Por Marcos Candido 

A agricultora Maria Josefa costuma dizer que mora "no meio do mato", rodeada por um pomar colorido pelos tons alaranjados dos pés de acerola e cacau cultivadas por ela na comunidade Tancredo Neves, em São Félix do Xingu, no Pará. Lá a telefonia não chega, e até 2017 não havia nem energia elétrica. Porém isso não impediu Josefa de se tornar tesoureira e presidente interina de um projeto que mantém a cor e a vida do meio ambiente: a agricultura familiar.

Por Joanna Haugen para Mangabay

Todas as manhãs, mulheres das aldeias Moygu e Arayó, no Médio Xingu, saem de casa munidas de cestos, sacolas e facões. Carregando também água e beiju, reúnem as crianças e começam a caminhar para dentro da floresta para mais um dia de coleta de sementes locais. Debaixo das árvores, seus dedos rastreiam a terra, varrendo as folhas caídas para revelar sementes de murici-da-mata, jatobá, leiteiro, carvoeiro, cafezinho-do-pasto, mamoninha, lobeira e de outras espécies locais.

Por Abahlali baseMjondolo*

No capitalismo racial imposto pelo colonialismo, os detentores do poder monopolizaram seu controle sobre a terra

Cosmas Milton Ochieng, an expert in natural resource governance and economic development in Africa, is the Director of the African Natural Resource Centre at the African Development Bank.

In collaboration with the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank will host the 3rd Edition of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa in Abidjan from 25 to 29 November 2019.

In this interview, Ochieng shares key insights into why the conference matters for Africa.

The land sector is increasingly being cited as a corruption hub. Many countries across the globe are grappling with land-related corruption that dates to the colonial years and which have metamorphosed into historical injustices and continue to be a source of conflict and violation of basic human rights. Cases of land grabbing, compensation-less expropriation, gender-based discrimination in accessing and ownership of land and related resources, illegal mining deals, bribing to access land administration services among others are not new in the lands sector.

Last week the World Cocoa Foundation, a membership organization of more than 100 cocoa companies, held its annual partnership meeting in Berlin, Germany. The aim of the meeting is for governments, cocoa companies and farmers to identify and tackle the sector’s largest sustainability challenges. A 90-minute session was devoted to the topic of land tenure. The prominence of the session, as well as the seniority of the presenters – the Head of Sustainable Sourcing for Hershey’s and the Deputy Director General of Cote d’Ivoire’s Land Agency among them – is a powerful signaling effect.