News on Land

Johannesburg – The Constitutional Court ruled on Monday that a black community holds a right to certain portions of the Salem Commonage in the Eastern Cape and was dispossessed of the land due to past racially discriminatory practices.

According to the judgment, penned by Justice Edwin Cameron and concurred by nine others, the community had rights – but not exclusive rights – to the commonage.

This post was written by Khalid Ibrahim, executive director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights, an independent, non-profit organisation that promotes freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in the Gulf region and its neighbouring countries.

Offered by edX, in this course, you’ll be introduced to the basics of land management. This MOOC gives you insight into basic functionalities and tasks of land management. It will help you recognize important land correlations with other fields of interest.

Small farmers plant a more diverse variety of crops, making them more resilient to climate change

MUMBAI, Dec 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India's small farmers are better equipped than large landowners to deal with climate change, but need more support to find innovative ways to minimise the impacts of higher temperatures, uneven rainfall, floods and droughts, analysts said.

The Mashco Piro, an isolated tribe in Peru's Amazon, are increasingly making contact with the outside world

DIAMANTE (Peru), Dec 6 - In Peru's remote southern Amazon, villagers rushed to the riverbank to witness a rare sighting - a group of Mashco Piro nomads standing on the other side, brandishing bows and arrows.

An elder from the indigenous hunter-gatherers, who have lived largely in isolation inside the rainforest for millennia, called to the Diamante villagers to ferry them across.

• Recent research found that 20 different “natural climate solutions” have the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 23.8 billion metric tons every year — and that nearly half of that potential, or some 11.3 billion metric tons of emissions, represent what the study’s authors call “cost-effective climate mitigation.”

• In August, the village of Taba Padang in southwest Sumatra was recognized by the Indonesian government for practicing the best community-based forestry management this year.
• Less than a decade ago, however, many of its residents were being arrested for planting in a nearby forest, deemed off-limits because of its protected status.
• In 2010, newly elected village chief Yoyon embarked on a years-long process to obtain state approval to allow the farmers to manage nearly 10 square kilometers of land in the forest.

• The government of Nigeria has announced its plans to restore four million hectares, or nearly 10 million acres, of degraded lands within its borders.
• The West African nation is now one of 26 countries across the continent that have committed to restoring more than 84 million hectares (over 200 million acres) of degraded lands as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), an effort that aims to bring 100 million hectares of land under restoration by 2030.

The conflict in Argentina between the indigenous Mapuche community and the national government has claimed another victim: Rafael Nahuel, an indigenous 22-year-old who was killed while resisting a raid by government forces on indigenous activists in the province of Río Negro.

NAIROBI: In a major global action against climate change, two UN environmental organisations on Monday signed a pact on increased cooperation and also for mobilisation of private finance and investment for climate action that is crucial for achieving the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement goals.

New group could help put pressure on Brazilian government to protect rights of Indigenous Peoples