In the six months since the coronavirus began its global spread, more than 15 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and more than 600,000 have perished, causing governments around the world to institute lockdowns and shut down businesses while entire industries have been devastated.

Tropical forests in Indonesia are subject to major transformation processes from native forests to other land uses, including rubber agroforestry as well as rubber and oil palm plantation systems. Using content analysis of policy documents, this paper aims at (i) analysing the formal administrative responsibilities related to the four rainforest transformation systems and (ii) based on the informal motives of the competing bureaucracies involved generating hypotheses on their future course of action and related research.

Land governance is proven to be significant in the development and survival of any nation. However, challenges associated with land governance have been a continuing debate as they keep changing due to the progress of any given society. Most researches on land governance have concentrated on the general aspects of land administration and management with reference to best practices of good governance.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that conflicts over land and extractive resource developments are on the rise across Papua New Guinea. These micro-level conflicts have the potential to scaleup and feed into large-scale armed conflicts—such as those that occurred on Bougainville and in neighbouring Solomon Islands—which require costly external intervention. Against this backdrop, this paper examines PNG’s legally-mandated land mediation system in theory and practice. A number of weaknesses are identified and described; and a case study of an apparently successful “hybrid” approach is discussed.

The debate over governance is something that will not pass overtime or become outdated. Governance in its essence is significant to ensure proper and sustainable development. Efficiency and effectiveness in management on the other part is vital in ensuring good-governance continuity especially to those dependent on governance institutions. Land on the other hand is an important finite resource for development of a country that requires exclusive management and control.

A landmark report from the Oakland Institute, Taking On the Logging Pirates: Land Defenders in Papua New Guinea Speak Out! elevates the voices of communities across the country who are opposing the theft of their land, made possible by the corrupt practices of local officials and foreign companies.

Language and technology barriers are a very serious constraint to effectively exchange and learn from land data, information and technologies across the globe. We would like to explore whether we can gain inspiration from how semantic web technologies have overcome knowledge-sharing challenges in other sectors, such as the agriculture sector. With emerging technologies, new tools and ever-growing amounts of land data, we face a very real risk of losing the overview. Without this overview, data is much less likely to be used and thus be useful.

This paper is an abridged version of an earlier scoping study entitled Sri Lanka Country Report: Land Watch Asia Study prepared in 2010 by the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement through the support of the International Land Coalition (ILC). It is also written as a contribution to the Land Watch Asia (LWA) campaign to ensure that access to land, agrarian reform and sustainable development for the rural poor are addressed in development.

This Case Study looks at the implementation of the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Law (VFV Law) in seven villages in Sagaing Region, to assess the practices on the ground and how the law impacts the land tenure security of smallholder farmers.

Agriculture is directly linked to the socio-economic development of every region. Agriculture impacts us all, whether we are seeking food security, better health or striving to conserve natural resources. Goal 2 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) underlines the significance of agriculture as a means to achieve food security. United Nations in its recently published report titled “World Economic Situation and Prospects 2020”(UN, 2020) has declared agriculture as one of the global priorities for achieving high-quality health care and formal employment opportunities.

The report answers the following questions:

1. Is perpetual fee simple ownership of real property permitted? If not, what are the principal forms of ownership, or other principal form of ownership, of real property?

2. What instruments are used to convey fee simple ownership, or other principal form of ownership, of real estate?

3. How in this jurisdiction is the ownership of real property recorded or searched? Who generally performs the search? 

In 2015, 193 countries affirmed their commitment to the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including Germany. According to an estimate by the United Nations in 2018, the international community loses 5% of global gross domestic product through corruption. Effective measures to combat corruption are therefore a prerequisite for achieving the ambitious goals of the 2030 Agenda.