News on Land

• The Indonesian government’s decision to revoke permits for plantation firms to operate in forest areas could lead to lawsuits filed by the companies, environmental law experts say.
• The permits were rescinded at the start of the year, not because of any environmental violations, but rather because the concession holders were deemed to be moving too slowly in exploiting the resources.
• But the unilateral revocations have set up an unprecedented legal mess, observers and industry representatives say, with no clarity over whether a company that has lo

This report is based on research into three mining companies operating in the Sekhukhune area of Limpopo and the experiences of local mining-affected communities. This research was undertaken by a team from Sekhukhune Combined Mining Affected Communities, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies and Amnesty International South Africa.

CSEP researchers studied 714 land conflicts in India to find that beyond being ‘influenced’ or ‘sensationalised’, there are objective reasons that decide media coverage.

Photo: Land in New Delhi. (Representational Image) | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint

With over 1000 licenses issued across the country, a diverse range of mineral extraction operations are transforming Mongolia’s rural cultural landscape. The Gobi region is crowded with both mega mines and smaller-scale operations. The Gobi also has excellent conditions for renewable energy and is poised to be a site for significant investment in this industry.

• The Indonesian government has rejected a proposal made by a prominent university to reclassify oil palms as a forest crop.
• The proposal was ostensibly meant to resolve the problem of illegal plantations operating inside forest areas, and would have redefined plantations as forests, and new plantings as reforestation.
• The environment ministry says it has no plans to adopt such a plan because it has its own program, the social forestry scheme, to get local communities to switch from illegal oil palm plantations to more sustainable, and profitable,

Radio Mozambique reported today that Massingir district government and community leaders from three communities in the district in the north of Gaza province have reached consensus on the land boundaries of their villages after decades of conflict.

The communities of Cubo, Canhane and Tihoveni, in the locality of Massingir-sede, have for decades been in conflict over the delimitation of their lands.

The conflict had caused adverse social and economic repercussions in those communities, Massingir district administrator Esmeralda Mutemba said.

Photo: South Sudan's Deputy Minister for Foreign and International Cooperation Deng Dau Deng Malek met Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque in Dhaka on Tuesday. Photo: Collected

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African country South Sudan wants to lease its vast fallow land to Bangladesh for producing crops.

South Sudan's Deputy Minister for Foreign and International Cooperation Deng Dau Deng Malek placed the proposal in a meeting with Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque in Dhaka today.

Communities living adjacent to the PHC oil palm plantations in DRC face arrests, beatings, and extrajudicial killings at the hands of private security and police.

Under the majority ownership of Kuramo Capital Management (KCM), conditions have recently further deteriorated — with violent repression of workers on strike.