News on Land

The bulk of Cambodia’s economic land concessions (ELCs) – at the centre of numerous land disputes and human rights concerns over the past two decades – generated just $5 million for state coffers last year, with critics attributing the meagre returns to a lack of collection capacity as well as simple corruption.

The pacific island of Papua New Guinea is one of the world's most resource rich countries, hosting nearly 7 percent of global biodiversity and important reserves of gold, copper and hydrocarbons.

By: Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava

Hindustan Times, New Delhi

Updated: Dec 12, 2015 

India witnessed an impressive surge in the number of women owning or managing agricultural land in 2001-11 with landholdings under them registering a faster growth in this period than the ones controlled by men, shows a World Bank-backed study that points to improved gender equity in land rights. 

Together with ICLEI President Park Wonsoon (Mayor of Seoul), ICLEI First Vice President James Nxumalo (Mayor of Durban) and ICLEI Secretary General Gino Van Begin, 100 mayors from around the world were onstage at today´s ICLEI World Congress 2015 Opening Plenary to adopt the Seoul Declaration. 

Source: iied

By Eric Yeboah

Land rights play a crucial role in agricultural development and inclusive growth, but in many countries in Africa, women lose out from patriarchal legal and cultural traditions. How can these practices be changed to benefit everyone?

More than 1 million hectares of forest terrain and land leased by private companies has been put under government control since Prime Minister Hun Sen initiated a moratorium on new economic land concessions (ELCs) in May 2012, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction has claimed.

The statement, signed on October 13 and obtained by the Post yesterday, also states that 3.6 million land titles have been issued since the May 2012 order began a process of land demarcation.

PepsiCo has joined fellow beverage corporation the Coca-Cola Company in giving its official support to a set of global guidelines that protect the rights of poor and vulnerable people to land, livelihoods and food security. 

The entirety of three protected forests are now classified as private land, an investigation from rights group Adhoc has found, along with tens of thousands of additional hectares of what has once been state public land.

In total, an area slightly smaller than the size of Jakarta has been reclassified since the beginning of this year.

In three cases, Adhoc’s findings show that entire protected forests – Snoul Wildlife Santuary, Preah Vihear Protected Area and Peam Krasob Wildlife Sanctuary – have now been reclassified.

Date: April 4th 2016
Source: AllAfrica.com / The Herald

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa says Government does not have capacity to pay for farm compensations at present but will acknowledge indebtedness over a period of time with the farmers that had their land taken from them during the Land Reform Programme.

The World Bank is looking for a global coordinator to support the implementation of land governance assessments in new countries and the follow up on existing ones. The latter would include to ensure piloting and eventual scaling up of innovative approaches in areas that have been identified as bottlenecks in a way that links to the ongoing policy dialogue and informs broader initiatives. This is a challenging opportunity to help advance the land agenda at a critical juncture.