News on Land

Indigenous Peoples and community advocates in Brazil, Guatemala, Kenya, Taiwan, and 21 other countries to take action for community land rights, April 22-29 (Earth Day)

New research provides yet more evidence that granting indigenous and other local communities formal title to their traditional lands can be a boon to efforts to conserve forests.

Deforestation is responsible for as much as 10 percent of total global carbon emissions, which means that finding effective means of keeping forests standing is crucial to global efforts to halt climate change.

Disputes over Brazil’s farmland are growing increasingly violent, pitting farmers against the original residents of the area

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma calls for ’clever’ lobbying if the ANC wants to amend the Constitution to allow expropriation of land without compensation

The ANC must "be clever" about lobbying other parties if it wants to amend the Constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told a gathering of students at Wits University on Wednesday.

The land reform debate is gaining momentum in the ANC and more broadly, with pressure to scrap what many believe is the obstacle to redistribution.

Next time you bite into a chocolate bar, think of Africa. The continent produces nearly 70 percent of the world’s cocoa, a growing output that requires carving more than 325,000 acres of new farmland from forests every year – a drop in the bucket of overall agricultural expansion there.

Dr (Mrs) Ladi Shambo is the MD of Dijmeds Ventures Limited, a company that is into food processing and Shea butter processing. 

After her retirement from the civil service, she decided to start producing spices. 

“I produce ginger powder, garlic powder, chili pepper and mixed spice (‘yaji’) and ‘garin danwake’. These products have NAFDAC number and are in the market.

There are serious concerns that government reforms will further exacerbate land tenure and food insecurity for the majority of the population in Myanmar who rely on their farm fields and forests for their livelihoods.

The Tapajós River Basin lies at the heart of the Amazon, and at the heart of an exploding controversy: whether to build 40+ large dams, a railway, and highways, turning the Basin into a vast industrialized commodities export corridor; or to curb this development impulse and conserve one of the most biologically and culturally rich regions on the planet.

UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz [official website] called [press release] Friday for the US to adopt a consistent approach to indigenous land rights in pipeline projects.

Shortly after a visit from an EU delegation last week, Kenya Forest Service (KFS) guards based at Tangul, Kipsitono and Maron KFS camps carried out intensive evictions according to Sengwer witnesses, with KFS allegedly having since burnt down over 90 Sengwer homes and destroyed their property.

The model of urbanization over the past two decades has been far from “smart” and sustainable. This is the major conclusion of Habitat III, the third United Nations’ Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development that took place in Quito, Ecuador, in 2016. Our cities are growing very quickly and spontaneously. Decreased planning and excessive urban expansion, alongside reduced density, is leading us to unprecedented levels of chaos, urban poverty and environmental degradation.