PhD research provides key inputs to strengthen our knowledge base on land access, land governance and challenges related to development, crisis and resilience. This is why LANDac reserves a special place in the programme to discuss their contributions.
From Europe to the U.S., migration issues are highly politicized, divisive, and complex. When U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Central America a few weeks ago to better understand the root causes of migration, she recognized the driving force of poverty that leads people to leave their homes.
The second day of the Forum built upon discussions around customary land tenure in the Mekong region, but with a focus upon private sector investment practices, particularly concerning agriculture and the potential impact on smallholder farmers, the rural poor, and the environment.
Summaries and selected replays from the 3rd Mekong Regional Land Forum are available below. Full replays of the plenary sessions will be posted shortly -- check back soon!
The impacts of agribusiness and plantation investments on the forests of the Mekong region have been widely documented. Taken together, much of this evidence paints a picture of global economic forces bearing down on fragile ecosystems and ethnically diverse communities of smallholder farmers. What emerges is a set of well-known trade-offs – agricultural investments can bring livelihood improvements and benefits to smallholders, but also multiple risks to people and landscapes.
In Dr. Tajamul Haque’s untimely demise on 2nd May, India has lost a scholar policy maker, a champion of the causes of farmers, tribal, an advocate of land rights for women and dalits and a messiah for marginal farmers and tenants. With his departure, farmers lost a tireless, fearless advocate at the echelon of power corridors, while for ministers and secretaries, gone now is a highly knowledgeable yet an unassuming pragmatic advisor.
Landless women should be recognized as farmers, and given their due tenurial rights
“Small farmers feed the world” -- does this make any sense to us? If it does, then what is the paradigm shift and what has it done, or is trying to do differently, to uphold and promote this hard truth?
Covid-19 pandemic has further worsened India’s hunger and malnutrition woes, more so for the millions of informal workers, now struggling to meet two ends in their rural homes, post the mass migration from their place of works, during lockdowns. Their embedded informality over labour, land, housing tenure, has uprooted and shaken them with loss of income, occupation and habitat, multiplying their already entrenched nutrition vulnerability.
Platforms struggle to support communities to secure their land rights and develop agriculture
When the new coronavirus (COVID-19) arrived Africa in January 2020, governments announced draconian measures to contain its spread, including restricting movement and association.
