News on Land

• The Mercosur trade bloc (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the European Union are expected to conclude trade negotiations and put finishing touches on a trade agreement by the end of this year.
• That pact will include landmark indigenous human rights clauses meant to protect indigenous groups from violence, land theft and other civil rights violations.

Indigenous peoples and other local communities play a vital role when it comes to mitigating the impact of climate change. But despite inhabiting 50 per cent of the world’s land, these communities legally own just 10 per cent of it. As a result, civil society groups are calling on governments around the world to scale up the protection of customary land rights.

This post was written by Khalid Ibrahim, executive director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights, an independent, non-profit organisation that promotes freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in the Gulf region and its neighbouring countries.

Offered by edX, in this course, you’ll be introduced to the basics of land management. This MOOC gives you insight into basic functionalities and tasks of land management. It will help you recognize important land correlations with other fields of interest.

Small farmers plant a more diverse variety of crops, making them more resilient to climate change

MUMBAI, Dec 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India's small farmers are better equipped than large landowners to deal with climate change, but need more support to find innovative ways to minimise the impacts of higher temperatures, uneven rainfall, floods and droughts, analysts said.

• PRIndex will collect data from 36 countries in 2018 to help citizens secure their rights to homes and land.

Forest foods are in high demand in haats or tribal community markets and nearby rural markets. Forest produce such as honey, amla and several fruits are in great demand in urban malls. Though this may appear as an opportunity for economic empowerment of the tribal communities, this may lead to degradation of the forests, hampering availability.

11 December 2017 – On International Mountain Day, the United Nations food security agency has called for greater focus on sustainable agriculture in highland regions around the globe to better respond to climate change impacts and migration challenges.

Johannesburg – The Constitutional Court ruled on Monday that a black community holds a right to certain portions of the Salem Commonage in the Eastern Cape and was dispossessed of the land due to past racially discriminatory practices.

According to the judgment, penned by Justice Edwin Cameron and concurred by nine others, the community had rights – but not exclusive rights – to the commonage.

The Mashco Piro, an isolated tribe in Peru's Amazon, are increasingly making contact with the outside world

DIAMANTE (Peru), Dec 6 - In Peru's remote southern Amazon, villagers rushed to the riverbank to witness a rare sighting - a group of Mashco Piro nomads standing on the other side, brandishing bows and arrows.

An elder from the indigenous hunter-gatherers, who have lived largely in isolation inside the rainforest for millennia, called to the Diamante villagers to ferry them across.