News on Land

The suit seeks the legal recognition of the Temiar Orang Asli's land rights

BANGKOK, Jan 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Malaysian government said on Friday it would sue the local government of Kelantan state for failing to uphold the land rights of its indigenous people, a move that activists said was unprecedented and that could lead to more protection measures.

Native groups are struggling with land encroachment by governments and logging, mining and agribusiness companies

WASHINGTON - Indigenous people from across the globe gathered in the U.S. capital on Friday for a march drawing attention to social and environmental injustices against indigenous communities worldwide, in what organizers said was a first-ever event.

• The authors of a new report argue that investment in forests as a climate change mitigation strategy is just as important as addressing emissions from the energy sector.
• Despite the recognized potential contributions of forests to slowing the warming of the earth, they aren’t typically seen as a permanent solution to climate change.

Indigenous jurisdiction is at the centre of the dispute over the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The same is true of the Trans Mountain expansion. In both cases, the corporations involved have misunderstood or misrepresented the risks associated with jurisdictional uncertainty.

Activists fight to stop construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which endangers an ecosystem that is one of the most important bird habitats in the western hemisphere

Deep within the humid green heart of the largest river swamp in North America, a battle is being waged over the future of the most precious resource of all: water.

Demand for recognition and protection of indigenous and community land rights is at an all-time high. ILC members around the world are mobilizing to support communities to claim and defend their land rights.

A United Nations commission has released a trio of letters it recently delivered to Canada that warn the country is likely failing to meet its commitments to the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Two of the letters concern infrastructure projects underway in British Columbia.

HATIYA, Bangladesh, Jan 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ferdousi Akter's family struggled to survive after a crumbling riverbank forced them to abandon their home and move to a new part of the island where they live, off the Bangladesh coast.

Her husband worked as a day labourer on fishing boats but earned too little to cover their expenses.

Just over a year ago, however, the five-member Akter family was one of 45 households offered land on Hatiya Island under a decade-long free lease by the Bangladesh Forest Department.

On a late night in December, I arrived in the village of Lunjuk on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. A warm breeze welcomed me as I sat down with 30 women and men from Forum Petani Bersatu — the local farmers’ union — who had gathered to share stories of their ongoing struggle to reclaim their land.

We are prepared, we won’t back down or give up the rights we have conquered, much less hand over our territory so that Bolsonaro and his coronéis [old land elite] can carry out the plan they’ve hatched,” declared the Articulation of the Indigenous People of Brazil (APIB), one of the country’s leading indigenous organizations, in a public statement on 3 January.

La deforestación en el estado Amazonas se ha intensificado en los últimos cinco años, pues la pequeña minería ilegal al sur del río Orinoco ha cobrado más fuerza, desde que se oficializó la Zona de Desarrollo Estratégico Nacional “Arco Minero del Orinoco”, un decreto con el que se entregaron concesiones mineras a empresas nacionales y extranjeras, para la explotación de bauxita, cobre, diamante y oro en 112.000 kilómetros cuadrados.