News on Land

TARTAGAL, Argentina , Jan 12 2019 (IPS) - Nancy López lives in a house made of clay, wood and corrugated metal sheets, on private land dedicated to agriculture. She is part of an indigenous community of 12 families in northern Argentina that, like almost all such communities, has no title to the land it occupies and lives under the constant threat of eviction.

Last month, indigenous Karen communities, the Salween Peace Park Committee, and the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) officially launched the Salween Peace Park in the Mutraw District of Myanmar’s Kayin State.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 14 is focused on the effort to conserve and sustain the world’s oceans, seas and marine resources. It is an essential goal for the life of the planet and the wellbeing of all. The ocean feeds billions of people and provides livelihoods for billions more - including, of course, women and girls.

WASHINGTON — Nine years after a devastating earthquake ravaged Haiti, a group of Haitian farmers won a settlement with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Haitian government after demonstrating they were adversely impacted by a bank-financed industrial park built on land seized in 2011.

Landscapes need to be restored. The growing global population needs enough food to eat. How can both needs be met at once?

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 10 2019 (IPS) - “We have already been decimated and subjected, and we have been victims of the integrationist policy of governments and the national state,” said indigenous leaders, as they rejected the new Brazilian government’s proposals and measures focusing on indigenous peoples.

NEW YORK - A small Native American tribe in Louisiana whose land has nearly vanished into the sea has moved a step closer to relocating its community further inland after authorities acquired new land for the move, part of a first-of-its-kind project.

The 515 acres (208 hectares) of farmland will be made available to members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe and other inhabitants of the Isle de Jean Charles to relocate after their village was nearly wiped by erosion and rising seas.

In the annual review of the Agrarian Reform Consortium, secretary-general Dewi Kartika displayed some interesting infographics. Presenting the government, the business sector and civil society organizations (CSO) as three circles, it was evident that over time, the business sector grew in size and edged closer to the government, while the CSOs shrunk in size and grew more isolated. 

In Uganda, there were at least 17 “land grabs” since 2000 with contracts totaling 74,831 hectares of land, according to Land Matrix data

A new report has linked land grabbing to worsening climate change, calling on governments to secure community land rights to protect the world’s natural resources such as “forests” that mitigate effects of climate change.

The tensions have highlighted the differences between elected and hereditary leadership

The tensions unfolding over a natural gas pipeline project in northern B.C. have raised questions about who a resource company should consult among Indigenous leaders when pursuing a major project: hereditary chiefs or elected band councils?

• PHOTOS

In the 1980s, the hilly Qianyanzhou region in Jiangxi Province, southern China, faced severe soil erosion due to deforestation and unsustainable farming practices. Fertile red soil was being washed away causing crop yields to tumble.

There are encouraging examples of improved forest governance. These include steps forward in increasing transparency, enhancing law enforcement and establishing demand-side measures to curb illegal logging. However, progress is too slow to significantly reduce deforestation, as shown by the fact that the average annual rate of natural forest loss between 2014 and 2017 was 42 percent higher than in the previous decade.