Land Reform News

JAKARTA — Palm oil companies will no longer be required to allocate a fifth of their land for smallholder farmers under a new bill, a move activists and officials call…

The Land Portal Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, recently released what it’s calling “the largest global database of land and property rights projects.” In around a decade…

The murder of Sister Dorothy in 2005, and resulting international outrage, helped curb violence in Brazil for a time, but crimes against landless peasants and activists are on the rise.

MANILA — Environment and land rights leaders were among the activists rounded up in a new wave of arrests in the Philippines as part of the government’s extensive counter-insurgency campaign…

JAKARTA — In late September, international news outlets caught flak for their coverage of Indonesia’s largest mass protests since the 1998 uprising that led to the fall of the dictator…

Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…

The way humans have changed the forests of Central and South America may be making it impossible for subsistence hunters to continue their way of life, according to two conservation…

This week, the Indonesian electoral commission confirmed the results of the April 17 election that gave President Joko Widodo a solid victory over his challenger, former army special forces general…

KALIBIRU, Indonesia — For years, Parjan hoped his community might one day gain title to the Menoreh Hills. The green valley northwest of the Javan city of Yogyakarta was tilled…

JAKARTA — In the space of a few days, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has vowed to side with local communities in their disputes over land with large companies — yet…

Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…

SUNGAI NIBUNG, Indonesia — The phone signal comes and goes and the electricity grid has yet to reach this patch of jungle on the west coast of Borneo. The quickest…

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. DARIÉN GAP, Panama — There is a land at the center of the Americas that is said to remain in…

The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah has called on construction crews working on the multi-billion-dollar Pan Borneo Highway project to avoid breaking up the region’s forests and…

MAROANGIN, Indonesia — One day in March last year, Rahim was shocked and furious to find an excavator rolling through his rice field, turning the bright green grains into piles…

JACKSONVILLE, Liberia — When rebels tore through the ancient forests of Sinoe county during the civil wars that ravaged Liberia between 1989 and 2003, villagers often fled to the only road…

Ecologists know that when we humans start tugging at the threads of a food web, the unraveling that results is often catastrophic to the connected species, paving the way for…

JAKARTA — Indonesian President Joko Widodo and his challenger in this year’s election, Prabowo Subianto, have both vowed to increase the use of palm oil in biofuels to achieve energy…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and his rival in this year’s election, Prabowo Subianto, are expected to address the issues of environmental protection and management during the second of…

The legal rights to manage local forests, recently awarded to communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have the potential to improve lives and protect the country’s block of…

NAKURU COUNTY, Kenya — Caroline Chepkoeh looked around her idyllic property, perched on a hilltop surrounded by green maize fields as far as the eye can see. A storm front…

Large landscapes of intact tropical forests will figure prominently in global strategies to avert catastrophic climate change and conserve biodiversity. In this context, the extensive forests of Papua and West…

BANDUNG, Indonesia — President Joko Widodo has signed a presidential instruction on agrarian reform, in a bid to accelerate a program to give local communities greater control over land. The…

EMBOBUT FOREST, Kenya — One morning in May, David Kisang, 50, sat outside his tiny dome-shaped hut, with its walls made of sticks and black polythene for a roof, sipping…

Indigenous communities occupying four territories in eastern Panama are taking their nearly five-year land-titling battle with the government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. Their move…

JAKARTA — For the past four years, the indigenous community of Santa Clara de Uchunya has battled for state recognition of its right to ancestral forests in a remote pocket…

The camera follows the men through the forest as they arrive at the splintered stump of what looks to have been a massive tree. “For me, the forest is a…

The word “pygmy” conjures images of hunter-gatherers living deep in the Congo rainforest, far removed from the modern world. But that modern world is closing in on them, as the…

MONTES DE MARIA, Colombia - Under a cloudless sky and a baking sun in late January, Argemiros Capela, 76, pointed to a patch of scrubland on his lot that had…

When a farmer cuts down a tree in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there’s often a reason for it. She’s most likely clearing the land to plant crops — the…