In cities and communities across the world, citizens of all ages and backgrounds are getting the chance to literally play an important role in redesigning their public spaces, thanks to an innovative collaboration between the UN, and the company behind the popular computer game Minecraft.

Vows to protect them in land grabs by government, concessionaires

Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a nongovernmental organization, engaged in land advocacy and related activities, has begun working with local people in Bomi to empower them to resist a wave of land grabs in the western Liberian region, led by elites and concessionaires.

Greater international support for indigenous land rights and livelihoods is a cost-effective way to limit climate change, PNAS study

Indigenous lands and protected areas in the Amazon contribute far less to climate change than the rest of the rainforest since they account for only 10 percent of carbon emissions while covering 52 percent of the region, a study shows.

• More than 2,000 communal landholdings known as ejidos, and communities, have organized themselves to carry out sustainable management of forests in their territory.
• In states such as Oaxaca, Michoacán, Durango, Chihuahua and Quintana Roo there are examples of communities that have managed to conserve forests and their biodiversity, while generating jobs and other benefits for the population.
• Mining, organized crime, illegal timber trafficking, and the tax regime are just some of the challenges facing community forest management in Mexico.

A government plan to use common land for industrial development in the Punjab could deny land rights to Dalits, say activists

BANGKOK, Jan 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Protests have flared in the Indian state of Punjab over a government plan to use common land for industrial development, a move that activists and analysts said on Friday would deny lower-caste Dalits their land rights.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) together with World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of Sierra Leone

When Manjari was 23, she was elected the first woman pradhan in her village as well as in all of Himachal Pradesh. She hasn't looked back since.

Six clans in Foya, Lofa County have officially informed the Liberia Land Authority (LLA) that they have identified themselves as separate land communities, completing the first step to acquire legal ownership of land for customary communities in Liberia.

The six clans include Upper and Lower Tengia, Upper and Lower Rankollie, and Upper and Lower Wuam. They made their community’s self-identification declaration at the LLA headquarters at Mamba Point in Monrovia.

The pumps' sensors record real-time data such as energy usage and pump speed in each location, which is then used to calculate groundwater extraction rates and levels

NAIROBI - High-tech solar pumps mapping underground freshwater reservoirs across Africa are collecting data that can help prevent them running dry, the project's developers said on Tuesday.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, indigenous pygmy communities displaced from their lands for “conservation” and a community leader imprisoned for defending their rights

Ercilia Araya is the President of  Pai-Ote, a Colla Indigenous community of 60 people in the Atacama Region of Northern Chile.  Since 2014, Ercilia has been criminalized and harassed for defending her community’s land rights against mining projects, and denouncing the pollution of sacred water sources in the Andes.

The ancestral territory of Pai-Ote is of great mineral wealth and includes the “Maricunga Strip”, one of the most important gold districts in the country. At least a dozen gold mining projects, most of them Canadian, are operating there.