Land News

With the world's third largest prison population, Brazil's jails are overcrowded and violent but there are mounting concerns the situation is worse for indigenous inmates

DOURADOS, Brazil - The plight of jailed indigenous Brazilians looked unlikely to change under President Jair Bolsonaro, campaigners said, despite a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation backing findings that many were locked up on dubious charges and without a lawyer.

• The authors of a new report argue that investment in forests as a climate change mitigation strategy is just as important as addressing emissions from the energy sector.
• Despite the recognized potential contributions of forests to slowing the warming of the earth, they aren’t typically seen as a permanent solution to climate change.

Activists fight to stop construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which endangers an ecosystem that is one of the most important bird habitats in the western hemisphere

Deep within the humid green heart of the largest river swamp in North America, a battle is being waged over the future of the most precious resource of all: water.

Indigenous jurisdiction is at the centre of the dispute over the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The same is true of the Trans Mountain expansion. In both cases, the corporations involved have misunderstood or misrepresented the risks associated with jurisdictional uncertainty.

A United Nations commission has released a trio of letters it recently delivered to Canada that warn the country is likely failing to meet its commitments to the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Two of the letters concern infrastructure projects underway in British Columbia.

On a late night in December, I arrived in the village of Lunjuk on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. A warm breeze welcomed me as I sat down with 30 women and men from Forum Petani Bersatu — the local farmers’ union — who had gathered to share stories of their ongoing struggle to reclaim their land.

HATIYA, Bangladesh, Jan 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ferdousi Akter's family struggled to survive after a crumbling riverbank forced them to abandon their home and move to a new part of the island where they live, off the Bangladesh coast.

Her husband worked as a day labourer on fishing boats but earned too little to cover their expenses.

Just over a year ago, however, the five-member Akter family was one of 45 households offered land on Hatiya Island under a decade-long free lease by the Bangladesh Forest Department.

We are prepared, we won’t back down or give up the rights we have conquered, much less hand over our territory so that Bolsonaro and his coronéis [old land elite] can carry out the plan they’ve hatched,” declared the Articulation of the Indigenous People of Brazil (APIB), one of the country’s leading indigenous organizations, in a public statement on 3 January.

Demand for recognition and protection of indigenous and community land rights is at an all-time high. ILC members around the world are mobilizing to support communities to claim and defend their land rights.

TARTAGAL, Argentina , Jan 12 2019 (IPS) - Nancy López lives in a house made of clay, wood and corrugated metal sheets, on private land dedicated to agriculture. She is part of an indigenous community of 12 families in northern Argentina that, like almost all such communities, has no title to the land it occupies and lives under the constant threat of eviction.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 14 is focused on the effort to conserve and sustain the world’s oceans, seas and marine resources. It is an essential goal for the life of the planet and the wellbeing of all. The ocean feeds billions of people and provides livelihoods for billions more - including, of course, women and girls.

Last month, indigenous Karen communities, the Salween Peace Park Committee, and the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) officially launched the Salween Peace Park in the Mutraw District of Myanmar’s Kayin State.