From 9-12 November 2020, 450 finance institutions from around the world will gather(link is external) for the first international meeting of public development banks, dubbed the “Finance in Common” summit, hosted by the French government. The institutions, which range from the World Bank to the China Development Bank, collectively spend $2 trillion a year on so-called development projects — roads, power plants, agribusiness plantations and more.

After years of blood, sweat and tears Badiri Vamaga, the largest clan group in Kirakira, NCD, is enjoying unprecedented optimism now that they are registered with the Department of Lands and Physical Planning as an Integrated Land Group (ILG).

They received their ILG certicate recently from the State clearing the way for business dealings involving their native customary land.

Land is life in Papua New Guinea. Handed down over generations from father to son, or mother to daughter. To own land is to have a lifeline, our bloodlines, our inheritance, our identity is dened, strengthened and made complete by it.For centuries the world over, blood, sweat and tears have been spilled, empires built and crumbled, heroes have risen and fell in itsdefense or acquisition, whether rightfully or not.

The United Nations urged civic leaders to build more liveable urban centres better for public health, society and the environment

TBILISI, Oct 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - COVID-19 will not spell the end of world cities, which are set to grow further over the next decade, the United Nations said on Saturday, urging civic leaders to use the pandemic as a springboard to build better, more liveable urban centres.

Fishermen say a development on two islands could destroy their livelihoods

KARACHI, Nov 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In the quarrel over building a gleaming "new Dubai" on two small islands off Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, the voices of the fishermen who have plied these waters for centuries often go unheard.

Steering his boat out of the Jamote jetty in the village of Ebrahim Haideri, 25-year-old fisherman Shakil said the islands around which he catches fish, crab and shrimp are now patrolled by armed guards.

For years, Christiana Akwabea admired the vast fields she visited in neighboring districts to buy maize for reselling and dreamed of one day owning a plot of land where she could grow the staple crop.

But there wasn’t much land for commercial farming in Seikwa in Ghana’s Bono Region, and the local soil is more suitable for cultivating cashew and yam.

Communities being able to participate on an equal basis in land governance is key to food security and inclusive development. How can securing land rights pave the way for responsible investments and what can we learn from experiences with the palm oil industry? To answer these questions we turn to West Africa where two activists are fighting for their communities’ right to land. ‘If we want to move forward, we need to share the wealth that the land brings.’

As indigenous campaigner Alessandra Munduruku wins the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, she says the Amazon is 'crying for help

SAO PAULO, Oct 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Alessandra Munduruku, a leader of Brazil's Munduruku indigenous community, has seen her home broken into and been threatened over her work defending her people and their Amazon land from illegal miners and loggers, hydropower plants and other threats.

Reports suggesting that a Canadian oil and gas firm is planning to start hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in one of Africa’s most sensitive environmental areas along the Namibia-Botswana border have made environmentalists, civil society organisations and local communities apprehensive about the long term effects of the activity on the Okavango Delta, one of Africa’s last natural sanctuaries.

Some chiefs in the Greater Accra Region have threatened to demonstrate against the government over lands that were seized from them by the state.

The aggrieved chiefs threatened a 4-day protest asking the government to immediately release to them lands that were confiscated by the state years ago.