Since its emergence more than two years ago, COVID-19 has reached nearly every corner of the globe. It has infected hundreds of millions of people, and overwhelmed health systems worldwide. But its impact goes beyond its direct health consequences.

• A total of 17.6 million hectares (43.5 million acres) of Indigenous territories in Indonesia, an area half the size of Germany, have been demarcated under an independent initiative that began in 2010.
• The mapping is seen as the first step for Indigenous communities in the long and complicated process of applying for official government recognition of their land rights.
• But government efforts continue to lag behind this initiative, with the state to date only recognizing 15% of the territories demarcated by the latter.
• At the loc

MMG is facing the possibility of a prolonged disruption at its copper mine in Peru after failing to clear the site of all protesters in an operation that has further inflamed tensions with indigenous groups.

Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Burundi are set to benefit from a regional initiative dubbed “Transforming Agri-Food Systems in West and Central Africa (TAFS-WCA)” which is aimed to increase food security and combat climate crisis.

Though a moratorium on evictions has been extended in Brazil, families still face forced removals. Activists are fighting for the right to land amid increasing precarity.

Mining in the former homelands in South Africa remains highly contested. At issue is the tendency of many mining companies to trample land rights, negotiate deals with elites to avoid securing informed consent  while sowing division and conflict in poor rural communities.

(main photo: In this file photo a farmer holds a handful of soil parched because of drought in Tunisia's east-central area of Kairouan, on 20 October, 2021. AFP Photo)

Human activities are damaging and degrading the lands of the Earth in an unsustainable fashion according to a new United Nations (UN) report.

Up to 40 percent of the global terrain has already been devalued, mainly through modern agriculture.

Guinea’s September coup sent shock waves through West Africa and the global commodities markets. Guinea is the world’s second largest producer of bauxite, the ore needed to produce aluminum, and has rich iron ore, gold, and diamond reserves.