This week in Geneva, the Human Rights Council is expected to take a position on the follow-up to a draft Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Persons Working in Rural Areas. Five years after the start of the negotiations, we are at a turning point.
Absent from the discourse spurred by the motion passed in the National Assembly on 27 February is what could be achieved in the interim for land reform programme using existing legislation while the country awaits a verdict on the constitutional amendment to determine whether is possible to expropriate land w
The Second Regional Land Forum kicked off in Bangkok, Thailand in the early morning of May 28th and the opening session was certainly one to remember! Live drones, talk of big data and using NASA related technology to propel land rights forward, were but a few of the impressive topics on the table. Participants gathered to hear a variety of ‘flash talks’, quick yet effective pitches about notable initiatives relating to data, technology and land rights.
Access to justice is a key governance concern in developed and developing countries alike. Community legal workers aim to help poor or comparatively powerless people defend themselves against land grabs, obtain public services, and challenge corruption. Can this bottom-up approach counter powerful interests seeking to entrench their control? Can legal empowerment help respond to rising authoritarianism and repression of civil society?
On Wednesday, 6 September 2017, Barbuda, the less known sister isle of the popular resort island of Antigua, bore the full brunt of Hurricane Irma as it struck the Leeward Islands of the Eastern Caribbean. The island suffered near total destruction: 95% of the island’s buildings were damaged, 60% of the population were rendered homeless, and a 2-year-old child was tragically killed. Antigua, on the older hand, was relatively untouched.
First global benchmark for measuring and reporting land information aims to improve tenure security and enable fair compensation
The potential for conflicts related to large-scale land acquisitions could be cut down significantly if seven key pieces of information are included in every property transaction, land professionals say.
New technology has unleashed a wave of opportunities to secure formal land rights for hundreds of millions of people, but it is not a solve-all solution in countries with weak institutions, said a senior World Bank economist.
Satellite imagery, drones, cloud computing and blockchain are among technologies with the potential to help many of the world’s more than 1 billion people estimated to lack secure property rights, said the World Bank’s Klaus Deininger.
Imagine you're a local sustainability officer developing an initiative to reduce emissions. But you don't know how many emissions the city produces, or where they're coming from. You don't know who the city's biggest energy users are, how many cars are on the road, or the amount of waste produced every year. And even if you can set goals for reducing emissions, you have no way of measuring progress against them.
On World Water Day, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) launched the ‘International Decade for Action: Water for Sustainable Development’ (2018-2028). Promoting the integrated management of water resources, the Decade aims to create a platform for sharing good practices, advocacy, networking and partnership-building at all levels. It will support achievement of the water-related aspects of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
In March, the Trump Administration released a new budget proposal that would cut funding to the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development by 28 percent. The proposal also reduces funding to the United Nations for ongoing climate change efforts.