Our blogs on Land

Deciding whether or not to allow an investor to use community lands and natural resources is one of the most important decisions a community can make. Namati and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) have published two new guides to help communities prepare for interactions with investors and, if they so wish, negotiate fair, equitable contracts. These guides are the first of their kind.

Granting forest dwellers legal rights to their traditional lands helps fight deforestation and climate change, but the vast majority of the world's forests remain under government control with limited access for communities, researchers said.

Only about 14 percent of forests, or about 527 million hectares, were legally owned or designated for local communities in 58 countries surveyed by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group.

In the village of Katebe, Ugandan schoolchildren have little choice but to drink from the same water supply as animals.

During the dry season from June to August, Kyakatarihwa dam is the only source of water for people and livestock alike in this remote part of southwest Uganda's Mbarara district.

"We have no (other) option," said Arinaitwe Kenneth, headteacher of Katebe Primary School, which has 420 pupils.

The world’s remaining ‘wild places’ are often envisaged to be packed full of biodiversity, and bereft of one troublesome species: Homo sapiens. But a new global study shows that about 40% of protected and ecologically-intact landscapes are actually under indigenous peoples’ custodianship.

Plantation workers in southern India are the unlikely subjects of a Tamil language film whose director said he wanted to draw attention to their struggles, which remain largely unchanged despite the country's fast economic growth.

"Merku Thodarchi Malai" (The Western Ghats), shows the daily lives of workers on cardamom estates in the hills on the frontiers of Tamil Nadu and Kerala states, and explores themes of landlessness, migration, caste and human-animal conflict.

Land conflicts can be fatal for burgeoning agribusiness or other enterprises located in rural regions, but many companies have limited knowledge of how to anticipate and evaluate land-related risk. This is particularly true for land held under collective arrangements by Indigenous peoples or other communities, which is seldom formally documented.

In June 2018, SciTech Europa travelled to Brussels, Belgium, to attend the 2018 instalment of European Development Days (EDD) as the event’s media partner. Organised by the European Commission, EDD brings the development community together each year to share ideas and experiences in ways that inspire new partnerships and innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.

Disabled people have been increasingly recognised as the most marginalised group in any society. This group faces various structural, political and systemic barriers hindering their access, participation and contribution in the economy.