agriculture related Blog post | Land Portal
5 May 2021
Authors: 
CLAUDIA RINGLER
Global

COVID-19 may have forced the 50th anniversary of Earth Day to be commemorated online last year, yet millions of people participated in calls to action. As we begin to look beyond the pandemic, however, it's vital to remember that we cannot go back to business-as-usual as far as our planet is concerned.


27 November 2019
Africa

Cosmas Milton Ochieng, an expert in natural resource governance and economic development in Africa, is the Director of the African Natural Resource Centre at the African Development Bank.

In collaboration with the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank will host the 3rd Edition of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa in Abidjan from 25 to 29 November 2019.

In this interview, Ochieng shares key insights into why the conference matters for Africa.

 

26 November 2019
Authors: 
Clinton Omusula
Africa
Global

The land sector is increasingly being cited as a corruption hub. Many countries across the globe are grappling with land-related corruption that dates to the colonial years and which have metamorphosed into historical injustices and continue to be a source of conflict and violation of basic human rights. Cases of land grabbing, compensation-less expropriation, gender-based discrimination in accessing and ownership of land and related resources, illegal mining deals, bribing to access land administration services among others are not new in the lands sector.

Land rights for cocoa farmers aren’t just good stewardship, they’re smart business
5 November 2019
Authors: 
Yuliya Panfil
Africa
Ghana
Latin America and the Caribbean
Asia
Global

Last week the World Cocoa Foundation, a membership organization of more than 100 cocoa companies, held its annual partnership meeting in Berlin, Germany. The aim of the meeting is for governments, cocoa companies and farmers to identify and tackle the sector’s largest sustainability challenges. A 90-minute session was devoted to the topic of land tenure. The prominence of the session, as well as the seniority of the presenters – the Head of Sustainable Sourcing for Hershey’s and the Deputy Director General of Cote d’Ivoire’s Land Agency among them – is a powerful signaling effect.

Why Women Farmers Deserve the Right to Identity
18 October 2019
Authors: 
Shipra Deo
Kenya
China
Myanmar
Bangladesh

On the 2019 International Day of Rural Women, Landesa’s Shipra Deo explores how land rights are an essential element for overturning misperceptions about the role of women in society and on the farm.


In a workshop with a group of agronomists who work in agriculture extension in India, I ask the participants to draw the picture of a farmer with whom they work. All but one of them draw male figures.


3 May 2019
South-Eastern Asia
Cambodia

By Chris Hufstader


 


After an audacious land grab by a foreign company, indigenous women in a remote Cambodian village struggle to regain their farms and sacred sites.



Sol Preng remembers vividly the day in 2012 when bulldozers unexpectedly arrived on her family farm.


“The company came and cleared away our cashew trees right before the harvest,” she says. “I lost four hectares of land and all my cashew trees.”


21 March 2019
Global

By Deborah Espinosa and Patrick Gallagher, USAID’s Land Technology Solutions Program


 


Persistent and pervasive gender inequality is a global development challenge that constrains economic growth, educational opportunities, and health outcomes. It jeopardizes food security and undermines poverty reduction strategies. The world over, some formal and many informal laws and customs operate to hinder women’s empowerment and thus their full potential as agents of economic and social change.


8 March 2019
Authors: 
Anouska Perram
Africa
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo

Improving how we work for – and with – indigenous and local women in their communities

 

As a human rights organisation, gender justice is a fundamental principle of our work, and we have long been conscious of, and sought to address, the barriers to effective participation in decision-making by women, as well as the other human rights violations they may face on account of their gender.

Women working in a field  Women at work in Sri Lanka. Photo: Lakshman Nadaraja/World Bank
26 September 2018
Authors: 
Olivier De Schutter
Global

This week in Geneva, the Human Rights Council is expected to take a position on the follow-up to a draft Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Persons Working in Rural Areas. Five years after the start of the negotiations, we are at a turning point.

Photo by: Sandra Coburn / The Cloudburst Group
17 April 2018
Authors: 
Matt Sommerville
Zambia
Ghana
Paraguay
Myanmar
Vietnam
Global

Much of the world’s rural landscapes are technically managed by national governments with limited recognition of, or support for, the rights and management responsibilities of the rural poor who live in these areas. In an era of large-scale land acquisitions for global commodity production, this has led, in some cases, to governments allocating vast tracts of land and resources to companies with limited or no consultation of the people affected.