News on Land

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A recent Nepal Rastra Bank report suggests that property price in Kathmandu Valley is increasing at the rate of 27.7 percent a year, doubling the real estate value every 3.5 years. 

In fact, almost every developing area of Nepal is witnessing this phenomenon. Property-price appreciation is starker still in the Madhes province and the Tarai towns of Sudurpaschim province. 

• Critics of a government plantation scheme have slammed the program following revelations that only a fraction of forest reserves cleared for plantations over the past decade have actually been replanted.
• An investigation by environmental news site Macaranga found that only 5% of the 77,331 hectares (191,089 acres) of forest reserves cleared in Pahang state for plantations between 2012 and 2020 were replanted.
• A Pahang state opposition lawmaker has called the program a “cover-up” for a logging scheme, while an environmental activist has criticized

A lucrative plot of Tashkent land belonging to a major Uzbek steel plant has been sold to a company close to President Shavkat Mirziyoev’s son-in-law, at a fraction of its market value, documents showed.

• The premium on parcels of land in eight major cities that completed their first round of auctions for the year was up from 2021
• Most of the winning bids in the latest auctions have come from state-owned developers

Main photo: Land in China can only be sold three times a year, according to a centralised scheme introduced by the central government in early 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE

As KwaZulu-Natal continues to count the cost of the floods that have ravaged the province, poor residents who have lost their homes are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, said the shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.

“The number of people who have lost their lives has yet to be confirmed, but our members witnessed people, including at least two babies, being taken by the water and many people are missing,” said the organisation, which is active in KwaZulu-Natal’s informal settlements.

The number of hungry people in the Sahel and West Africa has quadrupled over the last three years, currently reaching 41 million, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Friday.

Issuing the alert, WFP said that the figure rose to 43 million when the Central African Republic was included in the food insecurity estimate.

• On March 27, Nepali authorities evicted about 100 members of the Indigenous Chepang community living in Chitwan National Park and set fire to their huts.
• They allege the community members are encroaching on national park land, famous for its rhinos and tigers, and building new settlements despite warnings and resettlement plans rolled out by the government.
• However, community members say that only providing shelter, and not land for subsistence farming and their traditional livelihoods, does not solve the community’s problems.
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This documentary explores women’s struggles for customary land rights.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 90% of land is held under customary tenure.

Half the women in the region lose their land in the event of divorce or death of a spouse.

Main photo: Workers walk to work at an export processing zone early in the morning after crossing the Mongla river in Mongla, Bangladesh, March 3, 2022. This Bangladeshi town stands alone to offer new life to thousands of climate migrants. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

In Bangladesh, the south west seaport town of Mongla is home to thousands of refugees. They are not fleeing war or another conflict. They are refugees from climate change.

The World Food Programme has published a second update on the implications of the war in Ukraine for food security in Eastern Africa

Key Messages

• The disruptions in imports, production and the related surge in food prices induced by the current conflict in Ukraine have the potential to worsen the food security situation in the Eastern Africa Region, which is already been impacted by the effect of three consecutive below-normal rainfall seasons.

• Audit says ministry gave illegal permits, didn’t collect taxes

• Publication is step to unlocking $500 million in climate funds

AKIPRESS.COM - Mongolia has established a fund to support its national tree-planting campaign, Xinhua reported on Thursday citing the presidential press office.

The nationwide campaign to plant at least 1 billion trees by 2030 was officially launched last year as Mongolian President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh told the United Nations General Assembly that the country aims to combat climate change and desertification.