Around the world, rural women are a major provider of food and food security.

By Liam Kelley-St. Clair

Contracts between governments and private investors for large-scale land, agriculture, and forestry projects often play a critical role in the governance of these projects. Yet, despite their significance, such contracts are often kept hidden from the public eye. Amongst the many initiatives seeking to shed light on these deals, OpenLandContracts.org, an initiative of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), works to advance transparency by serving as a centralized online repository of publicly available land, agriculture, and forestry contracts between investors and governments.

By Kaitlin Cordes and Jesse Coleman, CCSI

This blog originally appeared on UNDP

16 Jun 2017 by Phemo Kgomotso, Regional Technical Specialist, Ecosystems and Biodiversity, UNDP Regional Service Centre for Africa

Would forced migration end, if people knew that they could survive and thrive in their homeland?

Scientists present their findings on forest tenure and land use at a major conference in Peru

Peru - Latin American countries have made progress in granting land rights to communities in recent years. Nevertheless, policies often fail to consider the diversity of those communities and the different ways they use their land.

By  Lewis Evans, Survival International

For Earth Day (April 22), Survival International reveals some of the amazing ways in which tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world:

1. The Baka “Pygmies” have over 15 words for elephant

The Baka people know so much about elephants, they have different words for them according to their sex, age and even temperament.

By Roy Prosterman

Asia’s Tigers, the collection of booming economies that emerged in the East following World War II, are often hailed as economic miracles. There was, though, no “secret sauce” behind that sustained and broad-based economic growth. Rather, as Myanmar is poised to show, the key ingredient for a Tiger economy can be found right beneath our feet.

Autor: Amélio Dall’Agnol

Common stereotypes can hinder the advance of women’s opportunities on the ground

By Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Agnes Quisumbing, and Sophie Theis

By Kaitlin Cordes and Jesse Coleman, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI)

This blog was originally posted at: http://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/2016/10/how-are-coca-cola-and-...

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have adopted “zero-tolerance” for land grabs in their operations around the world. Oxfam checks in on how they’re doing in Brazil.

By Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, and the Director of the ESRC STEPS Centre at Sussex