News on Land

A recently passed agricultural land law gives rural communities in Mali new rights to their traditional lands. Camilla Toulmin finds out more from an expert.

With the who’s who of the state machinery in attendance, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was celebrated with much pomp and fanfare in Ooty on 9 August. While the traditional dances and official speeches painted a rosy picture, it was what was left unsaid during the celebrations that deserves looking into.

INDIGENOUS leaders will meet on Wednesday at a forum in Lismore as part of a state government review into the Aboriginal Land Rights Act.

Lismore is one of nine locations where the forums are being held as part of consultations to review the act to ensure its relevance for indigenous communities.

Ngulingah Local Aboriginal Land Council interim chief executive Daniel Rose is one of the Aboriginal Land Council executives who will be attending Wednesday's meeting, facilitated by former indigenous senator Aden Ridgeway.

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Using digital technology to record land deals in Honduras can help clean up a corrupt system, protect the poor against eviction and stem violence in the world's most dangerous place for environmental activists, according to an analyst.

Nearly 80 percent of the country's privately held land is either untitled or improperly so, and acquisitions for mining, dams, tourism and other developments are often enforced through violence.

On top of the socio-economic reform demands being pushed by the National Democratic Front, collectively dubbed as the comprehensive agreement on socio-economic reforms (CASER), is the free distribution of land for the country’s landless rural poor. During the ill-fated peace talks in Amsterdam in July, the question was raised: where will the government get the land to distribute for free to would-be agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs)? One of the answers: public lands.

THE Zimbabwe Agricultural Society (ZAS) has admitted agricultural production in the country has been on a downward trend and on Tuesday announced it would introduce a new section aimed at encouraging farmers to improve their yields.

ZAS CEO, Anxious Masuka, told reporters at a press conference in Harare they would launch the Eleven Tonne Plus Club which will celebrate the cream of Zimbabwean farmers who have excelled in maize production.

The Kichwa people of the San Martin region have traditionally occupied the upland forests which since 2005 were classified as the Regional Protected Area - Cerro Escalera by the regional government of San Martin. Today, many of these communities lack any secure rights to these forests and are regularly stopped and restricted from accessing its forest resources vital for their subsistence.

Civil Society Organisations in Edo State, under the umbrella of Coalition for Protection of the Environment, recently staged a protest against land grabbing and deforestation. Adibe Emenyonu who was there, reports

Bose Eruanga is a peasant farmer from Uzalla, Owan West Local Government Area of Edo State. Eruanga, as a widow with six children depends on the produce from the farmlands in her community to train her children.