News on Land

• President Temer, influenced by the rural lobby in congress whose votes he needs to not be tried by the Supreme Court on corruption charges, has okayed new criteria meant to delegitimize indigenous land boundary claims, legal experts say.
• One rule rejects any indigenous demarcation of land where Indians were not physically present on a traditional territory in 1988, which would disqualify many legitimate claims.
• Another allows government to undertake “strategic” public works, such as dams and roads, without indigenous consent, violating the Intern

The Swiss Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ruth Huber, says investment in will remain stagnant as long as the Harare fails to compensate whites whose farms were forcibly taken without proper dialogue.

She was speaking during the Swiss National Day Tuesday.

Huber told journalists that although investment from Switzerland has slightly increased in Zimbabwe, the difficulty has been to attract new investment in the current political and economic environment.

The Swiss envoy described the political environment as polarized.

26 July 2017: According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) data, only 45 countries worldwide were able to assess changes in forest area and characteristics through consecutive systematic national forest inventories in 2010. The ‘Voluntary Guidelines on Forest Monitoring,’ published by FAO, help address this issue and underpin the tracking of national forestry management commitments under diverse global agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The United Nations urged Thailand on Tuesday to drop criminal cases against female activists who campaign for the rights of their communities, amid concerns they face increasing harassment.

The call came after the wife of a prominent Thai land rights activist was jailed last week and a separate group of female activists who protested against a gold mining operation were indicted for breaching public assembly laws.

Lagos state government has disclosed that it has disbursed the sum of N8 billion as compensation to individuals and groups whose properties were affected by ongoing construction projects in the state in the last one year.

Special Adviser on Urban Development, Mrs. Yetunde Onabule, who made this known at the weekend, at a one-day seminar on ,” Urban Tinkers Campus-The City We Need”, stressed that the government does not indulge in forced eviction of people arbitrarily without taking into consideration the welfare of the evictees.

Climate change, soil degradation and rising wealth are shrinking the amount of usable land in Africa. But the number of people who need it is rising fast.

By Jeffrey Gettleman

LAIKIPIA, Kenya — The two elders, wearing weather-beaten cowboy hats with the strings cinched under their chins, stood at the edge of an empty farm, covering their mouths in disbelief.

Kashmiri women who are permanent residents lose the right to own property in the state if they marry residents of other states

MUMBAI, July 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A woman from India's Jammu and Kashmir state is challenging a contentious law that denies women the right to own property in the state if she is married to someone from outside the state, saying it is discriminatory and violates her citizenship rights.

The application process for the 2018 Visiting Professionals Program is now open until August 20, 2017.

RESEARCH looking at the demand for forage by all grazing animals is underway in a project that could deliver valuable information to rangelands livestock producers about the time when risks of losing feedbase occur.

This unique national study will apply a  cross sector and jurisdiction approach to also deliver a solid base of information to natural resource managers.

NSW Department of Primary Industries senior research scientist Dr Cathy Waters, based at Trangie Research Centre, is leading the Meat and Livestock Australia-supported project.

Land governance disputes dominate civil and criminal cases in India

Honduras has the highest murder rate for environmental activists in the world mostly because of conflict over land rights.

Relatives of Berta Caceres, the iconic Indigenous environmentalist from Honduras who was killed in March last year, denounced a "hate campaign" against them Wednesday.