On a late night in December, I arrived in the village of Lunjuk on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. A warm breeze welcomed me as I sat down with 30 women and men from Forum Petani Bersatu — the local farmers’ union — who had gathered to share stories of their ongoing struggle to reclaim their land.
HATIYA, Bangladesh, Jan 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ferdousi Akter's family struggled to survive after a crumbling riverbank forced them to abandon their home and move to a new part of the island where they live, off the Bangladesh coast.
Her husband worked as a day labourer on fishing boats but earned too little to cover their expenses.
Just over a year ago, however, the five-member Akter family was one of 45 households offered land on Hatiya Island under a decade-long free lease by the Bangladesh Forest Department.
Landscapes need to be restored. The growing global population needs enough food to eat. How can both needs be met at once?
NEW YORK - A small Native American tribe in Louisiana whose land has nearly vanished into the sea has moved a step closer to relocating its community further inland after authorities acquired new land for the move, part of a first-of-its-kind project.
The 515 acres (208 hectares) of farmland will be made available to members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe and other inhabitants of the Isle de Jean Charles to relocate after their village was nearly wiped by erosion and rising seas.
In Uganda, there were at least 17 “land grabs” since 2000 with contracts totaling 74,831 hectares of land, according to Land Matrix data
A new report has linked land grabbing to worsening climate change, calling on governments to secure community land rights to protect the world’s natural resources such as “forests” that mitigate effects of climate change.
In the 1980s, the hilly Qianyanzhou region in Jiangxi Province, southern China, faced severe soil erosion due to deforestation and unsustainable farming practices. Fertile red soil was being washed away causing crop yields to tumble.
Global climate negotiations take place on the international stage, bolstered by countries’ national policies. But preventing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and other land-use changes requires work at the local level.
For those efforts to be effective, it is important to understand who is involved at each level and in every sector, and how they interact, say scientists from CIFOR, who have conducted research about such multi-level governance.
IXTLÁN DE JUÁREZ, Mexico, Jan 3 2019 (IPS) - “I dream of a healthy, sustainable, well-managed forest,” says Rogelio Ruiz, a silviculturist from southern Mexico, who insists that “we have to clean it up, take advantage of the wood, and reforest.”
These activities are essential for the ecosystem, especially to adapt to the impacts of climate change, the president of the La Trinidad Communal Lands Commissariat, in the municipality of Ixtlán de Juárez, in the state of Oaxaca, some 840 km south of Mexico City, told IPS.
The world is losing an estimated USD 6.3 trillion to land degradation every year, while restoring 300 million hectares by 2030 could have a return of USD 7 to 20 for each dollar invested.
