News on Land

The Sri Lankan army and forestry department has continued its ban on Tamil villagers of North Nedungeeni Vedivaithakal in Vavuniya from entering the village. 

Although residents in the area have proof of their lands, the army has set up camp in the village and continues to prevent people from entering the area. Some 15 families who attempted to clear their own land to relocate there using a permit from the Divisional Secretary, were denied entry by the army and the forestry department. 

Improving tenure of forests by Indigenous and Tribal Peoples can lower deforestation rates and biodiversity loss, avoiding C02 emissions, but more investment is urgently needed to address rising threats.

The Balochistan High Court (BHC), in a landmark judgment, has declared that the ‘unsettled land’ of Pakistan’s largest province belongs to the indigenous tribes and not the provincial government.

Despite its low population, the Balochistan province is the biggest federating unit of Pakistan in terms of its size, making up for 43 percent of the country’s total area. 90 percent of the total area of Balochistan is unsettled and undocumented land, according to The Express Tribune.

LAND-at-scale has started to work in Colombia on land formalization through a Fit for purpose approach in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. The project is based on previous work by Kadaster International, who piloted the Fit for Purpose methodology successfully in Colombia.

Hiber Sugar requested federal government intervention to resolve its dispute with the regional government of Amhara, which it accused of transferring its 6,183 hectare of land to unidentified investors and people relocated from other areas.  

Established a decade ago, Hiber has been at loggerheads with the region’s Rural Land Administration and Use Bureau for the last five years, after the Bureau revoked its license for its failure to clear the land and start operations on time.

DORDABIS residents have threatened war if the government fails to meet their demands listed in a petition they handed over last week, which land reform minister Calle Schlettwein said he had not received as of yesterday.

This is despite Windhoek rural constituency councillor Piet Adams confirming to The Namibian that he presented the petition to the minister's office.

Dordabis residents staged a demonstration last week over their landlessness and to demand an improvement in their living conditions.

Luanda - The first Farming and Fisheries Census (RAPP), in Angola, will start on the 25th of this month, through a process that will continue until the year 2022, aiming to allow the country to know the structure of its agriculture, cattle-breeding and fishing activities, with a view to boosting the economy.

ANGOP has learnt that the census is estimated at US $ 25 million, financed by the World Bank, and it is hoped that with the RAPP, concerned institutions will be able to draft farming and fisheries development policies and plans, with more solid technical and scientific bases.

Originally shared via newsletter from the Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) Programme

The Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) programme, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and implemented in partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture’s Rural Land Administration and Use Directorate, is one of the world’s largest land tenure programmes.

• Indonesia’s annual fire season has started again, with hotspots detected in 10 provinces.
• Some of the fires have been detected in protected areas with large swaths of peatland.
• The government says it’s preparing to carry out cloud seeding to induce rainfall in affected areas.
• However, environmentalists have called for more traditional methods of law enforcement to prevent fires breaking out in the first place.

Just as many Uzbek farmers began sowing the seeds for this season's crops, President Shavkat Mirziyoev called on them to give some of their agricultural land to young people without jobs.