News on Land

Date: 21 of June 2016

Source: IWMI

South Asian Water Studies (SAWAS), an open access journal http://www.sawasjournal.org, has issued a call for papers for a special issue on ‘Water justice, Gender and Disability.’

More than 2.2 million lives changed – 50,000 of those in a single week. Learn more about Landesa’s impact over the past year, from India and China to Rwanda, in Landesa’s new annual report.

View the online annual report
Download the PDF

Date: 05 July 2016

Source: Indian Country

Alaska Native communities have a bit more control over their land thanks to a July 1 ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that affirms their ability to place lands into federal trust, just as other tribes can, in what Alaska tribes are calling a landmark ruling.

More than land rights, the ruling enables Alaska Native governments to regulate alcohol and take other measures to protect members’ health and safety.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)  is inviting indigenous peoples’ organizations and communities, and organizations that work with them, to apply for grants that fund projects and partnerships to promote the development of indigenous peoples and their unique cultural identity.

Grants ranging from US$20,000 to US$50,000 will be awarded to applicants from IFAD’s developing Member States through the Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF).

• An irregular land titling system is behind the deforestation of a swath of Amazon rainforest now occupied by a Mennonite colony in Masisea municipality, in Peru’s Ucayali department.
• In 2015, more than 40 land registry files were filled out with false information to give forests titles that made them appear to be farmland.
• This system, used in several places in Ucayali department, allowed for the deforestation of more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of forests in Masisea and within Indigenous communities.

In September 2015, of

If you wander up and down one of the many irrigation canals in Egypt’s Nile Delta, you’ll see a wide range of crops being grown. Fields of swelling water melons sit alongside leafy greens. Twirling grape vines back on to rows of cucumbers. But why have the farmers chosen to grow one crop rather than another? Is it simply because they have differing access to water? A new study undertaken by IWMI and partners* sought to better understand the reasons for crop choice, and has come up with some surprising conclusions.