News on Land

 A growing body of research suggests that rather than serving as a boon for development, major fuel discoveries tend to spawn corruption and economic instability in countries that lack strong financial institutions and legal systems. More recent research suggests that these effects are not only reserved for the period after governments receive windfalls from fossil fuels. In what’s called the “presource curse,” the anticipation of oil and gas revenues may engender corruption and lead governments to prematurely restructure their economies and pile on debt.

From 7-19 December, officials from across the world are meeting in Montreal for COP15, the Convention on Biological Diversity. At the heart of their plans to save the planet lies the 30% initiative, a commitment to create even more national parks and animal reserves - a mainstream approach relying on "Fortress Conservation".

A new analysis finds that many materials needed for the shift to clean energy are on Indigenous lands, where mining could put vulnerable people at risk

Deputy Minister of Lands, Deus Gumba .“There has been an outcry that foreigners are taking over our land. The current land law has been amended with an aim of protecting the land from foreign citizens’ ownership”.

Despite being at the forefront of local adaptation strategies, women are ignored in most climate actions. 

The Land Portal is hiring researchers with expertise on Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Mozambique, Ghana,  and The Gambia.

Nearly 70% of the areas which are open natural ecosystems in India overlap with those which the government calls wastelands.

Azerbaijan and Armenia work on agreement to demarcate their shared border

Guinea-Bissau has been described as a country of “precarious complexity”. Home to more than 20 ethnic groupings Guinea-Bissau fought one of the longest wars on the African continent to end centuries of Portuguese control. It finally obtained independence in 1974. Since 1980 the history of Guinea-Bissau has been marked by multiple military coups and extreme fragility. This political instability has driven up poverty and stalled legal reforms to secure land rights. In 2008 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime declared Guinea-Bissau to be Africa’s first ‘narco state’.  By 2019 Guinea-Bissau was the 12th poorest country in the world. It has also been identified as highly vulnerable to climate change with low lying coastal areas at risk from rising sea levels and flooding. 

A new country portfolio unpacks the complexity of governing land in India.