Lucas Yamat and Pablo Manzano

The future of Ngorongoro has been the subject of hot debate among various stakeholders following a proposal by the government of Tanzania to relocate pastoralists from the district in order to conserve this important World Heritage site.

The proposal is based on claims that wildlife in the reserve faces extinction due to a sharp increase in human and livestock populations. Discussions about the proposal have caused concern among the residents of Ngorongoro who fear that they face eviction.

Last week, the International Land Coalition (ILC) hosted its 9th Global Land Forum in Jordan - the first large in-person meeting of the land community for three years.

"At last, we are beginning to harvest  more than 100 years

of international advocacy of Indigenous peoples."

- Dr. Myrna Cunningham Kain, on her initial reactions to the $1.7 billion pledge

This op-ed by Katlego Ramantsina, a researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies first appeared in the Daily Maverick

Developing land tenure legislation is a difficult job to get right — especially given the legacy of intractable problems inherited from apartheid. The Gauteng consultation did not seem genuine: it lasted only three hours.

International Day of Forests: 21 March

A new study, published ahead of the International Day of Forests, warns that the Amazon is now nearing its tipping point; its ability to recover from disruption, such as droughts or fires, is rapidly reducing, increasing the risk of dieback of the Amazon rainforest and potentially releasing up to 90 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  

It’s that time of year again! March means International Women’s Day and the annual meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. It’s not surprising, after COP26 in Glasgow, that this year’s CSW66 links gender equality with climate change. The official theme is ‘achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes.’

“It will be fun to develop land-use planning, if we do it together.” This was a comment from one of the local land managers during 30 online workshops run by PCC to introduce new Gender Guidelines for local land management in Mongolia.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities have successfully stewarded biodiversity rich landscapes for generations, helping to conserve and protect forests and other critical ecosystems while pursuing their own self determined priorities and livelihood needs. However, in the absence of legally recognized rights to their lands and forests, forest communities face an increasing array of threats from growing local and global demand for land and resources.

Indigenous Peoples look after their land, protect the environment and food sources, and can be a bulwark against global disease by ensuring biodiversity and proper management of forests.

But they remain under sometimes violent threat, are often treated as after-thoughts in international policy planning, and generally see their rights taking second-place to global demands, including environmental protection.

Curating land information is part of our daily work in the Land Portal. It includes selecting, categorizing, and enriching information with analysis and/or additional data, graphic visualizations, etc. In times with so much information available to choose from, people are increasingly seeking sources that offer selections of high-quality knowledge and provide analysis that make sense of it. Understanding how partners in the land community are meeting this demand is a great source for us to improve our work of curating, and providing meaning to land data.