News on Land

BACKGROUND:

Improved performance on land policies, in terms of formulation and implementation, is required for IGAD to deliver on cooperation among Member States. IGAD through this project with the Swedish Embassy seeks to improve the performance of the land administration function in the IGAD region moving these closer to convergence and enabling the implementation of cross border initiatives that have a bearing on land. This project intends to deliver the following four result:

• The people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands fended off a land grab that would have led to the destruction of a vast area of rainforest, through a sophisticated grassroots campaign that held power to account.
• The campaign holds lessons for rural communities facing similar threats, but their prospects have been diminished by new legislation that strengthens the hand of the powerful and corrupt.

BACKGROUND:

BACKGROUND

Land governance across borders or transnational land governance looks at rule making, standard setting and institution building across borders. Empirically, one can see a variety of patterns of regulatory governance emerging. The studies commissioned by IGAD in 2016 reviewing the of land governance systems in the IGAD Member States identified four transnational elements:

As advocates for women’s land rights, isn’t it time we support the establishment of land-rights-specific grievance mechanisms?

From farms to towns, women are a major provider of food and food security for their families, but women in half of the world still struggle to access their equal land and property rights in spite of legal protections.

Cadasta Foundation has launched its new Global Land Rights Challenge Fund to help partners better leverage Cadasta’s innovative tools and services to document land and resource rights worldwide.

The Land Rights Challenge Fund will feature multiple grant programs through 2021, each designed to advance land rights and tenure security for vulnerable populations around the world.

There are at least 362,450 landless indigenous people in the state and at least 40 lakh without land pattas

The Bhumi Adhikar Sangram Samiti, Assam, and the Guwahati Mati Pattakaran Sangram Samiti on Monday unanimously criticised the Assam government’s decision to adopt a new land policy which will allegedly “empower” the corporate sector rather than the indigenous people of Assam.

GENEVA - The U.N. human rights office is lambasting the Colombian government for failing to stop massacres of indigenous peoples by criminal gangs.
 
The latest atrocity occurred Tuesday in Tacueyo in Northern Cauca in southwest Colombia. Criminal groups trying to enter indigenous ancestral lands shot and killed five indigenous people and severely wounded six others.  Among the victims is a prominent human rights defender, Cristina Bautista.

When members of the White Earth band of Ojibwe in Minnesota take out their canoes to harvest wild rice, they're gathering a source of nourishment and following a tradition that has connected them to the land for generations.

But to the White Earth people, manoomin isn't just a resource to be used—it's an independent entity with the right "to exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve."

• When undisturbed tropical forests are lost the long-term impact on carbon emissions is dramatically higher than earlier estimates suggest, according to a new study.
• Between 2000 and 2013, about 7 percent of the world’s intact tropical forests were destroyed, leading not just to direct carbon emissions but also “hidden” emissions from logging, fragmentation and wildlife loss.

University, religious, sports and other gatherings often begin with an Indigenous Land acknowledgement. For instance, this article was written in Montréal, or Tiohtiá:ke, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations.

To more effectively guard forests and stem climate change, "simply designating a place as protected can't be the beginning and the end of a conservation effort"

LONDON - Expanding the planet's protected natural areas to safeguard vanishing forests and other ecosystems, and the species they protect, is unlikely to be effective on its own as human encroachment into reserves grows, scientists warned Tuesday.