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Indigenous People Integrated Community Development Project
General
This project aims to empower the poorest and the most vulnerable indigenous communities in 18 villages of Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri province to pursue claiming their rights to control their land and manage their natural resources (forestry and fishery) which are primary for their livelihoods development. The target communities have been affected by land grabbing from private companies limiting their agriculture production and depleting their local natural resources. However, their understanding about legal framework and procedures to claim their rights and filing complaint remains very limited. In this project, the partner will be replicating people-led development approach in order to strengthen capacity of community committees to be able to take leadership to respond to emerging issues. The partner will be working closely with community committees to develop their understanding on legal framework, their roles and responsibilities, and government mechanisms that they can use to solve land disputes and issues of natural resources management. The communities will also be facilitated to complete legal procedures to register their land and their community forestry and fishery so that they will be protected by law. To respond to immediate needs of the poor, community people will also be supported to practice climate-friendly and diversified agriculture. Farmers will form themselves into groups and learn to collectively sell their products for better profits. The partner will help coordinate the farmer groups to develop capacity to run agriculture cooperative and legally register so that they can claim more support from the government ministry. It is expected that the indigenous communities will understand about their rights, and make more engagement with existing legal framework, procedures, and mechanisms that enable them to claim their rights to control and protect their land and natural resources. With clear community structure and legal recognition, the communities will be able to influence government and private sector to ensure that they comply with the laws and respect indigenous people rights. The community people will also be able to develop diversified and sustainable livelihoods through farming on their protected land, and benefiting from forestry and fishery resources.
Towards reconciliation and peace in Colombia
General
CINEP have a new three-year plan (2021 to 2023), with the two first year embedded in their five-year strategic plan for January 2018 to December 2022. CAFOD is providing institutional support for CINEP to carry out this work - CINEP are a long-term partner that CAFOD have been supporting for many years (this is a new cycle of COL200). CINEP/PPP's vision is "By 2022, we plan to be a Centre guided by the Society of Jesus that will have developed proposals for region and nation building, aimed at promoting and protecting life, human rights, sustainable development and peace." CINEP/PPP works on two areas 1) Conflict, State and Peace (including work on peace education and land management) 2) Social Mobilization, Human Rights and Interculturality (including work on social movements) through research, advocacy and education. In this three year cycle CINEP is seeking to contributes to creating conditions for reducing inequalities, expanding democracy and building citizenships, within the framework of the effective implementation of the peace agreements and processes. CINEP is also seeking to contribute to reconciliation and the enforceability of rights with a diversity and gender-based approach.
SRJS_ToC_KH Securing livelihoods in the upper Mekong region
General
The Mekong River is the largest and most important river in Cambodia. The Mekong Basin is home to over 40 ecologically critical and threatened animal species, such as the emblematic Mekong Dolphin and many endemic fish species. 60 million people in the Mekong Basin depend on the river for their food and income, as a large part of people’s diets and livelihoods rely directly on fish. The river also provides irrigation water for the country’s agriculture. Due to the fast-growing economy, increasing population and growing urban centers, the demand for food and water has skyrocketed. At the same time, ecosystems that ensure the continuous supply of clean fresh water and fish are under threat from various economic activities, such as hydropower dams, large-scale irrigation development, deforestation, mining, intensive agriculture and unsustainable fish harvesting. The increasing competition for scarce natural resources is leading to tensions between their different users. Over the years, the Cambodian government has issued more than 50 economic land concessions (ELC) for large-scale agricultural production, often on land already occupied by indigenous peoples. With no capacity to defend their ancestral land rights, thousands of families have been evicted from their land without any form of compensation, leaving them with no access to their traditional sources of livelihood and subsistence. Intensive large-scale agricultural production undercuts the price of communities’agricultural products and releases toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers into the water systems, negatively affecting fisheries and the health of the population. Hydropower dams and mining operations threaten the supply and water quality in the Mekong. This is aggravated by the effects of climate change, with seasons fluctuating between long dry spells and widespread and severe flooding. Flooding is a top risk in Cambodia and a leading cause of deaths. Experts warn that fisheries production in the Mekong and the Tonle Sap will be reduced by 50% over the next 30 years when all the projected dams upstream are finally constructed.
GLA - TOC - Preserved ecosystems and improved livelihood con
General
Objectives The GLA programme for Liberia proposes to increase the capacity of communities to resist destructive oil palm expansion and logging, increase the respect and recognition of tenure rights of local communities by government and concessionaires, and increase adherence to the full implementation of policies and laws in forest and land management. This will provide opportunity for working in Liberia to contribute to the preservation of ecosystems and improved livelihood conditions for rural communities in Liberia and specifically in the Sinoe landscape. General Formal recognition of customary land ownership and security of tenure for the poor is a critical building block for inclusive and sustainable development. Since 2009, when Liberia enacted the Community Rights Law with Respect to Forest Lands that paved the way for communities to formalize their ownership claims to their customary forestlands, community rights with respect to natural resources have gained a prominent place on the political agenda. The move towards formalizing customary land claims gained further momentum in 2013 with the adoption of a Land Rights Policy that promised formal recognition and legal protection for customary rights. The Land Rights Act, which could‘seal the deal’for communities has however been stalled in the Liberian Legislature since 2015.
Adaptation & Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC)
General
In this 3-year project, we aim understand how societies, landscapes, ecosystems and Protected Areas have responded to climate change and societal use, to better understand how they may respond in the future. To do this, we will focus on the temporality, spatiality & complexity of interactions and interdependencies of social-ecological systems in north-western Tanzania over the last 300 years. Local livelihoods range from intensive agriculture to livestock herding & hunting-and-gathering, coupled with employment in tourism, conservation, or mineral extraction. Pressures from global climate change, rapid population growth, competing land use (including wildlife conservation), and new 'governmental' regimes pose major threats to livelihoods, their sustainability & resilience to future socio-ecological shocks. We will use a cross-disciplinary approach integrating archaeological, environmental, archival, modern land use & remote sensing data, with collaborative modelling of future land use & land cover change scenarios, to identify past and possible future drivers of change & sources of resilience; generate guidelines for land use planning; build research capacities in Sweden (post-doctoral position) & Tanzania (collaborating researcher) in sustainability studies; strengthen community awareness of and engagement in these issues. Hosted by Uppsala University, the team will involve experienced & junior researchers from Sweden, Tanzania & the UK.