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.

For years, Christiana Akwabea admired the vast fields she visited in neighboring districts to buy maize for reselling and dreamed of one day owning a plot of land where she could grow the staple crop.

But there wasn’t much land for commercial farming in Seikwa in Ghana’s Bono Region, and the local soil is more suitable for cultivating cashew and yam.

Can Sri Lanka live up to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s environmental commitments?

LAND-at-scale is a Dutch government program that contributes to improving land governance. The program supports better food and nutrition security, economic development, peace and stability in developing countries. It also contributes to sustainable incomes and social justice. In October last year, the program took off with 13 promising project ideas in different countries.

• Greenpeace Southeast Asia has identified nearly 3,500 hectares (8,650 acres) of peatland clearing in pulpwood plantations in Sumatra supplying Asian Pulp & Paper.
• Analysis of satellite imagery showed the clearing began in August 2018 and continued through June this year, despite APP having a “no peatland” and “no burning” policy that it also imposes on its suppliers.
• Greenpeace and local NGO Jikalahari also found evidence of fires in the concessions in question, which appeared to have been set deliberately to clear the land for planting.

• Gulzhan Musaeva, an independent financial analyst writes about CIMB’s sustainability commitments. CIMB is Malaysia’s second largest bank and a major leader to regional plantation companies.
• Musaeva argues that CIMB’s reluctance to address the issues associated with forest sector borrowers head-on casts doubt on its sustainability aspirations.
• “This means that, despite massive exposure to forest-risk sectors,” writes Musaeva, “CIMB, among other Malaysian banks, willfully overlooks its impact on SDG 15 ‘Life on Land’ through financing activities.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) guidelines is to address key challenges in the fishing sector.

The VGGT guidelines were unanimously endorsed on May 11, 2012 by the UN Committee on World Food Security as an international instrument that can be used by many different actors to improve the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forest.

It is a voluntary and not legally binding instrument.

Over 3.5 billion tree seedlings have so far been planted under this year’s Green Legacy campaign.

This was disclosed at a campaign where media leaders and professionals planted tree seedlings at Gulele Botanical Garden on Tuesday. 

Press Secretariat Head Nigusu Tilahun said on the occasion that the government and the people are pulling resources to fulfill very crucial national agendas.

The second round of LAND-at-scale resulted in 24 ideas submitted by 19 Dutch embassies. The LAND-at-scale Committee selected 6 most promising ideas to develop further. 

LAND-at-scale is a government programme that contributes to improving land governance. The programme supports economic development, peace and stability in developing countries. It also contributes to sustainable incomes, social justice, and better food and nutrition security.

From forced displacement to conflict over resources, the coronavirus pandemic has created a “perfect storm” for land rights abuses - and the situation is likely to worsen, researchers and activists warned on Thursday.

The migration of men to rural areas due to lockdowns and job losses has increased competition over land, with a disproportionate impact on woman, said organisers of a land rights webinar.