News on Land

NAIROBI ( Landscape News) – Degradation of natural resources reduces employment opportunities for at least 11 million young Africans entering the job market every year, and soil and nutrient depletion on croplands cost the continent 3 percent of its gross domestic product. Climate change magnifies the challenge.

MWINGITSA, Malawi (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Life was never easy for Salome Nkalawire but when her husband died the mother of four faced her toughest challenge yet.

She lost the small plot of land the couple had bought together and farmed in Mwingitsa village in the south of Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world.

When her husband passed away, Nkalawire’s relatives would not allow her to keep the plot because cultural norms dictate that widowed or abandoned women cannot own land, even if they have a legal claim to it.

Two events held on Tuesday, September 18 demonstrated an enormous divide between groups working on issues related to favelas and favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. Both events had more than one hundred people present and each featured an influential global thinker to help foster debate.

The battle to stop the spread of extractive industries pits indigenous and peasant communities against powerful business interests, backed up by politicians who encourage the foreign investments that convert millennial ways of life into cash—for them

Pastoralists manage land in way that keeps carbon in soil instead of releasing climate-changing emissions, experts say

TURIN, Italy - Nomadic herders across Africa can work in tandem with farmers and produce sustainable food without damaging the land or harming the planet, experts and pastoralists said on Saturday.

JAKARTA — Indigenous rights activists in Indonesia have expressed concern that the government is stalling the passage of a long-awaited bill on indigenous rights by tangling the legislative process in red tape.

The government said in July that it had agreed with members of the House of Representatives to stat discussions on the bill on Aug. 16. But the legislative docket seen by Mongabay shows the start of those discussions has been pushed back to Sept. 27.

MONTREAL — Forest areas managed by indigenous and local communities store nearly 300 billion metric tons of carbon — five times more than previously estimated — yet failure for these communities to have their rights formally recognized may lead forest-dependent people unable to protect carbon reserves, a new report claims.

One similarity between the three Asian economies, namely Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, is their success in becoming high-income countries after World War II while maintaining a more equal distribution of income. Currently the Gini Index of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are in the low 0.30s, while Indonesia’s index (a lower middle-income country) is around 0.40. Key to the ability of the three countries in maintaining a more equal distribution of income is land reform, which they conducted as early as the 1940s and 1950s. 

In a watershed moment for land rights in Liberia and across Africa, President George Weah on Sept. 19 signed into law a land reform bill that extends land rights to millions of rural Liberians.

The Land Rights Act ensures, for the first time, that the land rights of rural Liberians are recognized, protected, and guaranteed by law – an essential ingredient for these communities to achieve secure land rights. Under the previous land tenure system, as much as 80 percent of Liberians lived without legally recognized rights to land.

MASAITA, Kenya—Twenty years ago, when Rael Chemutai and her husband heard about the fertile land that was for sale near the Mau Forest, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) west of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, they decided to sell their belongings and set out on a journey to finally settle on the productive land.

Up to now, there is no announcement on a date when the trial will continue until the Court of Appeal resolves the legal objections filed.

The first trial for the murder of Honduran Indigenous activist Berta Caceres was suspended on Monday in Tegucigalpa.