South Sudan ready to lease land to Bangladesh: Razzaque
08 February 2022
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.
Indonesian government says no to reclassifying oil palm estates as forests
10 February 2022
- 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,
Mining fractures land and community in Mongolia
11 February 2022
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 link between microfinance and land loss: Country Insights Digest #4 - February 2022
14 February 2022
This Country Insights Digest discusses the topic of microfinance in relation to land loss. Daniel Hayward reviews three articles on the topic and adds some concluding thoughts and questions. Has microfinance merely warped into other forms of rural credit, where the profit margin trumps all other aims?
Two storms in two weeks carve trail of death and destruction in Madagascar
07 February 2022
- 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.
New Investors Exposed Behind the Human Rights Crisis at the PHC Oil Palm Plantations in DRC
08 February 2022
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.
As Indonesia retakes land from developers, conservation is an afterthought
08 February 2022
- President Joko Widodo’s administration announced last week that it was cancelling millions of hectares worth of logging, plantation and mining concessions.
- Environmental activists say this presents an opportunity to conserve these lands, which cover a combined area larger than Belgium, by redistributing them to local and Indigenous communities, and protecting areas still home to rainforest.
- However, some senior government officials say the concessions should be reissued to other companies to develop, and indicate that lands redistributed to
Land conflict: Understanding reached between government and three communities in Massingir
08 February 2022
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.
New Data Story: Communities, Carbon and the Climate Crisis
01 February 2022
Indigenous Peoples and local communities have successfully stewarded biodiversity rich landscapes for generations, helping to conserve and protect forests and other critical ecosystems while pursuing their own self determined priorities and livelihood needs. However, in the absence of legally recognized rights to their lands and forests, forest communities face an increasing array of threats from growing local and global demand for land and resources.