The Tapajós River Basin lies at the heart of the Amazon, and at the heart of an exploding controversy: whether to build 40+ large dams, a railway, and highways, turning the Basin into a vast industrialized commodities export corridor; or to curb this development impulse and conserve one of the most biologically and culturally rich regions on the planet.

its4land is an EU-financed project to assist Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia in mapping land tenure more quickly, cheaply and transparently. It will end in three years’ time; right now, the Africans and Europeans are in the phase of needs assessment. The focus is not on technical requirements, but on operational priorities and managerial context. The first results indicate that low-cost geospatial technologies will be helpful, not least because they also benefit priorities other than improving cadastral services.

The national conversation about land, always simmering in South Africa, has come to the boil again. What’s often missing is a voice for the unrepresented party – the land. I’d like to be that voice.

By: Adriaan Alsema

Date: 3 February 2017

Source: Colombia Reports

If it were up to the Colombian government, it will get rid of 75% of all the country’s coca, the plant to produce cocaine. Some 50,000 hectares are supposed to be eradicated in the country’s most ambitious counter-narcotics operations ever.

In total, the government wants to remove 100,000 hectares of coca, Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas told newspaper El Tiempo last month.

By: Luis Jaime Acosta

Date: 5 February 2017

Source: Reuters

Around 300 fighters from Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels will not demobilize under a peace deal, a military commander said, giving the first official figure of guerrillas who may join with crime gangs seeking control of lucrative rebel drug territory.

By: R. Avadhani

Date: 30 January 2017

Source: The Hindu 

Dispossessed by the proposed Mallannasagar project, owner of half an acre land loses confidence and is pushed to take the extreme step

THE DESIGNATION by incoming President Rodrigo Duterte of Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano as his secretary of agrarian reform is welcome news for the Filipino peasantry, farmworkers and the rural poor. Mariano, born into a poor peasant family in Nueva Ecija, is chair of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas and former Anakpawis party-list representative.

The pacific island of Papua New Guinea is one of the world's most resource rich countries, hosting nearly 7 percent of global biodiversity and important reserves of gold, copper and hydrocarbons.

More than 1 million hectares of forest terrain and land leased by private companies has been put under government control since Prime Minister Hun Sen initiated a moratorium on new economic land concessions (ELCs) in May 2012, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction has claimed.

The statement, signed on October 13 and obtained by the Post yesterday, also states that 3.6 million land titles have been issued since the May 2012 order began a process of land demarcation.

By: Mike Gaworecki

Date: December 20th 2016

Source: Mongabay.com

There’s already ample evidence of the ways environmental degradation can contribute to the spread of infectious diseases, and now a recent study provides an example of how the disruptions to an ecosystem caused by deforestation and other land-use change can help spread a bacterial pathogen.