News on Land

As logging and palm oil industries continue to decimate the Amazonian rainforest, the people who live in it are taking tech into their own hands to fight back.

A recent report by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General had some tough criticisms for the country’s International Forests and Climate Initiative (NICFI), one of the chief funders of REDD+ initiatives around the world.

ULAANBAATAR - In a damp, single room in a disused bathhouse in the Sansar area of eastern Ulaanbaatar, 90-year-old Yuule Vandan cares for her disabled son and worries how he will survive without her.

Yuule moved out of a shared flat in an old Soviet barracks over three years ago while it was redeveloped but the project was shelved and she now struggles to pay 100,000 tugrik ($42) rent from a state pension of 250,000 tugrik for their one room.

"As African countries seek to achieve inclusive economic growth to combat poverty, unemployment, inequality and informality, among other challenges, it is imperative that their policies recognize and realize the potential of urbanization. Cities, if well planned and managed, can become engines of structural transformation through the expansion of the productive sectors of the economy, including industries and services. " These were the views expressed by the Head of the Data Centre of the Central Africa Office of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Ms.

LOKOLAMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Sometime in March, I found myself trudging forward in a remote swamp in the heart of the Congo rainforest. As I worriedly tried to keep my boots from getting sucked in by the soft, brown mud, I wondered how far we could go on. It was our final day. In the two weeks prior, our team of British and Congolese researchers, together with men from the local village of Lokolama, had cut a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) trail into this dense, swampy forest. It had proved to be painstakingly slow work.

AgriSA represents 28,000 commercial farmers. It believes the reason land reform has failed is not because of inadequate legislation.

The Constitution should only be changed if it is deemed impossible to implement proper land reform under the current legal framework.

There is, however, no compelling reason why the Constitution must be amended to enable land reform, the country's largest commercial farmers' union will tell the parliamentary committee reviewing South Africa's highest law.

The Karen National Union’s Agriculture Department will give priority to assist the public in obtaining their land ownership rights and solve land issues that rose up in the mixed controlled areas within this year.

The department made the decision during its 12th year-end meeting held at Kalo Yaw Hta under Hpa-an District on May 30.

Local residents from the KNU-controlled areas have been demanding the KNU to do required land measurements in order to obtain land grants.

The course is organized by the Netherlands Academy for Land Governance (LANDac), a network of organizations exchanging knowledge and experience on how land governance may contribute to sustainable and inclusive development.

In recent years, Peru's sprawling jungle has been cleared for palm oil and cocoa plantations. Conservationists say the land is controlled by private companies who acquired it through corrupt means.

The Elinor Ostrom Award is given in three categories: Practitioners, Senior Scholars and Junior Scholars, in the fields of natural resource management, commons, common-pool resources or collective action.