Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, congratulated the editorial team of National Geographic for the special issue on Africa. National Geographic has played a unique role in broadening the knowledge of the world. The World Bank partnered with National Geographic to produce a full-color wall map to raise awareness of the millennium development goals (MDGs) and to highlight each country's progress. We often hear about an Africa that is ravaged by poverty, disease and conflict. There is another face to Africa, one of hope, ambition, energy, intelligence and achievement.

This report was drafted by a working group of United Nations entities, the World Bank, and other stakeholders to suggest a common understanding of the blue economy; to highlight the importance of such an approach, particularly for small island developing states and coastal least developed countries; to identify some of the key challenges its adoption poses; and to suggest some broad next steps that are called for in order to ensure its implementation.

This report is intended to provide guidance on best practices in mining licensing, based on examples from low, middle and high income countries in Africa, Asia, North America, and South America. It is not a 'how-to guide' or a licensing implementation toolkit, but rather identifies certain common features of successful mining licensing regimes worldwide that other national or sub-national jurisdictions might usefully incorporate in new mining laws and regulations or revisions or existing ones.

As market reforms to the Mongolian economy continue and the country enjoys rapid economic growth, the environment has entered a period of unprecedented pressure. Mining, infrastructure development and tourism development, in particular, are undergoing rapid expansion, and all pose risks to Mongolia's globally important biodiversity.

This report is about how to progressively reduce over time Afghanistan's dependence on opium - currently the country's leading economic activity - by development initiatives and shifting economic incentives toward sustainable legal livelihoods. Specifically, the report identifies additional investments and policy and institutional measures to support development responses that can counterbalance the economic advantages of opium.

The exploitation of natural resources plays a critical role in the Uganda government’s plans to develop the country. Extractive industries are up scaling their activity as the sector is gearing up for the exploitation of oil and gaz by 2020. In a country where most people live off the land, the construction of industrial infrastructure carries great risks for the protection of fundamental rights.

This paper focuses on one community in Cambodia that won back land from a large land deal by grabbing onto the rupture in property relations initiated by a one-year land titling campaign. I document the struggle between competing legibility and illegibility projects which I examine through two moments, one of the state choosing to see its population and their relations to territory, and another in which the state’s excuses for not recognizing smallholders’ claims began to falter.

This article focuses on how climate change mitigation policies and economic land and mining concessions in Prey Lang, Cambodia, accommodate and facilitate each other physically, discursively and economically. Maps and project descriptions reveal that climate-related policies and extraction coexist in the same landscape, even the same projects. Knowledge co-produced by the authors and affected individuals suggests that climate change mitigation initiatives are not only intimately linked to economic intensification in Prey Lang, but they also contribute to conflict and dispossession.

We believe that law should in principle assist vulnerable communities in changing power relations. Law is fundamentally a ‘neutral’ set of rules that constrains power by requiring decisions and actions of those in power to comply with legal rules, rights and obligations. Unfortunately, we have seen the powerful appropriate law as a tool for only protecting and strengthening their interests.

 Writ­ten sub­mis­sions on the Regulation of Agricultural Land Holdings Draft Bill made to the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform 

Writ­ten sub­mis­sions on the MPRDA Amend­ment Bill 15D of 2013 to the Gaut­eng Leg­is­la­ture, made on behalf of the Land Access Move­ment of South Africa (LAM­OSA), the Amadiba Cri­sis Com­mit­tee (ACC), and Bench Marks Foun­da­tion.

This report provides an overview of the present state of play of the extractive industries in relation to indigenous peoples, taking as its point of departure the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples(UNDRIP) in 2007, together with the 2009 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues International (UNPFII) Expert Group Meeting on Extractive Industries, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility, and the 2009 International Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Extractive Industries.