News on Land

The Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development and the Mekong Land Research Forum will run a week-long intensive summer school on land research in the Mekong Region. The purpose of the summer school is to equip early-career academic and advocacy-oriented researchers with key concepts, access to existing research outputs, and knowledge of current land issues across the region in order to strengthen individual and networked research that is geared towards secure access to land amongst the region’s rural and urban poor.

Authorities Threaten, Prosecute Residents Who Speak Out

(Nairobi) – Military and civilian authorities in western Rwanda have arrested, beaten, or threatened people who challenged recent government decisions to force residents off their land, Human Rights Watch said today.

its4land is an EU-financed project to assist Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia in mapping land tenure more quickly, cheaply and transparently. It will end in three years’ time; right now, the Africans and Europeans are in the phase of needs assessment. The focus is not on technical requirements, but on operational priorities and managerial context. The first results indicate that low-cost geospatial technologies will be helpful, not least because they also benefit priorities other than improving cadastral services.

Elizabeth Apolinar enjoys her job as a lawyer in the bustling center of Bogotá these days. But now and then she misses the traditional life she used to lead deep in the heart of the Colombian jungle.

Apolinar is originally from a community called the Sikuani. The Sikuani people are a pueblo indigena, an indigenous people, one of about 100 indigenous ethnic groups in Colombia. These groups are represented by Apolinar’s employer: La Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia (ONIC), or the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples in Colombia.

On March 20, 2017, a group of individuals from a broad range of institutions and organizations that focus on improving land governance around the world hereby commit to promote and bolster data-sharing efforts within the land sector, with the hope that such action will catalyze positive changes in the area of land governance and lead to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These individuals agreed on the following declaration:

Pastoralism is the main production system practised by communities who live in range lands and dry lands which are usually arid or semi-arid. But pastoral communities are facing increasing pressure on their land.

Land reform has been much talked about lately, but not everyone understands what it really means. The term is interesting because it is related to what is really needed to be revised in our existing agrarian field.

When talking about agrarian reform, it is not only about land aspects but also has a wider scope, such as water, forestry and other natural resources. Some experts often refer to it as land reform instead of agrarian reform, and this could limit its meaning to be just about land.

Thailand is aiming to increase its domestic palm oil production by up to 50 per cent over the next nine years while at the same time trying to reclaim encroached peat forest from smallholders.

“Look, the peat here is so deep” 61-year-old Preecha Chimtong, a smallholder farmer growing oil palm on his 49-rai (about 20-acre) farm in southern Thailand’s Chumphon province.

Cross River set up one of the world’s protected forest reserve, raised a high standard for conservation, but Governor Ben Ayade still draws environmentalists’ ire for his stance on converting part of the area under the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation  (UN-REDD) scheme for a 260-kilometre Superhighway project.

After three years of working with local governments and indigenous communities, the Provincial Council of Pastaza established the Pastaza Ecological Area of Sustainable Development in the center of the Ecuadorian Amazon region. The area covers more than 2.5 million hectares (about 6.2 million acres) and occupies about 90 percent of the area of ​​the province of the same name.