News on Land

The residents stated that Nwoko had successfully bought over senior policemen in Delta State and Abuja, who allegedly assisted him in intimidating and arresting those, who opposed his attempt to forcefully acquire additional 90 hectares of land from an area earmarked for all indigenes of the community.

Residents of Idumuje Ugboko community in Delta State have accused former senator, Ned Nwoko, of using the police and Ministry of Justice to dubiously harass, intimidate and lock up elders and sons of the town.

(Main photo: Indonesia - Employment in agriculture, services and industry [% of total employment]. The data is according to the World Bank compilation of development indicators, collected from official sources.)

The rate at which the country is losing farmers is a cause for concern. If it continues, Indonesia is likely to have no farmers left in 50 years. What will we eat?

In this land news update from South Africa we focus on:

• Our changing Covid 19 context
• The unresolved problem of farm worker evictions
• Budget cuts and food insecurity
• Contestation over land administration in communal areas in KwaZulu-Natal province
• The need for a digital deeds registry platform
• Unresolved land restitution disputes
• The  complex backstory behind mounting land occupations in Cape Town
• A selection of land related news from Southern Central and Eastern Africa 

Binit Agrawal analyses the global impact of a Thai court judgement, which provides a judicial forum to farmers from Cambodia, who were victims of transnational land grabbing.

The Prey Lang Protected Area has lost more than 100,000 hectares of forest between 2000 and 2019, more than half of which became plantations, according to a report released August 10 by the NGO Jesuit Service Cambodia’s Ecology Program and the Cambodian Youth Network.

To determine forest loss and recovery over the nearly two decade period, the Technical Report on Forest-Cover Change Detection in the Prey Land Protected Area of Cambodia compared satellite images, which showed that 58,138 hectares of forest was converted into plantations and 43,188 hectares became “non-forest.”

Malnutrition and food insecurity are major contributing factors to the San people’s vulnerability to the Covid-19 pandemic in southern Africa.

The San are extremely resilient people, successfully maintaining their culture in the face of the harmful effects of globalisation and modern societal pressures.

Monday, 10 August 2020 marked an important day for indigenous communities from Busra commune in Cambodia as they signed an agreement with the rubber company Socfin Cambodia to settle a long-lasting dispute about their communal and spiritual lands. 

LAHAD DATU, Aug 9 — Over 3,000 Sabah native land titles have been granted to Sabahans this year, said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal.

He said the land titles were handed over to among others residents of Tawau, Kalabakan, Keningau and Tambunan.

“We will make sure that the Sabah Land and Survey Department (JTU) properly manage all the land ownership grant applications submitted.

Main photo: new high-rise apartments are under construction in villages around Heze, in eastern China's Shandong province. Rural residents say these complexes are too expensive, too far away from their fields and ill-suited for farmers (Amy Cheng/NPR)

A farmer from Shandong province along China's east coast, Liu recalls how during Chinese Lunar New Year in January, he went out for a walk and came home to discover local officials preparing to demolish his home.

POLICE have told Baruni village leaders to take land matters to court and not to take the law into their own hands to affect innocent lives.

Zone one commander, Chief Inspector Fred Tundu said this following the alleged attack of three policemen from the Idubada police post at Motukea island, outside Port Moresby, last Wednesday.