BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Chinese tech giant Tencent is creating a “smart city” that utilises technology to put people and the environment first, a model that could be applied to other urban developments after the coronavirus, the project’s architect said on Wednesday.

Net City will be a 2 million square metre (21.5 million square feet) neighbourhood in the southeastern city of Shenzhen, comprising Tencent offices and residences for its employees, as well as public amenities such as parks and a waterfront area.

While indigenous communities in Cambodia stayed home to stem the Covid-19 outbreak, a Vietnamese rubber firm bulldozed their land. Experts say disputes arising from Cambodia's complicated land management system will be difficult to resolve.

When the indigenous Kreung and Kachok communities locked down their villages in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province in March to keep safe from the novel coronavirus, no one knew change was afoot in their ancestral forest.

“Multinational companies have taken advantage of the COVID-19 Lock Down to continue with impugned violations rendering many homeless, hopeless and starving” ~ statement submitted by lawyers to a Ugandan high court. 

Despite a Ugandan government prohibition on land transactions during COVID-19 lockdown, illegal land evictions and concessions in community territories accelerated. Now the lockdown is gradually being lifted, communities continue to report cases.

Since the coronavirus pandemic battered China's economy, tens of millions of urban and factory jobs have evaporated.

Some workers and business owners have banded together to pressure companies or local governments for subsidies and payouts.

But many of the newly unemployed have instead returned to their rural villages. China's vast countryside now serves as an unemployment sponge, soaking up floating migrant workers in temporary agricultural work on small family plots.

Last year the world lost some 119,000 square kilometers (45,946 square miles) of tree cover – an area the size of Nicaragua – according to satellite data collated by the University of Maryland (UMD) released today by World Resources Institute (WRI). Almost a third of that loss – or an area the size of Switzerland – came from primary humid tropical forests, which house most of the planet’s plant and animal species and play an important role in climate regulation.

This special bulletin wants to pay tribute to the forest communities and peasant families around the world who despite all odds and difficulties due to the Covid-19 pandemic – including the movement restrictions imposed by governments and the corporate and elite profit-seeking abuses -, have still managed to practice solidarity:

A Vietnamese agribusiness company in eastern Cambodia has illegally cleared old-growth forests, wetlands and spiritual sites on land that it pledged to return to indigenous communities. The land move reneges on promises the company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai, made in a mediation process with the World Bank.

New reports from eastern Cambodia say a Vietnamese rubber company has illegally cleared swaths of land in Ratanakiri province belonging to local indigenous communities, in violation of a World Bank-mediated agreement to return the land to local residents. 

The LAND-at-scale programme got a great response to the second call for ideas. The programme received 25 new ideas from 19 different countries. Support continues for enhancing land governance and tenure security. This is evident in the response and effort from embassies, NGOs and knowledge institutes.

Current LAND-at-scale portfolio status

In October 2019, approval was given to 13 promising ideas. LAND-at-scale has been working closely with embassies, knowledge institutes and NGOs to transform these ideas into land governance projects.

Companies are seeking to press ahead with investments on community lands or even take advantage of the pandemic to avoid the usual authorization requirements

Nairobi, 14 May 2020 – As COVID-19 spreads around the world, billions of people have been told to stay at home, practice physical distancing, wash their hands regularly and wear masks. However, these simple preventive public health measures are almost impossible to follow for those who are homeless, or who live in unsafe or overcrowded conditions.