News on Land

• A rule allowing subsistence farmers to burn small plots of land has been reinserted into the Job Creation Act passed last week.
• Other provisions affecting the plantation industry have also been adjusted in a new version of the law that appeared this week.

Multiple versions of a sweeping deregulation law passed in Indonesia last week contain substantial differences affecting the nation’s plantation sector, despite assurances from lawmakers that any changes to the text made in recent days were merely cosmetic in nature.

Land is essential to our lives – we grow food on it and rely on it for economic growth and development. In sub-Saharan Africa approximately 83% of people depend directly on land for survival.

Some chiefs in the Greater Accra Region have threatened to demonstrate against the government over lands that were seized from them by the state.

The aggrieved chiefs threatened a 4-day protest asking the government to immediately release to them lands that were confiscated by the state years ago.

The Dutch LAND-at-scale program was launched in March last year and since then, two rounds for land intervention ideas have been released. The program seeks ideas that contribute to improving land governance in developing countries, and that ultimately support better food and nutrition security, economic development, peace and stability in these countries. At this moment, projects for 16 countries are actively being formulated in close collaboration with embassies and other in country stakeholders.

LAND-at-scale is a Dutch government program that contributes to improving land governance. The program supports better food and nutrition security, economic development, peace and stability in developing countries. It also contributes to sustainable incomes and social justice. In October last year, the program took off with 13 promising project ideas in different countries.

Maun — Investigations to establish the root cause of squatting in Maun have revealed that some land overseers were at the forefront of the problem, Kgosi Oleyo Ledimo has said.

Presenting on the role of bogosi in land administration during the ongoing orientation workshop for new land board members, Kgosi Ledimo expressed disappointment that some land overseers encouraged squatting.

The investigations were undertaken by tribal leaders following concerns expressed by Tawana Land Board about squatting last year.

The Religion Ministry will now require pagodas to have hard land titles as part of an effort to better regulate religious institutions in the country, a move some monks said would tighten authorities’ control of monks who participate in social work.

On Monday, the ministry issued a new directive requiring pagodas to file for land registration with authorities’ assistance, as well as announcing a temporary halt to new applications to establish Christian churches.

A call for evidence-based approaches and community engagement to increase tree cover

This article was originally published by Landscape News. 

Main photo: Cambodian farmer and land rights activist Oum Samorl (photo: Ridan Sun)

Cambodian farmer Oum Samorl and her family lost their farm to a corporate land grab 15 years ago. They have never stopped feeling the loss, especially during the pandemic.

Oum Samorl remembers the day in June 2006 when tractors invaded her family’s farm in Cambodia’s Pailin province. 

Main photo: The family of Chai Bunthonglek, a farmer who was killed in 2015 in a community farm in Klong Sai Pattana in Surat Thani province in southern Thailand, Aug 24, 2020. (Photo: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Rina Chandran)

SURAT THANI: Somruedee Bunthonglek has not repaired the bullet holes in the pickup truck her husband was driving when he survived an assassination attempt barely a year after her father was shot dead on the same communal farm in southern Thailand.