This guide summarizes international human rights standards applicable to involuntary displacement caused by public and private infrastructure and urbanization projects. It provides guidance for all involved parties: urban planners and architects, public authorities, the legal community, national or international financing entities, governments, civil society, and affected populations. It aims to provide guidance to assist in the execution of development projects that respect, protect and fulfil the human right to adequate housing of the communities that will be affected by them.

O relatório “Natural Resources, Environment, and Sustainable Growth in Mozambique”, de Timothée Ollivier, Dominique Rojat, Carl Bernadac and Pierre-Noël Giraud, desenvolve e testa uma metodologia para medição do impacto ambiental e da exploração dos recursos naturais na sustentabilidade do desenvolvimento em Moçambique.

Natural forests and other types of woody vegetation cover 55.3 million hectares of
Mozambique’s total land area. Of the total forest, 67% is suitable for timber production. This represents a substantial commercial resource which forest enterprises could use to help achieve the aims of Mozambique’s Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA) in a country where 70% of the population lives in rural areas.

IIED’s Forest Team engagement with Mozambique began in January 2002, with a two year policy support process to the multi-donor ProAgri programme based at the then Direcção Nacional de Florestas e Fauna Bravia (DNFFB) – later to become the Direcção Nacional de Terras e Florestas (DNTF) – the national directorate of land and forests. At that time, the main legal frameworks had only just come into being, with the 1997 Land Law, the 1999 Forestry and Wildlife Law and the 2002 forest regulations.

Dans le cadre des travaux entrepris par le Comité technique « Foncier et développement » et du projet « Appui à l’élaboration des politiques foncières » financé par l’AFD, Alain Rochegude et Caroline Plançon ont actualisé des fiches de synthèse « décentralisation, acteurs locaux et foncier » à partir d’une analyse des textes législatifs appliqués dans 23 pays essentiellement de la zone AFR.

Guatemala was among the world’s leaders in deforestation during the 1990s at a rate of 2% per annum. Much of Guatemala’s recent forest loss has occurred in the emerging agricultural frontiers of the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), the heart of the largest contiguous tropical forest in Central America—La Selva Maya.

Finding Food in Fear/Living in Fear
Introduction for ‘one family’....

In February 2010, Burma Issues conducted a field trip inside Karen State to raise internally displaced persons’ (IDPs) awareness of the upcoming elections. While they were watching a video, the township where the IDPs were staying was attacked by the Burmese army. They had to flee into the jungle and our cameraman decided to follow.

This paper explores how a 'conflict and violence sensitive' framework in project assessment, design and implementation facilitates early identification and mitigation of negative consequences of competition and dispute, and promotes sustainable development over the longer term. It discusses the role of renewable resources in perpetuating conflict and violence, and distills lessons from selected development programming experiences in managing conflict risks associated with these dynamics.

This Scoping Mission Report, aimed at identifying the key land policy and land tenure reform issues and processes facing Sierra Leone, is based on extensive consultations with a wide range of stakeholders and review of available literature, undertaken in July 2009. It was commissioned by the Recovery for Development Unit of the UNDP in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands, Country Planning and the Environment. It will serve the purpose of enhancing public dialogue and programme development on land reform, and to also guide the coordination of initiatives and resource mobilization.

10,000 Shans uprooted, 500 houses burned in Burmese regime’s latest scorched earth campaign (press release)...

Map of villages forcibly relocated...

Summary of villages forcibly relocated...

Images of the Burmese regime's latest scorched earth campaign

The world food crisis has spurred foreign direct investments (FDI) into arable land in developing countries. While significant financial inflows into agricultural sectors could be beneficial on a global scale, it could negatively affect local livelihoods. This article provides an overview of the different types of FDI in land. In addition, examples of investment flows are illustrated in an overview and a sustainable impact matrix outlines the occurring effects. Finally, requirements of avoiding negative effects are presented, to achieve a Pareto-efficient win-win situation.