As the world struggles to deal with the shockwaves created by the Coronavirus pandemic, scientists have been drawing direct links between the emergence of new diseases, collapsing biodiversity and the destruction of vital forestlands which for generations have been stewarded by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.
The Prey Lang Protected Area has lost more than 100,000 hectares of forest between 2000 and 2019, more than half of which became plantations, according to a report released August 10 by the NGO Jesuit Service Cambodia’s Ecology Program and the Cambodian Youth Network.
To determine forest loss and recovery over the nearly two decade period, the Technical Report on Forest-Cover Change Detection in the Prey Land Protected Area of Cambodia compared satellite images, which showed that 58,138 hectares of forest was converted into plantations and 43,188 hectares became “non-forest.”
LAHAD DATU, Aug 9 — Over 3,000 Sabah native land titles have been granted to Sabahans this year, said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal.
He said the land titles were handed over to among others residents of Tawau, Kalabakan, Keningau and Tambunan.
“We will make sure that the Sabah Land and Survey Department (JTU) properly manage all the land ownership grant applications submitted.
JAKARTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indonesia has cut back its planned transfer of state forests to local communities this year by half - an area twice the size of Los Angeles - because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
Bambang Supriyanto, the ministry’s director general of social forestry and environmental partnership, said social distancing measures from March to June had halted the technical work needed on the ground to certify the handover of land.
A series of land complaints were filed with the Mondulkiri Provincial Court on Monday by residents of Lames and Pou Lu villages who claim two community leaders stole land to sell.
The four indigenous plaintiffs also filed a complaint against an environment official for not preventing the offences and against a couple – Kek Than and his wife Oeu – for land grabbing offences.
Concession to extract timber from 148,000 hectares in upper Baram was granted despite repeated objections from local communities.
Main photo: Communities like Long Tungan are working hard to find a way to protect their lands and save some of the most valuable carbon and biodiversity stocks we have left. Photo courtesy of The Borneo Project.
When the indigenous Kreung and Kachok communities locked down their villages in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province in March to keep safe from the novel coronavirus, no one knew change was afoot in their ancestral forest.
A Vietnamese agribusiness company in eastern Cambodia has illegally cleared old-growth forests, wetlands and spiritual sites on land that it pledged to return to indigenous communities. The land move reneges on promises the company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai, made in a mediation process with the World Bank.
New reports from eastern Cambodia say a Vietnamese rubber company has illegally cleared swaths of land in Ratanakiri province belonging to local indigenous communities, in violation of a World Bank-mediated agreement to return the land to local residents.
From its forested borderlands in the east, to vast mangrove forests and hundreds of island ecosystems in the Andaman Sea to the west, Tanintharyi Region is a bastion of nature and biodiversity. The region is home to one of the largest remaining expanses of intact low-elevation evergreen forest in Southeast Asia, a stronghold for endangered and endemic species including tigers, tapirs and pangolins.