Panelists call for legal recognition for Indigenous peoples and local communities

This topic will be discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum New York 2019. Learn more about how to join here.

Indigenous communities in Kenya made history last week by marching to the nation’s capital to demand official registration for their communal lands

Indigenous, pastoralist communities in Kenya made history last week by marching to the nation’s capital to demand official registration for their communal lands.

This was unprecedented and the culmination of years of effort to empower communities to understand and claim their land rights. 

Rights enforcement must be strengthened for forest landscape restoration efforts to succeed, said Steven Lawry during a webinar presentation hosted by the global forest team at GIZ, Germany’s development agency.

Lawry,  a principal scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), presented findings on the role of tenure security in the adoption of forest landscape restoration practices.

Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of Transparency International (TI) is asking  the government to speed up the passage of the land bill into law.

The bill, which was first introduced in Parliament in 2018 but was later withdrawn, would be tabled again before the House this year.

It seeks to consolidate and harmonise in one simplified form, about 166 existing laws relating to land, to regulate land use and enhance effective land management in the country.

Three agreements laid groundwork for possible future land claims, reparations and centuries-long grievances for Métis nations

Growing up as member of Alberta’s Métis community, Audrey Poitras was always acutely aware of the unique struggle her people faced.

The AU-EU Youth Hub is calling on all civil society organisations to submit concept notes for the AU-EU Youth Hub Call for Proposals.

The Call makes available EUR 10 million in 7 lots:
Culture, Arts and Sports
Peace and Security
Governance and Political Inclusion (Accountability)
Governance and Political Inclusion (Remittances)
Environment Preservation and Climate Change
Education and Skills
Business, Job Creation and Entrepreneurship

This indigenous lawyer has made history as the first native woman ever to be elected to Brazil’s congress. She faces a host of obstacles – but is used to overcoming challenges

Joênia Wapichana was the first person in her family to go to university, the first to study law and the first to qualify as a barrister. Now she has become Brazil’s first indigenous congresswoman.

ISLA JOVAI TEJU, Paraguay (Reuters) - Rumilda Fernández’s indigenous community has long tended its ancestral lands in Paraguay, marking boundaries with an ancient system of names for trees and streams. Now, squeezed by deforestation and farming, the community is going digital to defend itself.

Fernández, 28, is one of the group’s first technology-equipped forest monitors, traversing the narrow earthen tracks of the Isla Jovai Teju community’s land to map the area with a smartphone app and GPS.

Land ownership and income inequality remain highly emotive subjects more than two decades after the end of apartheid in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, May 7 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The South African government's promises of returning land to black South Africans taken during apartheid are under the spotlight during national elections this Wednesday, land experts said.

• In Niger, where agriculture is the main source of income, the message is simple: Losing your soil means losing your livelihood.
• The ability to grow food is inextricably linked to the productive capacity of the soil. In the case of Niger’s soil, the picture is bleak: The soils hold poor structural stability, low nutrient holding capacity, low water retention capacity… the list goes on.
• How can soil management be improved in a region that has little to no resources?

NEW DELHI - A push to formalise land claims, map settlements and digitise records is not always in the best interests of vulnerable communities, and may even lead to greater rights abuses, analysts warned on Friday.

From Peru to the Philippines, governments are curtailing the rights of indigenous communities and forcibly resettling people in slums, land campaigners say, while mapping lands and digitising land records with the aim of increasing efficiency.

Getting to the bottom of illegal plantations on Indonesia’s state owned forests

In an ideal world, palm oil production would cause no deforestation, and have a transparent and fair supply chain. In reality, the impacts of the sector have been the cause of ethical concerns worldwide.