A group of civil society organisations called the Sierra Leone Land Alliance (SLLA) has released a report critical of the situation land ownership and acquisition in the country, with particular emphasis on the Western area.

Main photo: A Keppel employee stands at a company shipyard in Singapore. The group sees floating data centers as the next step in diversifying beyond its shipbuilding roots.   © Reuters

With demand for data centers expected to skyrocket in an increasingly digital and interconnected world, Singapore's Keppel Corp. wants to change the game by building these notoriously energy-intensive facilities out at sea.

The national government’s upcoming plan to re-open the world-class Porgera mine in Enga Province will hit a snag because local landowners are claiming billions of kina in compensation.

Prime Minister James Marape and Minister for Mining Johnson Tuke recently announced that the government was taking Porgera mine seriously and will re-open it in due time.

Illegal land grab cases are on the rise in protected areas as land prices have soared and the development of the agricultural and agro-industrial sectors has ballooned, Ministry of Environment spokesman Neth Pheaktra said.

“In 1964, Cambodia was 73 per cent forest land with a population of only 5.7 million. But in 2018, the country was 46.86 per cent forest land – 8.5 million hectares – with a population of 16 million,” he said.

Pheaktra said the lost land has been turned into plantation or for housing.

Land is life in Papua New Guinea. Handed down over generations from father to son, or mother to daughter. To own land is to have a lifeline, our bloodlines, our inheritance, our identity is dened, strengthened and made complete by it.For centuries the world over, blood, sweat and tears have been spilled, empires built and crumbled, heroes have risen and fell in itsdefense or acquisition, whether rightfully or not.

Close to 20 million hectares of land have already been restored, as part of the Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative, according to the implementation report released recently at a virtual meeting of environment ministers from Nigeria, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti together with regional partners, international organisations and development agencies.

A licence to restart work at an iron ore opencast mine has been issued despite complaints of poor working conditions and dust and water pollution affecting the surrounding areas.

The second-biggest mountain in eSwatini, located in the north-east near the main border gate, is called Ngwenya because, at first glance, it looks like a crocodile. On its crown is a massive man-made crater, and on its side is a small hollow big enough to shelter a pride of lions, called the Lion Cavern.

Maseru, Lesotho, 23 October 2020 – The African Risk Capacity (ARC) Group and the Government of the Kingdom of Lesotho have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to address persistent climate risks and scale up national disaster risk management and financing efforts.

Mondulkiri provincial authorities are working to identify suspects who cut down tens of thousands of trees and buried them in a 60ha patch of forestland in order to take over the land.

The search came after a joint force confiscated three machines in Pu Leh village, in O’Raing district’s Dak Dam commune.

Provincial Forestry Administration director Um Van Sopheak told The Post police have been looking into the case since last Thursday.

Land is essential to our lives – we grow food on it and rely on it for economic growth and development. In sub-Saharan Africa approximately 83% of people depend directly on land for survival.

A call for evidence-based approaches and community engagement to increase tree cover

This article was originally published by Landscape News. 

The first of 10 Mondulkiri public officials implicated in illegal land grabbing in the province has been transferred from his position — a warning to others, according to a government spokesperson, but for local rights monitors a sign of continuing impunity over imprisonable crimes.

An inter-ministerial working group concluded an investigation into illegal encroachment of protected forests in Mondulkiri in late August, identifying 10 governmental officials allegedly involved in stealing state land.