• Gulzhan Musaeva, an independent financial analyst writes about CIMB’s sustainability commitments. CIMB is Malaysia’s second largest bank and a major leader to regional plantation companies.
• Musaeva argues that CIMB’s reluctance to address the issues associated with forest sector borrowers head-on casts doubt on its sustainability aspirations.
• “This means that, despite massive exposure to forest-risk sectors,” writes Musaeva, “CIMB, among other Malaysian banks, willfully overlooks its impact on SDG 15 ‘Life on Land’ through financing activities.

(Main photo: a surveyor sits on a construction site in Ningbo, China, on April 26, 2020. Local governments have long offered firms connected to China’s political elite land sale discounts. Photo: Bloomberg)

Following talks on customary land being alienated from land owners, the Land Department is encouraging Customary Land Owners to have their land registered.

This is to ensure these lands are bankable, so that they can use them for further development.

Speaking to th emedia recently, the lands minister said there were policies in place for customary lands registered under the lands department.

He is calling on land owners with portions of land near towns and cities to consult the lands department, and have their land registered.

Some 37 members of the “Nagkahiusang Mag-Uuma sa Pindasan og Pangibiran” (NAGMAPPA) from the Davao de Oro town of Mabini withdrew their support from the leftist “Kilusan ng Mambubukid sa Pilipinas” (KMP), the Army's 71st Infantry Battalion (71IB) said Thursday.

In a statement on the same day, members of the NAGMAPPA expressed their dismay towards the failed promises of the KMP such as tracts of land.

EMEKA ELEH is a past president, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) and a principal partner at Ubosi Eleh and Company. In this interview with BERTRAM NWANNEKANMA, he spoke on the imperative of land titling, challenges of inaccurate data and other issues in the real estate sector.

The family also accused the Babajide Sanwo-Olu-led government of Lagos of acting outside of legal provisions by demolishing their properties.

The Elejigbo family of Lamgbasa community in Eti-Osa Local Government Area of Lagos has accused the state government of demolishing their property at Silverpoint Estate for the purpose of acquiring the land and selling to wealthy individuals.

The family also accused the Babajide Sanwo-Olu-led government of Lagos of acting outside of legal provisions by demolishing their properties.

Worried by the huge housing deficit estimated at over 17 million, the Group Chief Executive Officer, Oxford Group Nigeria, Teni Adesanya, has tasked the country’s economic managers to pass a law that would make land documentation seamless.
 
Specifically, he said if a bill that will make land documentation as easy as opening an email is passed into law, the country’s housing deficit would be addressed quickly.
   

• Mbonjo sits in the heart of Cameroon’s country’s largest oil palm and rubber-producing region. In 2000, state-owned oil palm plantations around the village were acquired by Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin), a Belgian holding company that operates palm oil and rubber plantations through dozens of subsidiaries across Africa and Southeast Asia.

With the COVID-19 pandemic still expanding across the globe, ACT NOW is urging the PNG government to drop its plans to put customary land into the hands of commercial banks.

The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated once again that customary land is a vital and irreplaceable resource for our families and communities.

It should be inconceivable that the government would put customary land at risk by allowing commercial banks to hold the title as security for financial loans.