The Indonesian government is pushing ahead with a plan to grow crops on a Puerto Rico-sized area of peatlands, despite criticism from experts and a history of similar failed projects.

In Sri Lanka, where the state formally owns an estimated 85 percent of the country’s 6.6 million hectares of land, there is legitimate concern that the proposed US-funded project, the MCC compact would shift control of these lands towards private interests.

Contrairement aux fervents partisans du légalisme, en matière de foncier rural, il vaut mieux décrocher d’abord la licence sociale que de se prévaloir d’une sécurité juridico-administrative matérialisée par une délibération (ou notification) du Conseil municipal.

Au Sri Lanka, une circulaire protégeant des milliers d’hectares de forêt pourrait être levée. Officiellement, le but est destiné à soutenir les petits paysans. Mais ce projet s’inscrit dans un contexte moins glorieux où l’on retrouve des multinationales US bien décidées à privatiser aux quatre coins du monde des terres qui échappent à leur appétit vorace.

An investigation is carried out into whether Singapore-based agribusiness giant Olam deforested more than 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres), in contravention of sustainability criteria it had signed up to, in order to develop oil palm plantations in Gabon.

Canadian alternative asset value expert argues that farmers should stop thinking they need to own their land as this is better left to asset managers and institutional investors, like pension funds and private equity groups

A Bangkok court ruled that about 3,000 Cambodians could proceed with a class-action suit against Mitr Phol, the world’s fourth-largest sugar producer. Farmers in Oddar Meanchey province are seeking compensation after the Cambodian government allocated land to the company for sugar plantations.

Today, Cambodian plaintiffs representing more than 700 farming families won a landmark appeal allowing them to move forward with their class action against Asia’s largest sugar producer, Mitr Phol. The transboundary class action Hoy Mai & Others vs. Mitr Phol Co. Ltd. is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.

On 17 July 2020, Amnesty International submitted a third-party legal intervention (amicus curiae brief)to Bangkok South Civil Court that grant Class Action Lawsuit (CAL) status to more than 700 Cambodian families who are suing Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol after being forcibly evicted from their homes in 2008-09.

Reportage de Mongabay sur le conflit autour de la Socaplam au Cameroun

The invasion of large scale cattle breeding in areas inhabited by traditional populations is widespread in the Amazonian area.

SMTP created BoViMa in 2014 with the ambition of capturing the regional market, supplying beef to islands in the Western Indian Ocean. Its plans remained in cold storage for years. In 2017, the IFC stepped in.

"The Senhuile land-grab is an ongoing process, whose trajectory will depend on the possibility to construct and strengthen alliances among farmers’ and herders’ groups at local, regional and national levels to ensure recognition of pastoral land rights" says Maura Benegiamo

Sayaka Funada-Classen reports that the Japanese and Mozambican governments have announced the termination of ProSAVANA, a huge victory for Mozambican peasant movements and tri-national peoples solidarity

A decade ago, the Indonesian government began to heavily promote large-scale plantation in southern Papua. An investigation recently published explored how some outside investors gained rights to the land and the fallout for the indigenous population. Children were suffering from malnutrition while agricultural commodities are exported from their ancestral land.

While palm oil companies present themselves as benevolent donors during the pandemic, communities living in and around these plantations tell another story.

Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest says conservation and heritage considerations must be balanced against the need for farming, after outbiding the Yi-Martuwarra people for a vast land holding on their territories.

Cambodia’s government is unable to resolve the country’s myriad land disputes because many of them involve senior officials, Minister of Interior Sar Kheng said in a rare acknowledgement

Activists have called for a financial probe into the Korindo Group, a conglomerate that paid a $22 million “consultancy fee” for the permits to expand its oil palm operations in Indonesia’s Papua province.

Civil Society Organzation from various regions in Indonesia and International letter contains urgent concern for the safety of land and human rights defenders impacted by the Korindo Group and POSCO International, Indonesia.

Nationalists want land issues to be handled independently by Sri Lanka because of fears that the MCC will be used to grab land for foreign investments, as has happened in Africa.

Update fropm the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, accountability mechanism for the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, on the complaint from Liberian communities regarding IFC’s investment in Salala Rubber Corporation of the Socfin group.

Mbonjo sits in the heart of Cameroon’s country’s largest oil palm and rubber-producing region and owned by the Belgian holding company Socfin.

Selon la Convergence malienne contre les accaparements de terres cette agression au domicile de son porte-parole visait soit de «l’enlever ou de l’assassiner ».

A Korean conglomerate paid $22 million to an “expert” to help it get land in Papua for oil palm plantations, at the heart of the largest rainforest left in Asia.

A court in Indonesia has sentenced two indigenous farmers to eight and 10 months in prison for harvesting palm fruit from land whose ownership is contested by the community and a palm oil firm, PT Hamparan Masawit Bangun Persada. The ruling appeared to ignore evidence showing that the villagers are the rightful owners of the land

Farmers to receive preferential terms for farmland acquisition after the land market is introduced and local governments will be granted authority to manage the lands of local communities outside the settlements.

Study finds that, compared with similar areas that have not seen private investment, areas with large-scale land acquisitions had higher forest loss in 52% of cases.

Investment opportunities in the agroindustrial business in Kazakhstan were one of the key topics during a recent webinar for investors from Kuwait hosted by Kazakh Invest

Kiryandongo Sugar limited, a multinational agribusiness company, which has been dispossessing thousands since 2017 in Kiryandongo district, is grabbing another piece of land in the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.