News on Land

Guinea-Bissau has been described as a country of “precarious complexity”. Home to more than 20 ethnic groupings Guinea-Bissau fought one of the longest wars on the African continent to end centuries of Portuguese control. It finally obtained independence in 1974. Since 1980 the history of Guinea-Bissau has been marked by multiple military coups and extreme fragility. This political instability has driven up poverty and stalled legal reforms to secure land rights. In 2008 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime declared Guinea-Bissau to be Africa’s first ‘narco state’.  By 2019 Guinea-Bissau was the 12th poorest country in the world. It has also been identified as highly vulnerable to climate change with low lying coastal areas at risk from rising sea levels and flooding. 

A new country portfolio unpacks the complexity of governing land in India.

Seven people were injured following firing from Afghanistan to Pakistan, linked to local cross-border land disputes

Over the last four decades, Nepal’s communities have carried out an extraordinary reforestation campaign. And the results are clearly visible.

Agriculture development needs a new turn, to secure national sovereignty and reduce dependency on food imports.

Between 6 and 18 November, indigenous leaders of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), together with their grassroots organizations, will participate in the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27). The event will take place in the city of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where the delegation will discuss the demarcation of Indigenous Territories (ITs) in the country as an essential action to face the global crisis.

A Kulkalgal activist from the Torres Strait Islands has said the way the world often treats Indigenous people is an insult and that he is here at the Cop27 conference in Egypt “fighting for our home”.

Powerful indigenous women, guardians of the forests and ancestral knowledge of Africa, Mesoamerica and the Colombian Amazon and Brazil, joined their voices at the event “Indigenous Women: Weaving the climate change agenda towards a sustainable future” to make an urgent call to stop the violence caused by climate change and the destruction of the environment that continues to affect their territories; and demand recognition of their ancestral knowledge as essential contributions to the future of humanity.

A push to conserve 30% of the planet's land and oceans by 2030 - a key pillar of a new global nature pact due to be agreed next month - has gained the support of about 112 nations, a big boost from 70 a year ago, leaders said at the COP27 climate summit.

The widespread popularity of chocolate has led to a cocoa boom in the DRC, escalating deforestation in the country’s primary forests by impoverished locals in the war-torn region.

The Huni Kui Indigenous people are an integral part of the Amazon Rainforest. They don’t differentiate between humans and nature. For them, there is only “nature” and humans are part of it.

Transparency International is inviting experts to work on a consultancy about how land corruption affects discriminated and marginalised groups.