It is estimated that 20% of global land is either degraded or undergoing degradation, leading to an annual loss of 12 million hectares of productive land (UNCCD 2017). In Africa, some 715 million ha are degraded, including 65% of all arable land, 30% of all grazing land and 20% of all forests.

Georeferencing — a digital mapping technique increasingly employed by South American governments to register land ownership — is being regularly used by landgrabbers and companies to expel traditional communities from ancestral lands occupied for decades or even centuries, according to a report by GRAIN, an NGO that works with peasant communitie

The report highlights the need for a fundamental transformation across three socio-economic systems, which represent over a third of the global economy and provide up to two-thirds of all jobs. These systems are: food, land and ocean use; infrastructure and the built environment; and extractives and energy.

Land use change is the primary transmission pathway for emerging infectious diseases, and the rate of land conversion is accelerating. Moreover, the foundation for building back better in the face of climate change and the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will be centered upon future land use decisions.

A recent study commissioned by the government and funded by the European Union, and conducted by experts from different institutions, with me as the leader, focused on the potential contribution of redistributive land reform to employment creation.

The publication, Rethinking land reform in Africa: New ideas, opportunities and challenges, follows last November’s Conference on Land Policy in Africa, organised by the ANRC in Abidjan, and the 10th anniversary of the African Union Declaration on Land.

To amend the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act, 1991, so as to provide for the application for conversion of land tenure rights to ownership; to provide for the notice of informing interested persons of an application to convert land tenure rights into ownership; to provide for an opportunity for interested persons to object to conversion of l

Land degradation exacerbates the unique vulnerabilities of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to environmental challenges, such as climate change, flash floods, soil erosion, lagoon siltation, coastal erosion and sea level rise, undermining their economic potential.