News on Land

Despite efforts to protect them, tropical forests are dwindling at a near-record rate at a time when humanity needs them more than ever in the fight against climate change. In this interview with Eco-Business, World Resources Institute’s global forests director Rod Taylor argues that we need to rethink the balance between development and conservation.

An experiment conducted in Brazil in an area of Atlantic Rainforest suggests that intensive silviculture, including the use of herbicide and substantial amounts of fertilizer, is a more effective approach to promoting the regeneration of tropical forest and biomass gain than the traditional method based on manual weeding and less fertilizer.

Land redistribution through just and equitable means remains contentious in the South African political and judicial landscape. Under the apartheid rule, the distribution of land was aligned to race, with the minority white population allocated about 90% of arable and habitable land, while the majority black population was allocated the minute remainder, mainly in the homelands. Transitioning from an apartheid to a democratic state brought about the human rights laden Constitution which contains section 25 – the right property.

Indigenous communities in Nicaragua are facing violence and displacement, but agroecology is helping empower the Miskito people.

What do you do when your access to rivers, sacred sites, and forests, is cut off, especially when your whole identity has grown from a spiritual connection to nature?

When you face displacement from your native lands, discrimination, and human rights abuses, how do you survive?

This article was first published at The Lush Times.

Recent studies find that the prevention of irreversible climate catastrophes require the world’s population to commit to transformative change within the next decade. On 12–14 May, the Global Landscapes Forum Kyoto (GLF Kyoto) event entitled “Climate, Landscapes and Lifestyles: It is Not Too Late” focused on making this commitment a reality.

Forest Advisory Committee decided this while suggesting that instead states with deficient green land should divert their non-forest land for afforestation to companesate for use of forest land in development projects

States with more than 75 per cent forest cover won’t be required to provide non-forest land for forest diversion projects, decided the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) in a meeting on April 23, 2019.

While gridlock is keeping the Taliban and the United States from reaching a political settlement to the war in Afghanistan, a lacklustre peace process represents just one of many issues confronting the country. 

Decades of civil wars and invasions have exacerbated the consequences of deforestation and desertification in Afghanistan, where environmental issues tend to take a backseat to counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. 

MOST people have heard of the historic 1992 High Court Mabo Decision and the Native Title Act 1993.

However, many people may not be aware of the NSW State Government Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (ARLA) and its impact.

Sometimes too, there is confusion between the two acts, but they are two very different pieces of legislation.

The United States government announced on Monday it will invest another $160 million in Colombia’s ongoing peace process.

The announcement came during an event with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where Director for International Development Administrator Mark Green told reporters in Bogota that the funds are meant for the “implementation of peace” and to formalize land ownership of small farmers.

• A new modeling study finds that largely unrestricted “business-as-usual” Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado deforestation could result in the loss of an estimated 606,000 square kilometers of forest by 2050, leading to local temperature increases of up to 1.45 degrees Celsius, in addition to global rises in temperature.
• Under a Brazil Forest Code enforcement model, researchers predict deforestation would be limited to 79,000 square kilometers, with reforestation occurring over 110,000 square kilometers, leading to an average local increase of just 0.02 degrees Celsius.<