News on Land

There is need to broaden the debate on finding solutions for water crisis

Water scarcity has been figuring prominently in the national discourse now. It has initiated a debate on water issues in the country that is a welcome development. The spectrum of debate ranges from building more dams and their feasibility, water conservation, and better water management.

KOTA KINABALU: A Sabah opposition leader has accused the current Sabah government of misleading the people on the issue of communal titles which the state had claimed will be abolished soon.

Sook assemblyman Ellron Angin said in place of the state-planned communal titles, the Sabah government had promised to issue individual titles for the natives.

However, he noticed the individual titles promised by the new administration are almost identical to the communal titles issued by the previous government.

Chile's President Sebastián Piñera has promised a thorough investigation after a young indigenous man was fatally shot by police.

The incident on Wednesday sparked protests in an area in the country's south, which is marked by tensions over land ownership.

Police said Camilo Catrillanca, 24, was accidentally shot in the head during an operation against local car thieves.

Mr Catrillanca was a grandson of a Mapuche indigenous leader.

According to NGO Makaam, which helps women in drought-affected areas and has been working with the women’s commission to safeguard the rights of farmer widows, getting legal land title rights for widows in villages remains a major issue.

Following consultations in Vidarbha and Marathwada region where a high number of farmer suicides has been reported, the Maharashtra State Commission for Women, along with NGOs, has created a charter of demands for farmer widows.

From South Africa to the Amazon, battles over land and who owns it are unleashing unprecedented conflict and labyrinthine legal cases

LONDON - Land laws mean nothing unless communities can prove their ownership, researchers said on Thursday, calling for better tools to map the land and stave off conflict over property.

“Cape Town, like so many cities across the world, has found itself to be the piggy bank for global surplus capital looking to invest in property. We have seen wave after wave of exclusive developments catering to the super wealthy jack up prices and strip our homes of their basic function – to house families.

• In the early 21st century, Amazon biome deforestation decreased, as native vegetation loss began rising dramatically in the Cerrado savanna biome in Brazil. Now, scientists using a new research methodology known as telecoupling, have found that the Amazon deforestation decline and Cerrado increase are linked.

More than 600,000 migrants have arrived on Italy's shores from north Africa since 2014

ROME - Hundreds of migrants and Roma have been left homeless following two days of evictions in Italy, as its interior minister said on Wednesday that he was restoring order to the country.

Volunteers running the Baobab camp in Rome said that police forcibly evicted about 150 refugees and undocumented migrants on Tuesday and bulldozed their makeshift shelters, with the majority having nowhere else to sleep.

The Gujarat government is planning to give 45 lakh hectare of cultivable wasteland to corporates for farming while ignoring the landless Dalits and tribals

Latest legal skirmish in a long battle between activists and the company building the pipeline, which is also behind Keystone XL

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 2018 (IPS) - A new landmark initiative aims to make quality data and tools available to the international community in order to combat an “existential crisis”: land degradation.

The Land Degradation Neutrality Initiative (LDN), launched by United Nations-backed partnership the Group of Earth Observations (GEO), aims to put data directly into the hands of local and national decision makers to help stop and reverse environmental degradation.

"All around us, we have seen forest land taken for mining and for palm oil plantations that are not good for the environment or for the people"

GAJAH BERTALUT, Indonesia, Nov 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In a community hall, a group of men sit cross-legged on mats, poring over documents and maps marked with forests, farmland, a river and the village of Gajah Bertalut in Indonesia's Sumatra island.