News on Land
Get the latest news on land and property rights, brought to you by trusted sources from across the globe.
Indonesian government says no to reclassifying oil palm estates as forests
- The Indonesian government has rejected a proposal made by a prominent university to reclassify oil palms as a forest crop.
- The proposal was ostensibly meant to resolve the problem of illegal plantations operating inside forest areas, and would have redefined plantations as forests, and new plantings as reforestation.
- The environment ministry says it has no plans to adopt such a plan because it has its own program, the social forestry scheme, to get local communities to switch from illegal oil palm plantations to more sustainable, and profitable,
Ecuador´s top court rules for stronger land rights for indigenous communities
Land conflict: Understanding reached between government and three communities in Massingir
Radio Mozambique reported today that Massingir district government and community leaders from three communities in the district in the north of Gaza province have reached consensus on the land boundaries of their villages after decades of conflict.
The communities of Cubo, Canhane and Tihoveni, in the locality of Massingir-sede, have for decades been in conflict over the delimitation of their lands.
The conflict had caused adverse social and economic repercussions in those communities, Massingir district administrator Esmeralda Mutemba said.
South Sudan ready to lease land to Bangladesh: Razzaque
Photo: South Sudan's Deputy Minister for Foreign and International Cooperation Deng Dau Deng Malek met Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque in Dhaka on Tuesday. Photo: Collected
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African country South Sudan wants to lease its vast fallow land to Bangladesh for producing crops.
South Sudan's Deputy Minister for Foreign and International Cooperation Deng Dau Deng Malek placed the proposal in a meeting with Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque in Dhaka today.
As Indonesia retakes land from developers, conservation is an afterthought
- President Joko Widodo’s administration announced last week that it was cancelling millions of hectares worth of logging, plantation and mining concessions.
- Environmental activists say this presents an opportunity to conserve these lands, which cover a combined area larger than Belgium, by redistributing them to local and Indigenous communities, and protecting areas still home to rainforest.
- However, some senior government officials say the concessions should be reissued to other companies to develop, and indicate that lands redistributed to
New Investors Exposed Behind the Human Rights Crisis at the PHC Oil Palm Plantations in DRC
Communities living adjacent to the PHC oil palm plantations in DRC face arrests, beatings, and extrajudicial killings at the hands of private security and police.
Under the majority ownership of Kuramo Capital Management (KCM), conditions have recently further deteriorated — with violent repression of workers on strike.
Two storms in two weeks carve trail of death and destruction in Madagascar
- Batsirai, a category 4 cyclone, struck Madagascar’s eastern coast on Feb. 5, leaving 10 people dead.
- The island nation is still recovering from another tropical storm, Ana, which made landfall on Jan. 22 and left dozens dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.
- Data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that 12 storms of category 4 or 5, the highest level, made landfall on Madagascar between 1911; of these 12, eight occurred since 2000.
Cyclone Batsirai rammed into Madagascar’s coast on Feb.
New book: Researching land reform in Zimbabwe
Researching Land Reform in Zimbabwe is a new book compiling 20 articles the Zimbabwe Land Research team has published over the last 20 years. All the chapters bar one have appeared as peer-reviewed journal articles, with the material covering the period from early land invasions in 2000 to more recent developments. All the articles are available, many as open access, but there was a demand to have these all in one place.
An estimated 45,000 people have been displaced by a cyclone in Madagascar
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Cyclone Batsirai's torrential winds and rain are hammering Madagascar, after landing on the island's east coast late Saturday.
An estimated 45,000 people have been displaced by the tropical storm, the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management said on Sunday.
After gaining strength in the Indian Ocean with gale-force winds reaching peaks of 145 miles per hour, the cyclone made landfall near Mananjary, 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of the capital Antananarivo, according to the island's meteorology department.
Municipal officials accused of complicity in land grab
Residents of Macleantown near East London say wealthy outsiders are grabbing land from them, with the complicity of municipal officials. Buffalo City denies it but has launched a probe.
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Photo: Johnnie Isaac
Updated SDG Land Tracker makes dispersed land data easily accessible
February 2, 2022 (GLOBAL) — Six years into the establishment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Land Portal is re-examining progress made on land-related SDG indicators. More than a dozen land-related indicators are housed over five SDG goals. The newly updated SDG Land Tracker features completely revised and updated narratives for 13 land-related indicators describing why the indicator is important and how the indicators are measured and monitored.
Infographic: How wetlands can help fight climate change
Wetlands – land consisting of swamps or marshes – have, during the centuries, been demonised as places of pestilence, drained for agriculture or urban development, and polluted or paved over.
But today, they are emerging as crucial ecosystems in the fight against climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate, has warned of the need to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.