News on Land

Monday, 10 August 2020 marked an important day for indigenous communities from Busra commune in Cambodia as they signed an agreement with the rubber company Socfin Cambodia to settle a long-lasting dispute about their communal and spiritual lands. 

LAHAD DATU, Aug 9 — Over 3,000 Sabah native land titles have been granted to Sabahans this year, said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal.

He said the land titles were handed over to among others residents of Tawau, Kalabakan, Keningau and Tambunan.

“We will make sure that the Sabah Land and Survey Department (JTU) properly manage all the land ownership grant applications submitted.

Main photo: new high-rise apartments are under construction in villages around Heze, in eastern China's Shandong province. Rural residents say these complexes are too expensive, too far away from their fields and ill-suited for farmers (Amy Cheng/NPR)

A farmer from Shandong province along China's east coast, Liu recalls how during Chinese Lunar New Year in January, he went out for a walk and came home to discover local officials preparing to demolish his home.

POLICE have told Baruni village leaders to take land matters to court and not to take the law into their own hands to affect innocent lives.

Zone one commander, Chief Inspector Fred Tundu said this following the alleged attack of three policemen from the Idubada police post at Motukea island, outside Port Moresby, last Wednesday.

The government is donating 168ha in Botum Sakor National Park in Koh Kong to the Royal Group to build a 700MW coal-fired power plant.

A sub-decree obtained by The Post on Sunday said the Ministry of Environment has to work in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Finance and others to prepare the deal.

The Post could not contact Royal Group chairman Neak Oknha Kith Meng for comment about the size of the investment.

The Deputy Mayor of Addis Ababa City Administration, Takele Uma (Eng.), has told city officials to take immediate action in granting farmers, who possess farming lands in the city’s surrounding area, with a legally binding land title deed.

The order comes after a discussion forum on activities to be carried out pertaining land audit and registration process was held with various officials in the city administration and various stakeholders. The meeting took place inside the Assembly Hall of the House of People’s Representatives (HPR) on Thursday.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) guidelines is to address key challenges in the fishing sector.

The VGGT guidelines were unanimously endorsed on May 11, 2012 by the UN Committee on World Food Security as an international instrument that can be used by many different actors to improve the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forest.

It is a voluntary and not legally binding instrument.

The Swakopmund Municipality is targeting to accommodate 17 000 people under the various erven and housing provision projects.

There is an estimated 25 000 to 30 000 people living in the Democratic Resettlement Community (DRC), an informal settlement of Swakopmund.

One of the major criticisms against the Lagos state government has been the prohibitive costs of owning a home. These costs start all the way from purchasing land with restrictive land use charges and crippling penalties when homeowners are unable to pay their land use charges. Added to this, the recent increases in Land use charges in Lagos state, many have wondered if the Lagos state really cares about its mandate to become a megacity.

Intensive farming makes future pandemics such as Covid-19 more likely as wild animals carrying diseases known to infect humans are forced into increasingly close contact with us, a research report showed on Wednesday.

Writing in the journal Nature, a team of researchers from University College London (UCL) warned that animal pathogens are increasingly likely to make the leap to humans as land-use changes benefit animal hosts.

The UN estimates that three-quarters of land on Earth has been severely degraded by human activity since the start of the industrial era.

The National Assembly standing committee approved three draft laws on Thursday to be submitted to the expert commissions for review.

The National Assembly’s Commission for Economy, Finance, Banking and Audit will review and study two draft laws – the Control, Use and Management of State Property; and Management of Commercial Gambling.

Another draft law before the Commission for Legislation and Justice is on the adoption of treaties between Cambodia and South Korea involving assistance for criminal justice.

JAKARTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indonesia has cut back its planned transfer of state forests to local communities this year by half - an area twice the size of Los Angeles - because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

Bambang Supriyanto, the ministry’s director general of social forestry and environmental partnership, said social distancing measures from March to June had halted the technical work needed on the ground to certify the handover of land.