There is a strong and compelling environment and development case to be made for securing indigenous and community lands. Securing collective land rights offers a low-cost, high-reward investment for developing country governments and their partners to meet national development objectives and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Securing community lands is also a cost-effective climate mitigation measure for countries when compared to other carbon capture and storage approaches.

Imagine a world where sustainable development is no longer an oxymoron, one where the Earth is economically and ecologically stable and food and energy needs are met. It’s a place where habitats are preserved and pollution is limited.

Don’t worry – you’re not alone if you can’t.

But according to a recent study published in The Ecological Society of America, this vision is not just imaginable, but it’s attainable. And by 2050 no less.

Of late, land has increasingly been figuring into the development sector, for both positive and negative reasons.

Thousands of farmers from across India will march to the parliament in New Delhi on November 30, to demand action on the deepening agrarian crisis that has left a trail of heavy debts and suicide in its wake.

The 2015 U.N. climate change conference was a historic moment in which the world agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Through the Paris Agreement, parties consented to a long-term pathway of climate-resilient development.

Droughts, floods, hurricanes, and other disasters displaced over 24 million people in 2016. When people leave their homes behind, land records offer critical protection of their property rights. This is crucial, as land and homes are usually

Heat waves, floods, hurricanes, starvation these are the ‘rewards’ Mother Earth has for years of neglect, overuse, misuse, and abuse. The earth’s natural resources support life. Trees, soil, natural gas, coal, fresh water, and oil- life wouldn’t exist without oxygen, without food, medicine, and power. However, if natural catastrophes are anything to go by, we have gone way past the red natural these resources, creating a life-sucking ecological debt.

What will be our fate if natural resources run dry?

In the village of Katebe, Ugandan schoolchildren have little choice but to drink from the same water supply as animals.

During the dry season from June to August, Kyakatarihwa dam is the only source of water for people and livestock alike in this remote part of southwest Uganda's Mbarara district.

"We have no (other) option," said Arinaitwe Kenneth, headteacher of Katebe Primary School, which has 420 pupils.

This July is the first time the United Nations will review the progress made towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal 15, which is about Life on Land. Each goal will be reviewed about every 4 years until 2030.

The reviews will be based on the 10 indicators countries agreed on, that assess change in each country over time. Two important developments relating to the indicator on land degradation neutrality (15.3.1) have occurred, since its adoption in 2015.

As Singapore dredges sand out from beneath Cambodia’s mangrove forests, an ecosystem, a communal way of life, and one woman’s relationship to her beloved home are faced with the threat of erasure.

UNITED NATIONS — Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals remains uneven, and is not moving fast enough to meet the ambitious 17 goals on poverty, health, and equality by 2030, the United Nations said this week.

Land is connected to many of our most pressing global issues. For example, a significant body of empirical evidence supports the view that strengthening indigenous and local communities’ legal rights to their land is a crucial strategy for avoiding deforestation and mitigating climate change.