One year ago, thanks to a Solutions Journalism Network LEDE Fellowship and in collaboration with the Land Portal, I started a project to find stories of responses to the damage caused to the land and environment. During this time, I affirmed that communities and people around the world are working to protect and heal the environment, even if those stories hardly make it to the mainstream media.
In the last 15 years, Paraguay lost a greater share of its forest than almost any other country on Earth. While soy farming once drove deforestation in the east, the focus of Paraguay's forest loss has since moved west to the low-lying, thorn-forested Chaco, where cattle ranching has claimed over 3.7 million hectares (9 million acres) of forest for pastureland – an area about the size of the Netherlands – between 2001 and 2015.
The Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), together with its grassroots organisations, is present at the 27th UN Conference on Climate Change to reaffirm what needs to be done to tackle the global climate crisis: RECOGNIZE AND GUARANTEE LAND TENURE RIGHTS OF OUR INDIGENOUS LANDS!
The land governance context in Argentina in detail
In conversation with Heidi Mendoza
The Filipino government can generate new momentum and resources for its longstanding community-based forest management programme, by placing it more centrally in its climate policies. This could benefit forest-dependent communities, but only if mistakes from the past are not repeated, argues Heidi Mendoza. It requires a better understanding of the conditions and constraints for community forestry.
Addressing the land and conservation communities’ discomfort in discussing the relationships between migrants, Indigenous peoples, and tropical forests in the fight against climate change.
Landscape restoration creates opportunities for securing the land and natural resource rights of local land users as well for improving soil health, sequestering carbon, and enhancing biodiversity. In order to achieve synergies between these interrelated aims, restoration practitioners must carefully consider how projects are managed, particularly with regard to supporting equity in project design and planning—the focus of this blog.
Instruments like the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) are "voluntary", i.e., legally non-binding. These instruments are intended to have a direct influence on the governance of the tenure practice of states by providing an internationally recognized set of principles, and by simultaneously encouraging good practices.
Using satellite technology and digital innovation, the United Nations Development Programme, through its Sustainable Palm Oil Initiative, in partnership with the Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), has built an Android-based digital system to address challenges in developing a land cover monitoring system.
The INA- Alert application allows users to get real time accurate information and it works in conjunction with the WebGIS Ecosystem, developed by Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (LAPAN).
This piece was written by Tedi Rabold about the completed U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) LESTARI project.
