In the hills of northern Sikkim in northeast India, the Drokpa community live peaceful yet difficult lives. The hills resound with the songs the Drokpas have for every activity. These are not your usual villagers who reside in the same place for decades and have a set source of livelihood. Rather, the Drokpas, as their name suggests are nomads—“drokpa” is a Tibetan word that can be roughly translated as “nomad” or “high pastoral people”. For the last several generations, however, the Drokpas have followed an occupation that might soon disappear from Sikkim: herding yak.

The Land Portal is an independent nonprofit foundation based in The Netherlands. The Land Portal pioneered the open data revolution in the land sector and is committed to building an information ecosystem for land governance that ultimately supports better informed decision and policy making at local, national and international levels.

Climate change needs behavior change.What people eat, what they buy and what they use contributes directly to climate change. In just eight months, humans consume what the earth can sustainably produce in a single year. Nearly two-thirds of global emissions are linked to both direct and indirect forms of human consumption – even conservative estimates for the potential of changing behaviors to reduce consumption of natural resources suggest an enormous contribution to reducing global emissions.

"Gender, Land and Mining in Pastoralist Tanzania" is the product of rigorous field research over two years by WOLTS team members from Mokoro and HakiMadini. Significant stresses from mining, population growth and climate change, as well as disturbing levels of violence against women have been uncovered in this study of two traditional pastoralist communities in Tanzania. Initial findings are based on repeat rounds of participatory fieldwork by the WOLTS team and have already received attention at national and local level.

BONN, Germany (Landscape News) — A new partnership urging businesses, citizens and governments to take action in the field of forest conservation, land use, food production and consumption aims to take action on climate change.

Land and water-related conflicts are flaring up across Kenya, amid drought, population growth and high unemployment

By Kagondu Njagi

CHUKA, Kenya - Phyllis Mugeni was watering her greens when she spotted a dozen armed men advancing from the lowlands to attack farmers working on the banks of the River Naka in the foothills of Mount Kenya.

• World's fist comprehensive evidence-based assessment report on land degradation will be launched in March 2018
• Best-available evidence for decision makers to make informed decisions to halt & reverse land degradation
• Prepared by more than 100 leading international experts from 45 countries over 3 years
• Draws on more than 3,000 scientific papers, Government reports, indigenous and local knowledge & other sources
• Improved by over 7,300 comments from more than 200 external reviewers, including Governments
• Examines implications of land d

“Gender, Land and Mining in Mongolia” is the product of two years of rigorous field research in Mongolia in collaboration with the Mongolian NGO, People Centered Conservation (PCC). It is the first country research report by the WOLTS (Women’s Land Tenure Security) project team at Mokoro and involved repeat rounds of both quantitative and qualitative participatory fieldwork to validate results.

Communities are at the frontline of social change, uniting in a common cause to benefit the wider population

LONDON, Dec 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As 2017 draws to a close, the term 'resilience' has become a buzzword for many humanitarian organisations and governments who are set on preparing for major disasters so any recovery is much easier.

Resilience covers broad disasters ranging from climate change induced floods and droughts to economic shocks and health epidemics.

Central America and the Caribbean are considerably vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Political analyst Geovanny Vicente Romero investigates.

Indigenous peoples and other local communities play a vital role when it comes to mitigating the impact of climate change. But despite inhabiting 50 per cent of the world’s land, these communities legally own just 10 per cent of it. As a result, civil society groups are calling on governments around the world to scale up the protection of customary land rights.