The mood is tense. After months of delays, the EU will soon vote on a long-awaited piece of legislation that will require European companies to integrate environmental and human rights…
No one on the Colombian island of Providencia was prepared for what happened on the night of Nov. 16, 2020. Not even Josefina Huffington, who had survived four hurricanes. That…
More than eight years after the Mariana dam disaster, Indigenous Krenak people remain scarred by the memories of one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. Living…
It’s a hot and humid afternoon in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Our contact at Burapha Agro-Forestry welcomes us to an empty boardroom full of maps. The meeting goes smoothly,…
The threatened fish of the Mekong River are inching closer extinction, according to a new report that cites piling pressures on the waterway. Though the situation is serious, conservationists say…
It’s been about a decade since Foday Fahnbulleh was arrested. Along with other students and workers from his home in Bong Mines about an hour’s drive north of Monrovia, he’d…
Located in northeastern Central African Republic (CAR) close to the Chad and Sudan borders, Manovo-Gounda St. Floris National Park is the largest park in the Central African savannas, covering 17,400…
American agroforestry initiatives got a big boost of funding in 2022 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which allocated $60 million to help farmers transition toward this style of…
Mineral extraction is a major cause of contention among the inhabitants of the Pan Amazon. Thousands of families depend on economic activity that originates, directly or indirectly, from the mining…
One of the benefits of agroforestry and plantation forestry is the ability of tree crops to capture and store carbon in their above-ground biomass. Although they must be renovated (cut…
There are three fundamental rules of financial planning: (1) save continuously, (2) invest in a diversified portfolio of assets and (3) exercise patience via a long-term strategy. This common-sense advice…
ANTANANARIVO — Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector. The report is a…
The agro-industrial farms of Mato Grosso are among the most efficient on the planet; they benefit from abundant rainfall and a long rainy season, which allows them to plant and…
The creation of protected areas and Indigenous reserves offers the best hope for conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon; however, the management of the human modified landscapes will determine whether…
Undesignated public land One of the objectives of the ZEE process was to assist the nations of the Pan Amazon to allocate their public lands among different constituencies and stakeholder…
Ecuador The territorial planning framework in Ecuador is known as the Plan de Desarrollo y Ordenamiento Territorial (PDOT). It is one component in an ambitious effort to articulate a Plan…
Ocean rise and changes in the Amazon River are ruining the way of life in an archipelago close to where the Amazon River runs into the Atlantic.
Land-use maps and their explicit recommendations are most relevant on pioneer landscapes that are in the flux of change. Recommendations can provide sound information and support an expanding agricultural production…
Regulating land tenure is not the only power available to the state for influencing how people use land. Land-use planning and land-use zoning are two closely related mechanisms that Pan…
DHAKA — Jhinuk recalls screaming as water rushed into her hut in northeastern Bangladesh last August. “Four children clung, two stumbling toddlers. Fear choked me, air like ice, but I…
The sharecropping system that defined land tenure in the Ecuadorian highlands prior to agrarian reform was known as the ‘huasipungo’, a Quechua word that describes the relationship between landlords and…
CANTABON, Philippines — In the heart of Siquijor province in the southern Philippines lies the secluded mountain village of Cantabon. Amid the verdant trees, the healing hut, or balay pahi-uli,…
The agrarian reform process in Peru began in 1964. Originally a cautious effort targeting the more egregious examples of peasant exploitation, it was dramatically expanded by a left-wing military government…
Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s recent announcement of a new court system to resolve land ownership conflicts in rural areas of the country has drawn a mixed response from advocates of…
Regularizing land tenure on landscapes where private property predominates is more challenging than on landscapes occupied by communal landholdings. In part, this is due to their greater number, but the…
MONTERÍA, Colombia — “Look at the rooms in our house,” says Remberto Gil, 45, during a sweltering day last September. “During this time of the year, they are typically overflowing…
The political movement that brought Evo Morales to power incorporated a latent conflict between highland and lowland Indigenous communities. The lowland nations are intent on recuperating their ancestral territories, which…
Bolivia was a leader in the agrarian reform movement in South America. A defining moment in its modern history was the national revolution of 1952, which started as an uprising…
CENTRAL ARU, Indonesia — One afternoon last November, Natanel Ginobal, 67, drove his motorboat to check the mud crabs caught by the traps he had installed earlier the day. He…
The need to fast-track the regularização of smallholder titles motivated the Terra Legal programme, which sent teams of surveyors to selected municipalities to accelerate the process for landholdings established prior…