News on Land

Prindex Global and leading think tank NCAER will announce a new initiative today at the India Land and Development Conference 2021 to enhance land and housing rights in India. The project will go state by state mapping government performance on land records against people’s perceptions of their rights to drive policy progress in the country.

In Bangladesh, one in every seven people will be displaced due to climate change by the end of 2050, according to recent estimation. Sea level rise may cause the displacement of up to 18 million people of Bangladesh. Natural disasters are another reason for displacement where 700,000 people on average migrate every year according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. In 2009, cyclone Aila displaced millions of people and many agricultural lands submerged with saline water.

Aug 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Taliban’s return to power threatens Afghan women’s hard-won property rights, with thousands who fled their homes during the militants’ takeover at particular risk of losing their land and houses for good, rights groups and researchers said.

The Taliban imposed a strict Islamic law that largely denied women property rights during its 1996-2001 rule, but since then local authorities have been granting property titles to widows, divorced women and other female-led households.

Architecture, by its very definition, involves the construction of structures. Structures that are meant to serve as spaces for work, living, religious devotion, amongst many other purposes. Architectural projects and interventions, however, need land – and it is this intrinsic relationship, between land and architecture, that has massive ramifications not only regarding reducing carbon emissions but more importantly in forming an equitable future rooted in climate justice.

When the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was created by a coalition of industry giants, retailers, banks, and NGOs in 2004, it was supposed to be the catalyst for a new, ethical era in palm oil production. Consumers could finally open a jar of Nutella or unroll their lipstick confident that the palm oil it contained didn’t come from a plantation that was, say, located inside of a rainforest reserve or patrolled by soldiers accused of burning local villages to the ground. The Okomu Oil Palm Company in southwestern Nigeria might give them second thoughts.

Dr Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Associate Professor in the Discipline of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki  has recently reviewed a new book by one of South Africa's leading legal minds and land analysts Tembeka Ngcukaitobi . His review of Land Mattters: South Africa's Failed Land Reforms and the Road Ahead appears in the LSE Review of Books.

According to Obeng-Odoom Land Matters is outstanding. Some extracts from his review appear below.

Parliament is scheduled to consider early next month the issue of the report that will recommend the amendment of the Constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation.

The Section 25 Committee adopted its report for tabling to the National Assembly in September.

The debate on the report was delayed when Parliament went into an early constituency period to allow parties to campaign for the local government elections.

ONE year ago, on July 27, 2020, three tribes who live around the border between Indonesia’s Kampung Naga area in Boven Digoel, Papua, and Kampung Kuem in Papua New Guinea, sent a claim letter to Tunas Timber Lestari. Representatives of the Kuranop, Ekogi, and Gembenop tribes protested against operations carried out by the subsidiary of the Korindo Group, as it infringed their customary land.

President Joko Widodo claimed that deforestation in Indonesia is at its lowest point in the past 20 years. Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution emissions reduction report to the United Nations said that there were only 39,285 hectares of deforested areas in 2013 to 2020. A Tempo investigation in Papua found otherwise: The area of deforestation from 2019 to 2020 alone covered 19,807 hectares. Timber companies have violated some regulations about forest conservation management and have illegally produced wood.

Madagascar is one of the countries that contributes the least to climate crisis yet is the fourth most affected by it according to the 2020 Global Climate Risk Index. The country is also a biodiversity hotspot.

embers of parliament have called for a full forensic audit of the Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) and for the entity to be placed under administration by the land reform ministry over its history of “delinquency” in failing to meet public finance management standards.

MANILA – The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is hoping its proposed budget for 2022 for its land titling project will be restored during the bicameral committee deliberation of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

In an interview with the Philippine News Agency on Wednesday, DAR Secretary Bernie Cruz appealed to the House members to heed the call of the senators pushing for the restoration of the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project to its original amount.