News on Land

Two weeks after Malagasy Forest Landscape Restoration experts came to Yaoundé, their Cameroonian counterparts visited Madagascar to intensify their South-South exchange on Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Africa.

The African Union Development Agency (AUDA) pilots targeted exchanges between member countries of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) to foster peer-learning on FLR.

This topic will be discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum Luxembourg on 30 November.

The Land Portal Foundation is recruiting up to two new board members to complement its existing board.

The Land Portal was set up in 2009 as a partnership project dedicated to supporting the efforts of the rural poor to gain equitable access to land by addressing a fragmentation of information resources on land, which makes it difficult and often prohibitively expensive to draw together reliable evidence in support of programs, advocacy campaigns or policy formulation, especially for grassroots organisations.

'People should not and do not need to be dying in heatwaves'

LONDON - With urban populations surging around the world, cities will struggle to keep residents safe from fast-growing heat risks turbo-charged by climate change, scientists and public health experts warned this week.

Heat is already the leading cause of deaths from extreme weather in countries including the United States. The problem is particularly severe in cities, where temperature extremes are rising much faster than the global average, they said.

In Madagascar 70% of the population depends on the traditional exploitation of natural resources, and land degradation affects more than 46% of the country's surface area, with costs to 21% of the Gross Domestic Product.

Under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), which is a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of forests and degraded land in Africa under restoration by 2030, Madagascar has committed to restore 4 million hectares of its forests and degrade lands (Länderlink Madagaskar einfügen, evtl. Homepage MEDD).

In mid-November, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) hosted a summit in Nairobi, Kenya to rally the political will and financial commitments urgently needed to implement the goals of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) adopted by 179 governments in Cairo.

The effect of losing intact tropical forests is more devastating on the climate than previously thought, researchers report.

A new international study reveals that between 2000 and 2013, the clearance of intact tropical forests led to much higher levels of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere than first believed—resulting in a 626% increase in the calculated impact on climate.

Power relationships, local knowledge and transparency in integrated landscape approaches

Integrate knowledge holders. Understand power relationships and address imbalances to ensure marginalized groups are heard. Promote transparency in decisions and actions in landscape restoration work. Address governance and ensure transparency in motives and “political visions.”

A series of leaked emails was leapt on by climate-change deniers to discredit the data, but their efforts may have only slowed the search for solutions

The email that appeared on Phil Jones’s computer screen in November 2009 was succinct. “Just a quick note to encourage you to shoot yourself in the head,” it said. “Don’t waste any more time. Do it today. It is truly the greatest contribution to mankind that you will ever make.”

• During the launch, Environment and Forestry PS Betty Maina called for concerted efforts to help achieve the government’s target of getting 10 per cent forest cover by 2022.

• Environmental activist Benson Wemali on Friday told the Star more than 70 per cent of Kenyans lack knowledge on forest conservation.

Kenyans are largely ignorant of the importance of forests in the country and that is why they attach little importance to afforestation, an environmental organization has said.

BACKGROUND

Land governance across borders or transnational land governance looks at rule making, standard setting and institution building across borders. Empirically, one can see a variety of patterns of regulatory governance emerging. The studies commissioned by IGAD in 2016 reviewing the of land governance systems in the IGAD Member States identified four transnational elements: