This Land Portal data story looks at the increase of maize production in and around Thailand, and its relation to a poultry value chain as an ingredient in animal feed.
This Land Portal data story explores the history of double dispossession in South Africa, from the colonial and apartheid era until contemporary times due to mining investments.
Kazakhstan and China must reach mutually beneficial agreements on water issues.
by Wilder Alejandro Sanchez for Center for the National Interest
It’s that time of year again! March means International Women’s Day and the annual meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. It’s not surprising, after COP26 in Glasgow, that this year’s CSW66 links gender equality with climate change. The official theme is ‘achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes.’
International Women’s Day today challenges us to ‘break the bias’. This is key when it comes to the climate crisis as women are more vulnerable to climate shocks, yet less able to build resilience due to the cultural and legal biases that frustrate their agency over land and resources. Subjective data offers us ways to spot these biases and target ways of breaking them.
“It will be fun to develop land-use planning, if we do it together.” This was a comment from one of the local land managers during 30 online workshops run by PCC to introduce new Gender Guidelines for local land management in Mongolia.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities have proven experience at maintaining and improving the carbon density of forest landscapes, often under dire and violent circumstances. Like much of the front line workers that have been so crucial in the current global climate, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are first responders in their own right, on the front lines of the fight to protect the planet’s remaining tropical forests.
With crucial United Nations conferences due this year on both climate change and biodiversity, experts have called for Indigenous People to be included in the meetings, for current laws protecting forests and the wildlife within to be enforced, and for money to be allocated towards the further protection of such lands by those who live there.
Indigenous Peoples look after their land, protect the environment and food sources, and can be a bulwark against global disease by ensuring biodiversity and proper management of forests.
But they remain under sometimes violent threat, are often treated as after-thoughts in international policy planning, and generally see their rights taking second-place to global demands, including environmental protection.
Curating land information is part of our daily work in the Land Portal. It includes selecting, categorizing, and enriching information with analysis and/or additional data, graphic visualizations, etc. In times with so much information available to choose from, people are increasingly seeking sources that offer selections of high-quality knowledge and provide analysis that make sense of it. Understanding how partners in the land community are meeting this demand is a great source for us to improve our work of curating, and providing meaning to land data.
In Mongolia, the word “rangeland” is synonymous with “homeland.” It is a clue to the importance of rangelands in a country where a quarter of Mongolians are herders, and the wider livestock economy provides sustenance, income, and wealth to nearly half of the population. For many nomadic societies herding is at the core of their life. Around the world, rangelands support the livelihoods, social traditions, and resilience of 500 million people, primarily in low-income countries.
Despite its proven efficiency in protecting rainforests, Indigenous Peoples and local communities only receive a small share of funding for climate and biodiversity protection.
