International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (Nairobi)

How could it be that we possessed and protected this land for millennia and this sacred link is in danger of disappearing from Tanzania's history in merely 60 years?

The island nation of Cabo Verde is facing record levels of food insecurity due to drought, the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine, affecting some 181,000 people, or 32 per cent of the country, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Thursday. 

Recent hard-won gains in food security and nutrition are at risk, the UN agency said, forcing the government this week to declare a social and economic emergency. 

Just over a decade ago, Shajahan Bepari made a living by farming paddy and jute on a small scale and selling poultry reared on his 0.15-acre land in Shariatpur's Zajira.

But then, the government came calling as plans for the construction of a hitherto elusive bridge over the Padma gained steam.

Shajahan soon parted with his land and a place to call home for a sum that was one and a half times higher than its market value.

Tensions are spiking once again in the chronically turbulent eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The M23 rebel movement — widely thought to be long dead — has dramatically resurrected. And DRC president Félix Tshisekedi has accused Rwandan president Paul Kagame of again backing it with military support.

Solo ramas y pedazos de troncos tirados en el suelo quedaron donde antes había bosque. Eso fue lo que dejaron los taladores ilegales que, entre 2008 y 2011, entraron a la zona forestal de la comunidad de Cherán, en la región purépecha de Michoacán. En tres años, la devastación alcanzó a cerca de 7133 hectáreas.

Known as the rice basket of the country, the delta now sees houses tumbling into rivers and livelihoods lost

When a riverbank subsided and gave way, Tran Van Bi’s house collapsed into a river in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta four years ago. Everything his family had accumulated over 32 years was gone in an instant.

Main photo: Sri Lanka facing worst economic crisis (file photo-representational photo). Photo by AP/PTI.

Sri Lanka’s army established its Green Agriculture Steering Committee (GASC) to supplement and promote the food security programme in the country facing worst economic crisis.

The Sri Lanka Army will take part in a farming drive aimed at cultivating over 1,500 acres of barren or abandoned state land to multiply food production and avert any shortage in the future, according to a media report.

June 17th 2022-  Today marks #DesertificationAndDroughtDay and to highlight the occasion, the Land Portal, FAO and the UNCCD have come together to launch two new products; a portfolio and podcast, delving into the important relationship between land tenure and Land Degradation Neutrality.  

Sub-division of ancestral land has all but wiped out farming in Kisii, driving poverty and malnutrition and pushing the population into migration in search of greener pastures.

When my father died in the early 1990s, my mother and my two siblings moved to Kisii in Southwest Kenya. Widowed in her early 30s, my mother inherited about four acres of my father’s ancestral land on which to eke out a living for her young family.

UN human rights experts* have expressed grave concerns about continuous encroachment on traditional Maasai lands and housing, accompanied by a lack of transparency in, and consultation with the Maasai Indigenous Peoples, during decision making and planning. This trend most recently culminated in security forces’ violence against the Maasai Indigenous Peoples who were protecting their ancestral land in the Loliondo Division of Ngorongoro District, in northern Tanzania.

• Brazilian police reported on June 15 that they had found the bodies believed to be those of Brazilian Indigenous defender Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips deep in the western Amazon.
• The bodies were found not far from where the pair disappeared on June 5, in the Vale do Javari region, considered the most violent region of Brazil, where criminal groups vie to seize land occupied by Indigenous and traditional communities.
• Similar conflicts occur all over the Amazon, with some land grabbers admitting that they will, if necessary, us

Tanzanian authorities must immediately halt the violent forced eviction of the Indigenous Maasai community in Loliondo, and launch an urgent investigation into the security crackdown which has left dozens of people injured, many missing and a police officer killed, Amnesty International said today.