In Burma, where 70 percent of people earn a living through agriculture, securing land is often equivalent to securing a livelihood. But instead of creating conditions for sustainable development, recent Burmese governments have enacted abusive laws, enforced poorly conceived policies, and encouraged corrupt land administration officials that have promoted the displacement of small-scale farmers and rural villagers.

The study’s findings offer the most compelling quantitative evidence to date of the unparalleled role that forest peoples have to play in climate change mitigation, reinforcing the critical importance of collective tenure security for the sustainable use and protection of the world’s tropical forests and the carbon they sequester.

This issue paper No. 6 of the Rangelands Series consolidates a set of case studies which document how pastoralists plan landvand resource use in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of Ethiopia. 

This short thematic study challenges the assumption that the legal framework to recognize and protect indigenous peoples’ (IP) customary lands is adequate and that the challenge lies in its implementation. With support from MRLG, a core group of IP NGOs of the Cambodia Indigenous Peoples Alliance (CIPA) held a series of seminars to scrutinize this legal framework, identify gaps and make recommendations for a revision of the supporting legal framework. The thematic study documents this joint reflection.

This short thematic study challenges the assumption that the legal framework to recognize and protect indigenous peoples’ (IP) customary lands is adequate and that the challenge lies in its implementation. With support from MRLG, a core group of IP NGOs of the Cambodia Indigenous Peoples Alliance (CIPA) held a series of seminars to scrutinize this legal framework, identify gaps and make recommendations for a revision of the supporting legal framework. The thematic study documents this joint reflection.

In April 2015, an international group of independent researchers, coordinated by Rosamel Millaman and Charles R. Hale, embarked on a comprehensive study whose guiding theme was the situation of Mapuche comunities in the region of La Araucania in relation to forestry companies in Chile. The intention of this study is to provide a document that could form a basis for renewed and improved dialogue about the way these companies conduct their forestry operations in the lands that are historically claimed by these Mapuche communities. 

The Organising Committee of the Dutch Land Governance Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue has commissioned an investigation into the need and possibility to develop a protocol on fair compensation in cases of legitimate land tenure changes, with a focus on expropriation. This is in line with the Ministry’s role in the Land Governance Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue. This dialogue involves government, civil society, business, finance and academia.

A new report offers evidence that the modest investments needed to secure land rights for indigenous communities will generate billions in returns—economically, socially and environmentally—for local communities and the world’s changing climate. The report, Climate Benefits, Tenure Costs: The Economic Case for Securing Indigenous Land Rights, quantifies for the first time the economic value of securing land rights for the communities who live in and protect forests, with a focus on Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia.

El mapa y los datos que se presentan en esta hoja informativa son el resultado de la actualización de la línea base de Sistema de Información sobre Comunidades Nativas de la Amazonía Peruana (SICNA) del Instituto del Bien Común (IBC) en la región amazónica de Ucayali (Perú), realizada durante el primer semestre de 2016, con el apoyo de la Cooperación Alemana, implementada por la GIZ, a través de su proyecto ProTierras Comunales.

Based on the experiences of Amerindian communities in Guyana, this briefing presents some of the main causes of forest conflicts in the country as well as recommendations for how to address these. In particular, the document presents the following points: 

• Lack of full recognition of indigenous peoples’ land rights in line with international law, absence of effective FPIC procedures and limited transparency in forest governance are key underlying causes of forest-related conflicts in Guyana; 

1. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, visited Brazil from 7 to 17 March 2016, at the invitation of the Government. The purpose of the visit was to identify and assess the main issues currently facing indigenous peoples in the country and to follow up on key recommendations made in 2009 by the previous mandate holder, following his visit to Brazil.

Since 2009, Oxfam and others have been raising the alarm about a great global land rush. Millions of hectares of land have been acquired by investors to meet rising demand for food and biofuels, or for speculation. This often happens at the expense of those who need the land most and are best placed to protect it: farmers, pastoralists, forest-dependent people, fisherfolk, and indigenous peoples.