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Armed with trumpets, S. African men blow away street crime against women | PLACE
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Female commuters living in Mofolo North and Dobsonville, two neighbourhoods in #Soweto, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that a walk in the dark to the nearest bus, train or taxi station was seen as taking a necessary risk.

But on a recent morning, before the sun had even risen over Soweto, a symphony of vuvuzelas was heard echoing between different neighbourhoods as people began to trickle out of their homes. [...]

The patrols are a welcome male-led initiative in the movement to end gender-based violence, which has so far predominantly been steered by women, said gender activist Mandisa Khanyile.

“I wish we lived in a society where women were able to walk freely in the streets,” said Khanyile, founder of Johannesburg rights group Rise Up Against Gender-based Violence.

“But in the absence of this, (the patrols are) an awesome, meaningful, tangible move by men who are taking responsibility for the scourge of gender-based violence in South Africa,” she said in a phone interview.

#agressions #agressions_sexuelles #trompette #alerte #femmes

Palm oil from ’orangutan capital of world’ sold to major brands, says forest group | PLACE
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Despite corporate efforts to halt deforestation, palm oil from trees grown illegally in an Indonesian wildlife reserve is entering supply chains, an investigation finds

#industrie_palmiste #forêt #déforestation #indonésie #agroalimentaire

South India’s kolam art helps women map business opportunities | PLACE
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The artistic mapping project has helped more than 5,000 women earn a sustainable income in six districts of Tamil Nadu

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Australia promises national vote on recognition of indigenous people by 2022 | PLACE
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Australia has struggled to reconcile with descendants of its first inhabitants, who arrived on the continent about 50,000 years before British colonists but are not recognised in the national constitution.

However, with public support on the issue growing, Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt promised a referendum before 2022.

“I will develop and bring forward a consensus option for constitutional recognition to be put to a referendum during the current parliamentary term,” Wyatt said in a speech in Canberra. [...]

Indigenous Australians account for about 700,000 people in a total population of 23 million and have tracked near the bottom in almost every socio-economic indicator, suffering disproportionately high rates of suicide, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and imprisonment.

Denied the vote until the mid-1960s, they face a 10-year gap in life expectancy compared with other Australians and make up 27% of the prison population.

#Australie #peuples_premiers #Aborigènes #discriminations

Fight fires with indigenous knowledge, researchers say | PLACE
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ah ces primitifs qui ne connaissent rien de rien...

“The best firefighting equipment in the world cannot stop the most devastating wildfires. An effective weapon to prevent uncontrolled wildfire is knowledge,” the report said.

Indigenous people, who manage nearly 900 million hectares of land worldwide, hold “highly sophisticated” knowledge of fire management, the report noted.

Indigenous groups around the world deliberately light small fires throughout the year, which reduces the amount of fuel, preventing wildfires from spreading rapidly.

“Small controlled burns can reduce the impact and threat of catastrophic wildfires,” lead researcher Andrew Davis told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In the Brazilian savannah, the number of dry season fires decreased by 57 percent after fire services started collaborating with indigenous tribes, according to the Prisma Foundation.

The U.S. Forest Service formed a partnership with the Yurok tribe in northern California last year, after a fast-moving wildfire killed 43 people.

#feu #incendies #savoir-faire #peuples_autochtones #climat

Armed with gas and cows, Kazakhstan takes aim at land degradation | PLACE
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The extent of degradation is difficult to assess because countries in Central Asia do not release official figures, but anecdotal evidence shows the situation is serious, said Christian Welscher, project coordinator for the Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI) at University of Greifswald, Germany.

Also, studies show a potential loss of 76 percent of saxaul trees, a shrub found only in the region’s deserts, due to rampant deforestation and overgrazing by cattle, said Welscher.

The CADI is working with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to combat land degradation and conserve biodiversity.

The deforestation causes sandstorms that devastate rural communities, Welscher said.

Mars Almabek, deputy chairman of the State Agriculture Inspection, said Kazakhstan is buying and importing modified cattle from the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, France and Czechoslovakia.

#Kazakhstan #dégradation_des_sols #sols #élevage #surpâturage #déforestation #gaz

Rural slave descendants risk all to fight for land in Brazil | PLACE
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Rejane Maria da Costa has fallen out with neighbors and faced repeated death threats in her battle for Brazil to recognise her community’s claim to the land their ancestors inhabited.

Yet the 42-year-old, who makes a meager living growing cassava on a small patch of land behind her single-story home, is determined to keep up the fight for the rights of the small rural community descended from slaves.

“We won’t give up,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at her home in the poor neighborhood of Maria Joaquina on the outskirts of the coastal town of Buzios, about 170 km (105 miles) northeast of Rio de Janeiro. “I can’t be afraid. I’m not just fighting for something for me. I’m fighting for something for all of us.”

When Brazil abolished slavery 130 years ago this week, at least 4 million slaves had arrived there from Africa to work on sugar plantations and in other sectors of the country’s flourishing economy.

Many of those who escaped the harsh working conditions set up homes in settlements across Brazil that are known as quilombos.

The fight for a safe home by the 16 million #quilombolas, as the inhabitants of these settlements are known, is part of a struggle for land across Brazil.The country is rich in land for development but low on deeds and formal records, leading to enormous tension and conflict over property rights.

#Brésil #foncier #esclavage

Indigenous man who lived on tree for two years in India given land for home | PLACE
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An indigenous man who lived in a tree house for two years after his home was damaged in a south Indian forest, has been given a plot of land, an official said, in a case that highlights the slow progress in recognising the rights of forest dwellers.

Gajja, who belongs to a tribal community in the southern state of Karnataka, has lived on a platform he built on a mango tree in the forest to keep safe from elephants.

This week, following a local newspaper report about his plight, officials gave him a plot of land.

“He had already been conferred with forest rights, but he was unaware of the fact, and had continued to live on the tree,” said D. Randeep, the deputy commissioner in Mysuru city.

“We have now allocated some land near that tree, so he can build a hut. If he is willing to live outside the forest, we can give him compensation and allot him a proper home,” he said.

Gajja, who gathers honey and other forest products, is among millions of people who depend on forests for a living.

More than a fifth of India’s 1.3 billion people were expected to benefit from the 2006 Forest Rights Act covering vast areas of forest land roughly the size of Germany.

The law gives indigenous people and forest dwellers rights to manage and govern their traditional forests and resources, individually and as a community.

#inde #forêt #foncier #peuples_autochtones #territoire

Driven from home, Philippine indigenous people long for their land | PLACE
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This time feels different; we have been forced to leave our homes, and we are being told we need to give up our lands for our own good. But we cannot live like this - we belong in our ancestral lands, and we want to go back," he said.

The Lumad in Mindanao in southern Philippines are part of nearly 17 million indigenous people in the country. They are among the poorest of minority groups, with little access to social services including education and healthcare, experts say.

They have been caught in the middle of a five-decade old insurgency, as well as a push by logging and mining companies to tap Mindanao’s rich resources including gold, copper and nickel, after President Rodrigo Duterte said he would welcome investors.

Their vulnerability has been exacerbated by the extension of martial law imposed in Mindanao last May by Duterte, who has called the island a “flashpoint for trouble” and atrocities by Islamist and communist rebels.

“Duterte is waging war against defenceless indigenous people in Mindanao,” said Duphing Ogan, secretary general of indigenous peoples’ alliance Kalumaran.

#Philippines #terres #peuples_autochtones #discriminations #évictions_forcées

Murder of eight-year-old in India tied to nomadic land rights, activists say | PLACE
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The brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in India, that has triggered massive protests, highlights nomadic tribes’ vulnerability and lack of land rights, activists said.

According to the police, the girl was kidnapped, gang raped and killed in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of a plot by Hindu residents to evict her nomadic Bakkarwal community from a village where they had temporarily settled.

Nearly 2 million people in the state belong to the Muslim Bakkarwal and Gujjar ethnic groups who traditionally spend the summer months in mountain pastures, and winters on the plains with their cows, sheep and horses.

They have sparred with Hindu villagers in recent years over their shrinking access to grazing and forests, said Javaid Rahi, a tribal activist in Jammu.

“Their biggest problem is the lack of land rights,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

#viol #pédocriminalité #fille #enfant #droit_foncier #élevage #agriculture

Chocolate forests: Can cocoa help restore the Amazon? | PLACE
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Facchi illustrates a trend that is turning damaged parts of the Amazon basin green again and creating an usual alliance between the agriculture industry and conservationists. Brazil’s cattle ranchers are planting cocoa on their used-up pasture, with financial support from international environmental groups.

That’s a big change. For decades, ranchers have been the engine of clear-cutting in the Amazon rainforest that has rendered an area nearly the size of Spain treeless. Environmentalists have argued the practice destroys wildlife habitat and undermines the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide that causes global warming.

“Besides being a means of avoiding deforestation, cocoa plantations favor the local, regional and national economy,” the international environmental group The Nature Conservancy said on its website.

The young trees will also bring change to global cocoa markets. Brazil’s National Association of the Cocoa Processing Industry (AIPC) expects the surge in planting to help double the country’s output of the raw material in chocolate by 2028 to 400,000 tonnes a year. That increase would raise global output by about 5 percent.

#élevage #cacao #plantation #Brésil

Brazil averts ’a massacre’ by blocking eviction of Indians | PLACE
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Brazil’s highest court has averted a “massacre” by blocking the eviction of 5,000 indigenous people from disputed land, one of their leaders said, in a ruling that boosted ancestral claims.

Guarani-Kaiowa Indians occupied the land in the southwestern Mato Grosso do Sul state in 2016, amid rising violence and tensions following Indian affairs agency FUNAI’s pledge to return ancestral land - owned by farmers - to indigenous people.

“We were expecting a new Caarapo massacre,” indigenous leader Kunumi Apyka’i Rory said, referring to a 2016 attack on indigenous activists by farmers in the same region.

“It would be a bloodshed but because of Nhanderu and our prayers we managed,” he said in a statement by Conselho Indigenista Missionario (Cimi), a monitoring group linked to the Catholic Church.

South America’s largest country is grappling with scores of deadly unresolved indigenous land issues, in one of the world’s clearest examples of the conflict between preserving indigenous culture and promoting economic development.

Cimi says hundreds of indigenous people are killed each year in territorial conflicts with ranchers in Brazil, rich in land to be exploited and low on deeds and property records.[...]

Brazil’s 900,000 indigenous people - who are disproportionately impacted by poverty and other social problems - control about 13 percent of its territory, mostly in the remote Amazon rainforest.

#brésil #peuples_autochtones #massacre #discrimination #agriculture #élevage

Colombia takes ’unprecedented’ step to stop farms gobbling forests | PLACE
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Indigenous communities that depend on Colombia’s Amazon rainforest for their survival will have more say over their ancestral lands, as Colombia adds 8 million hectares to its protected areas in an effort to stem forest loss.

The new measures announced by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday aim to create a buffer zone for the country’s southern Amazon region.

Farmers are pushing deeper into forests, cutting down more trees to clear land for cattle-grazing and agriculture.

Santos said the protected areas will be marked off in the next two weeks, meaning that “once and for all, we (will) know where we can farm, produce - and from what boundary we will protect all the forests and the entire Amazon”.

This brings the total area of protected forests in Colombia to nearly 40 million hectares, Santos said in a speech in the Amazon town of Leticia, flanked by indigenous tribes and Norway’s prime minister and environment minister.

Norway, a key financial backer of Colombia’s forest conservation efforts, said the new buffer zone was important to meet Colombia’s goals of zero net deforestation by 2020, and halting the loss of all natural forest by 2030.

#Colombie #déforestation #forêt #conseravation #agriculture #élevage

Carbon prices too low to protect SE Asian forests from rubber expansion - report | PLACE
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The price of carbon credits must rise drastically if they are to help protect Southeast Asia’s tropical forests against rubber plantation expansion, according to researchers.

Individuals, companies and countries purchase carbon credits to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

Putting a cost on carbon emissions provides an incentive to do business more sustainably, and a disincentive to engage in environmentally damaging activities - like clearing forests.

But researchers found that credits bought and sold on international markets would need to rise from $5-$13 per tonne of carbon dioxide to $30-$51 per tonne if they are to safeguard Southeast Asian forests from rubber.

#marché_carbone #mauvaise_farce #caoutchouc #déforestation #plantation

Women farmers join ’long march’ to Mumbai to demand land, forest rights | PLACE
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Thousands of women farmers marched into Mumbai alongside their male peers on Monday demanding the government recognises their rights over forests and stops the takeover of land for industrial projects.

The protesters, who over several days walked 180 kilometres (112 miles) from the town of Nashik, northeast of Mumbai, also demanded waivers of farm loans, and higher prices for cereals and vegetables.

Among the more than 30,000 protesters, many wearing red caps and waving communist party flags, were groups of women farmers. Many till land they do not own, often because their husbands have migrated to the cities for jobs or committed suicide.

#Inde #agriculture #protestation #droit_foncier #foncier_rural #terres

Indian state to give property rights to slum dwellers in ’historic’ step | PLACE
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About 65 million people live in India’s slums, a number rising quickly as tens of thousands of migrants leave their villages for urban areas

#inde #bidonville #exode_rural #pauvreté

India’s tribals at loggerheads with new tree-planting policy, say campaigners | PLACE
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Millions of tribal people in India are being denied their rights to forest land and resources and forced from their ancestral settlements due to a recently enacted law promoting an increase in tree cover, an indigenous rights group said on Wednesday.

The Indigenous Peoples Forum (IPF), which represents tribal groups in eastern Odisha state, said the law passed by parliament in July last year has resulted in communities being displaced from their homes in favour of tree plantations.

#Inde #forêt #plantation #peuples_autochtones #extraction_minière

Luxembourg pioneers property rights laws for planets and asteroids | PLACE
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Luxembourg’s ambitions to become a leader in the nascent space mining industry moved a step forward as it adopted a new law to create property rights on planets and asteroids and govern exploration and use of space resources.

The economy minister, Etienne Schneider, said on Friday that Luxembourg had become the first European country to offer a legal framework ensuring that private operators can be confident about their rights over resources extracted in space.

The law will come into force on Aug. 1 and is based on the premise that space resources are capable of being owned. The country’s law also establishes the procedures for authorising and supervising space exploration missions.

“#Luxembourg is the first adopter in Europe of a legal and regulatory framework recognising that space resources are capable of being owned by private companies,” Schneider said.

Luxembourg in June 2016 set aside 200 million euros ($229 million) to fund initiatives aimed at bringing back rare minerals from space.

#facepalm #privatisation #espace

Namibian president calls for land expropriation | PLACE
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“This means we need to refer back to our Constitution which allows for the expropriation of land with fair compensation and also look at foreign ownership of land, especially absentee land owners.”

Namibia wants to transfer 43 percent, or 15 million hectares of its arable agricultural land, to previously disadvantaged blacks by 2020. By the end of 2015, 27 percent was redistributed, according to the Namibia Agriculture Union.

#Namibie #foncier #redistribution #terres

The man who mapped Dakota’s pipeline like a jigsaw | PLACE
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Daunted by the job but enthused by the possibilities, he enlisted help from two specialist mapping colleagues in the Philippines and Kenya, and together they spent 80 hours - consecutively - working remotely to finish the job.

“It is interesting, I am not the only person to have asked the pipeline company for mapping data for the pipeline’s path but they have refused everyone. That just made us want to go and draw it even more.” he said.

#cartographie_participative