News on Land

The Netherlands Enterprise & Development Agency (RVO) is pleased to announce its collaboration with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN) in N’Djamena, Kadaster International, Oxfam Chad and Oxfam Intermon for the implementation of a LAND-at-scale project in Chad “Land Reform based on rapid evolutions and present crisis”. The country intervention will run until 2025 and has a budget of 2 million Euros.

SAN IGNACIO DE VELASCO, Bolivia — On Feb. 12, 2021, Bolivian conservationists joyfully celebrated the creation of the Bajo Paraguá Municipal Protected Area. Located in the municipality of San Ignacio de Velasco in the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz, the new reserve was established to protect 983,006 hectares (2.4 million acres) of Amazonian and Chiquitano forest.

Main photo: Special Assistant to PM on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam addresses the media about the launch of the Forest Restoration and Carbon Offset Programme at the Ministry of Climate Change. Image Credit: PID

Islamabad: The Pakistan government has announced it will collaborate with the private sector to restore at least 50,000 acres of degraded forest land across the country.

Prindex Global and leading think tank NCAER will announce a new initiative today at the India Land and Development Conference 2021 to enhance land and housing rights in India. The project will go state by state mapping government performance on land records against people’s perceptions of their rights to drive policy progress in the country.

Bereng Mpaki writing in the Lesotho Times provides background on the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill which seeks to legalise artisanal and  small scale mining. This had previously been outlawed by the Mines and Minerals Act, 2005.

According to the the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Natural Resources, Tourism and Land Cluster Portfolio Committee  the Bill sought to alleviate poverty by empowering locals to venture into mining.

In Bangladesh, one in every seven people will be displaced due to climate change by the end of 2050, according to recent estimation. Sea level rise may cause the displacement of up to 18 million people of Bangladesh. Natural disasters are another reason for displacement where 700,000 people on average migrate every year according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. In 2009, cyclone Aila displaced millions of people and many agricultural lands submerged with saline water.

Aug 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Taliban’s return to power threatens Afghan women’s hard-won property rights, with thousands who fled their homes during the militants’ takeover at particular risk of losing their land and houses for good, rights groups and researchers said.

The Taliban imposed a strict Islamic law that largely denied women property rights during its 1996-2001 rule, but since then local authorities have been granting property titles to widows, divorced women and other female-led households.

Architecture, by its very definition, involves the construction of structures. Structures that are meant to serve as spaces for work, living, religious devotion, amongst many other purposes. Architectural projects and interventions, however, need land – and it is this intrinsic relationship, between land and architecture, that has massive ramifications not only regarding reducing carbon emissions but more importantly in forming an equitable future rooted in climate justice.

When the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was created by a coalition of industry giants, retailers, banks, and NGOs in 2004, it was supposed to be the catalyst for a new, ethical era in palm oil production. Consumers could finally open a jar of Nutella or unroll their lipstick confident that the palm oil it contained didn’t come from a plantation that was, say, located inside of a rainforest reserve or patrolled by soldiers accused of burning local villages to the ground. The Okomu Oil Palm Company in southwestern Nigeria might give them second thoughts.

Dr Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Associate Professor in the Discipline of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki  has recently reviewed a new book by one of South Africa's leading legal minds and land analysts Tembeka Ngcukaitobi . His review of Land Mattters: South Africa's Failed Land Reforms and the Road Ahead appears in the LSE Review of Books.

According to Obeng-Odoom Land Matters is outstanding. Some extracts from his review appear below.

Parliament is scheduled to consider early next month the issue of the report that will recommend the amendment of the Constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation.

The Section 25 Committee adopted its report for tabling to the National Assembly in September.

The debate on the report was delayed when Parliament went into an early constituency period to allow parties to campaign for the local government elections.