General

The project is intended to build the capacity of women leaders to engage, influence and lobby for gender responsive programmes and interventions in their respective location. The project is also intended to connect spaces between local leaders and national leaders and build capacity of women leaders to influence at local level (Subcounty and district) and also gain capacity to feed into national debates through the forum (Uganda women#s Parliamentary forum) that exists at national level. The ordinary women and girls willbe engaged by women leaders through dialogues on VAW and Land to build a critical mass and generate credible messages for advocacy and engagement with traditional leaders and legal duty bearers at all levels. The women leaders from grassroots women organisationswill be given capacity to work in hand with political leaders and gain spaces to participate in Local government planning meetingsas provided for the by Local government planning guidelines of 1997 Although the guidelines provides for representation of civil society organisations in all planning and budgeting processes, the reality on ground is that the space can be gained through having contact with key political leaders part of that process. The women leaders #political and CSOs will identity groups of ordinary rural women that have suffered VAW and Land related Violence in their respective location and mentor them to engage at the different Subcounty, district, regional and national meetings and voice their concerns to the duty bearers. The project will seek to hold the leaders (traditional and government) to account and make decisions to take action on issues raised by women. The decisions will include following up with district council to prioritise project proposalscomponents into the Local government plans. The work at national level will be informed by grassroots experiences and key stakeholders will be involved ensure that VAW Currently the ministry of Gender doesn#t have government funds for VAW prevention, andits assumed that funds for VAWQ response are supposed to go to Ministry of health, Justice law and order, these ministries are also underfunded. and Women#s land rights are given space in national level debates by UWOPA and the relevant ministries this in turn will allow for proper budget allocations to the respective programmes. Recently,the land policy was approved by the government and the Law on Domestic violence was passed in 2010. Oxfam and other two DV Act coalition members supported the translation of the Ct into 8 Local languages including languages spoken in Karamoja and Acholi. The project is intended to expedite the implementation of the law and the Land policy through active engagement of the key stakeholders who are women.

General

The objective of this grant was to: i) establish and promote a new compelling narrative worldwide on the issue of Indigenous and community land rights; ii) connect struggles, victories and best practices on the topic of Indigenous and community land rights to amplify their voice; and iii) targeted advocacy and lobby toward international institutions. Through this grant we supported an Oxfam campaign spike on indigenous and community land rights, produced the report #Custodians of the land, Defenders of our future# in 4 languages, provided policy and campaign tools and opportunities in 6 countries, and reached more than 7M people through social media. In addition, we led a global mobilization around the Earth Day 2017, including by providing campaign and policy material to all participants of the Land Rights Now campaign, whilst brokering new alliances. The mobilization resulted in 42 events across 30 countries, more than 25k signatures, social media outreach of 5M. Finally, we also provided policy leadership to the Global Call to Action onIndigenous and Community Land Rights so as to create adequate momentum and pressure on this issue. We also worked on a specific influencing strategy with allies to consolidate the work on land rights indicators in the SDGs, and influencing the High Level Political Forum and the related National Review process, so as to support an enabling international environment.

General

There is a requirement to feed a rapidly growing human population whilst maintaining ecosystem services and reducing biodiversity losses. Across the world, previously extensive tracts of natural habitats have been degraded by human activities, with detrimental impacts for biodiversity and soils, and for the livelihoods of local communities living in these landscapes. Indonesia's forests are extremely biologically diverse but this hyper-diversity is threatened due to widespread loss of rainforest. Peat swamp forests contain particularly large stores of carbon and support unique flora and fauna not occurring elsewhere, but have been drained and degraded to make way for agriculture, threatening wildlife and releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere from loss of trees and soil. Much of this recent forest loss is due to conversion to oil palm plantations, which provide important sources of local incomes, although drained peatlands produce many ecosystem disservices (e.g. bare land and soil with low/no agricultural value, poor air quality). Thus there are moves to rehabilitate degraded peatlands with a focus on reducing emissions, but potential co-benefits (and risks) of restoration for biodiversity and consequences for local communities whose livelihoods are dependent on agriculture are not well understood. The aim of this project is to understand the consequences of draining peatlands for biodiversity and local livelihoods, and to examine different scenarios for prioritising peatlands for restoration, according to biodiversity and emissions considerations and local community benefits and trade-offs. Restoration of degraded peat forest and re-wetting of drained areas may remove agricultural areas from production thereby reducing small holder farmer incomes and food. Moreover, decisions about sites to restore need to be compatible with systems of local governance, land rights and devolved administrations, and require the identification of alternative livelihood options for communities in restored habitats. The size and degree of connectivity of forest areas is also important for maintaining population networks of species in degraded landscapes, and for promoting the responses of biodiversity to climate change, and so decisions about peatland locations for restoration also need to include consideration of connectivity and adaptation of species to climate change. The issues we will address in this multi-disciplinary project will have a direct impact on local communities living in Indonesian peatland landscapes but the wider issues of balancing environmental, biodiversity and local community needs in multi-functional landscapes will be of broad generic importance.

Objectives

The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.