon neutrality pathways 2050.
2024 — 2026
Foundation & Launch Phase
Building Knowledge Infrastructure
- Establishing headquarters and recruiting a founding team in line international quality standards
- Launching the Arab Land Monitoring Platform as an early warning and analysis system
- Publishing the first strategic report on climate justice in the Arab region
- Publishing 15 policy papers and five in-depth research studies to support decision makers and communities.
2027 — 2029
Growth & Impact Phase
Expanding Political & Field Impact
- Launching climate agriculture labs in selected Arab countries
- Organizing an annual regional conference on land, climate justice and food sovereignty
- Contributing to enacting at least two national laws
- Training 300 researchers, practitioners and climate leaders across the Arab region
2030 — beyond
Maturity & Leadership Phase
Consolidating Regional Leadership and Global Engagement
- Becoming a recognized regional reference on land, climate justice, agriculture and food sovereignty.
- Establishing a sustainable funding model that protects the institute’s independence
- Training and supporting 500 Arab climate and land justice leaders
- Participating actively in international committees and environmental agreements
Publications
Knowledge Production in Service of Change
All ILC research undergoes peer review and is published in Arabic and English under open-access standards — designed as tools for advocacy and legal defense, not mere archival documents.
Policy Paper
Green Colonialism in the Arab Region: When Environmental Protection Becomes a Tool of Land Domination
Critical analysis of how carbon offset projects and wind farms are used as pretexts to seize communal agricultural lands across the Arab region.
Strategic Report
Who Bears the Cost? Climate Justice in the Arab Region: Rhetoric vs. Reality
A comprehensive study of how climate change burdens are distributed across social strata in the Arab region, with recommendations to ensure a just environmental transition.
Research Study
Who Bears the Cost? Climate Justice in the Arab Region: Rhetoric vs. Reality
A detailed inventory of traditional Arab crops with high drought and salinity tolerance as a pillar of food sovereignty and local genetic heritage conservation.
Get in Touch
Partnership, Consultancy, & Advocacy
We welcome research partnership requests, policy consultancy, and collaboration with civil society organizations, government bodies, and international funders committed to the climate justice agenda.
info@ilc-arab.org
HQ
Palestine — Arab Region
Web
www.ilc-arab.org
