News on Land

A growing number of reports show that large-scale deforestation continues in Cambodia’s protected forests, often with tacit endorsement from government officials—despite promises of conservation.

Editorial

A series of reports this year show that protected forest areas across Cambodia are under increasing threat from land grabs and deforestation.

The (online) course runs between 15 Feb and 05 March 2021 in close collaboration with Freiburg Academy of Continuing Education (FRAUW), UNIQUE Forestry and Land Use & other renowned forest carbon experts (Solidaridad etc.).

IMPORTANT TO KNOW: The course will be held online this year (due to the pandemic restrictions) and there will be reduced fee opportunities for participants without institutional support or with low income.

THE attitude towards agriculture in PNG, especially farming is one that it is for the poor and the elderly.

The pandemic, conflict and other health crises have hit livelihoods and food security dramatically, a UN report warns

Nearly 22 million people face "crisis-level or worse" food insecurity in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to conflict and the Covid-19 pandemic, an arm of the United Nations has warned.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), part of the UN, said the number of food-insecure people has risen by more than six million since 2019, making it the world’s biggest food crisis.

Main photo: Fourteen Lao Christians evicted from their homes in Luang Namtha province's Long district are shown in a February 2020 photo. (Citizen Journalist)

Seven Lao Christians evicted from their homes in southern Saravan province in October for refusing to renounce their faith have returned to their village, but are being refused permission to rebuild homes demolished by authorities when they were first thrown out, RFA has learned.

Seeking quick returns, Chinese investors are driving a scramble for plantation land in parts of northern Myanmar.

About half of Ghana's fish landing sites across the coast are under threat, Friends of the Nation (FoN), a non-governmental organisation has said.

According to them, most of the fishing communities were losing their source of livelihoods to the increasing takeover of the shorelines for residential and commercial facilities to the detriment of fishing.

Mondulkiri officials issued a six-day ultimatum on constructions encroaching on the Doh Kramom Mountain Cultural Centre in Sen Monorom town’s Sokdum commune.

The centre belongs to the Bunong indigenous people and the builders must remove the constructions immediately or face legal penalties.

Mondulkiri Culture and Fine Arts Department director Sey Touch said on December 2 the decision was made on the guidance of a working group set up by Mondulkiri provincial governor Svay Sam Eang and led by Chum Nary, the deputy head of the administration.

New study portrays women’s disadvantageous position due to deprivation in land ownership, wage discrimination and non-recognition of unpaid works 

Women constitute nearly 65% of farm labour force in Bangladesh, yet they have very limited land ownership, making them mostly work under the supervisions of their male counterparts.

Most of the tasks they deliver in agriculture production value chain are unpaid work, and when it comes to earning wages for farm labour, women receive far less compared to what men earn for the same jobs.

More than 200 indigenous Bunong families in Mondulkiri province have asked authorities to retrieve 5ha of community forest land they claim had been secretly stolen from them by speculators.

Roch Chok, a representative of the more than 200 families, told The Post on November 30 that two people in Koh Nhek district’s Or Buonloeu commune deployed two bulldozers to clear the forest land on November 29.

The two, he said, claimed to represent an unnamed tycoon with the title oknha – an honorific bestowed on those who donate at least $500,000 to the state for development.

For Zimbabwean organic farmer, Elizabeth Mpofu, access to healthy food is liberation.

Millions of people across the world go to bed hungry. Scores do not have access to nutritious food owing to an inequitable global food system focused on industrial mass food production. The food from this system is less nutritious, more expensive and less friendly to the environment.

The Cardamom Mountains sit off the Gulf of Thailand in southern Cambodia and provide important habitat for a multitude of plant and animal species, many of them already threatened with extinction.

Due to Cardamoms’ remoteness, they had largely been spared the human encroachment that has razed much of the rainforest across the country – until infrastructure development in 2020 opened up the area to loggers, poachers, and others seeking to exploit the region’s forests.