News on Land

• Batsirai, a category 4 cyclone, struck Madagascar’s eastern coast on Feb. 5, leaving 10 people dead.
• The island nation is still recovering from another tropical storm, Ana, which made landfall on Jan. 22 and left dozens dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.
• Data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that 12 storms of category 4 or 5, the highest level, made landfall on Madagascar between 1911; of these 12, eight occurred since 2000.

Cyclone Batsirai rammed into Madagascar’s coast on Feb.

Researching Land Reform in Zimbabwe is a new book compiling 20 articles the Zimbabwe Land Research team has published over the last 20 years. All the chapters bar one have appeared as peer-reviewed journal articles, with the material covering the period from early land invasions in 2000 to more recent developments. All the articles are available, many as open access, but there was a demand to have these all in one place.

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Cyclone Batsirai's torrential winds and rain are hammering Madagascar, after landing on the island's east coast late Saturday.

An estimated 45,000 people have been displaced by the tropical storm, the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management said on Sunday.

After gaining strength in the Indian Ocean with gale-force winds reaching peaks of 145 miles per hour, the cyclone made landfall near Mananjary, 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of the capital Antananarivo, according to the island's meteorology department.

Residents of Macleantown near East London say wealthy outsiders are grabbing land from them, with the complicity of municipal officials. Buffalo City denies it but has launched a probe.

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Photo: Johnnie Isaac

Wetlands – land consisting of swamps or marshes – have, during the centuries, been demonised as places of pestilence, drained for agriculture or urban development, and polluted or paved over.

But today, they are emerging as crucial ecosystems in the fight against climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate, has warned of the need to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

February 2, 2022 (GLOBAL) — Six years into the establishment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Land Portal is re-examining progress made on land-related SDG indicators. More than a dozen land-related indicators are housed over five SDG goals. The newly updated SDG Land Tracker features completely revised and updated narratives for 13 land-related indicators describing why the indicator is important and how the indicators are measured and monitored.

The multiplicity of acts of ownership or enjoyment, the non-respect by the actors of their fields of competence, the anarchic occupation of the public domain, the insufficiency and / or inadequacy of the modes of advertising during the procedure of registration of plots of land, the slowness in the processing of land files and the difficulties of application of certain court decisions etc., are all evils that characterize state and land management in Mali.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on January 21 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with three companies geared towards the production of a minimum of 400 tonnes of additional vegetables per year to supply the domestic market and ship abroad.

The signatory companies of the MoU, entitled “Agriculture 4.0 and Greenhouse Cooperation: Transforming Farmers to Agropreneurs”, were listed in a post on agriculture minister Veng Sakhon’s Facebook page as Agri-Sambathkhmer Co Ltd, PLMP Venture Capital Co Ltd and ISBP Group-Sun Business Investment Globe Co Ltd.

Join the Resource Equity in an accredited ten-week online course. Explore what works to advance women’s land and resource rights and address gender inequality. Gain expert insights into how to avoid the unintended and harmful consequences of gender-neutral thinking in land laws, policies, and programs.

Pastoralist communities are effectively losing their rights to their communal lands through an obscure and predatory engagement process that involves conservation NGOs and self-seeking community leaders

Nigeria’s smallest yet most populous state continues to destroy informal settlements in defiance of the courts.

On the night of 8 April 2017, the people of Otodo Gbame went to bed thinking they were safe. The previous year, the Governor of Lagos had promised to destroy this crowded waterfront community, but a November 2016 court ruling had forced the state government to suspend its plans.

Failed government leadership, the lack of accountable partnerships between aid partners and the government, rampant corruption, and psychological dependence on aid have kept Somalis on life support.