Hiber Sugar requested federal government intervention to resolve its dispute with the regional government of Amhara, which it accused of transferring its 6,183 hectare of land to unidentified investors and people relocated from other areas.  

Established a decade ago, Hiber has been at loggerheads with the region’s Rural Land Administration and Use Bureau for the last five years, after the Bureau revoked its license for its failure to clear the land and start operations on time.

The Congo Basin contains the world's second-largest rainforest, crucial for regulating the world's climate. Inside it, a plan to halt the forest's decline is bearing fruit.

With a gentle tug of his left hand, Patrick Wasa-Nziabo eases dozens of kernels from a sun-dried cob and into a large plastic bucket brimming with lemon-yellow corn at his bare feet.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre vigilant on potential impacts of oil and gas exploration in Namibia and Botswana on the Tsodila and Okavango Delta World Heritage properties.

• Once covered in vast tropical forests, East Kalimantan, in the Indonesian half of Borneo Island, is today the most intensively mined province in Indonesia.
• Surface mining for coal has left behind vast expanses of barren land across the province.
• Under Indonesian law, mining companies are responsible for rehabilitating their mining concessions.

All in all, despite COVID-19, the WOLTS team have had a highly productive year. In 2020  we've been adapting, taking stock,  writing  blogs, and  concluding  our pilot 'gender and land champions' training  programme in  Mongolia  and Tanzania.

• Top Indonesian ministers who pushed for the passage of a deregulation bill that benefits the mining and “dirty energy” industry have links to some of those very companies, a new report shows.
• The report by a coalition of NGOs highlights “massive potential for conflicts of interest” in the drafting and passage of the so-called omnibus bill on job creation.
• Under the new law, coal companies can qualify for an exemption from paying royalties, as well as be absolved of criminal and financial sanctions for mining in forest areas.
• Act

Coordination, data and inclusivity key to move ahead, says study

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) embraced REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) a decade ago, becoming an early adopter of the initiative in the region. However, the country’s rate of emissions from forest loss continues to be among the highest in the Congo Basin due to unsustainable logging, fuelwood collection, agricultural expansion and mining.

KINSHASA, 16 November 2020 –The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with the Global Battery Alliance (GBA), is aiming to raise US$ 21 million from public and private partners over the next three years to fund a series of initiatives aimed at addressing the root causes of child labour in mining communities.

From 9-12 November 2020, 450 finance institutions from around the world will gather(link is external) for the first international meeting of public development banks, dubbed the “Finance in Common” summit, hosted by the French government. The institutions, which range from the World Bank to the China Development Bank, collectively spend $2 trillion a year on so-called development projects — roads, power plants, agribusiness plantations and more.

The national government’s upcoming plan to re-open the world-class Porgera mine in Enga Province will hit a snag because local landowners are claiming billions of kina in compensation.

Prime Minister James Marape and Minister for Mining Johnson Tuke recently announced that the government was taking Porgera mine seriously and will re-open it in due time.

Illegal land grab cases are on the rise in protected areas as land prices have soared and the development of the agricultural and agro-industrial sectors has ballooned, Ministry of Environment spokesman Neth Pheaktra said.

“In 1964, Cambodia was 73 per cent forest land with a population of only 5.7 million. But in 2018, the country was 46.86 per cent forest land – 8.5 million hectares – with a population of 16 million,” he said.

Pheaktra said the lost land has been turned into plantation or for housing.

Landowners of the Porgera gold mine in Enga Province, are seeking relief orders from the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional recent amendments to the Mining Act that will enable the State to cease negotiations with landowners over royalties.