Full Coverage: Land

26.08.2004

©Forest Action Network

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, an environmental group has launched a campaign to protect America's 105 million acres of federally protected wild places from logging, mining, drilling and road building. The Bush administration's Bureau of Land Management is moving to open some of these areas to oil and gas exploitation.

19.08.2004 A draft World Bank report, due September, says the root to development in Africa, Asia and Latin America lies in formalizing property ownership through distribution of land titles, but experts warn the move could prove disastrous as it would jeopardize the future of small local businesses in favor of multinational corporations (MNCs).

13.08.2004 Over 200,000 Nepalese tribals freed from slavery and living in makeshift tents have grabbed more than 10,000 acres of government land in protest against the state's failure to rehabilitate them, more than four years after their release.

12.08.2004 Native Americans on reservation land along the Arizona-Mexico have had to put up with increased activities by smugglers and undocumented immigrants since the National Park Service began construction of vehicle barrier in the neighboring Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The barrier, a Fencing Project, is expected to cover the entire length of the 75-mile border area.

03.08.2004 Amid all the violence and crime that have stricken much of central and southern Iran in recent months, the northern region of Kurdistan has remained relatively quiet. But beneath that calm lies simmering tensions over conflicting land claims between Kurds, Turkomans, and Arabs that could burst into armed conflict.

02.08.2004

Zapatista Movement © Beto Del Sereno/In Motion Magazine / In Motion Magazine

The Mexican government and international corporations are eager to implement Plan Puebla Panama, a development scheme they consider necessary infrastructure for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). But, as Mary Ann Tenuto Sanchez argues, depriving the indigenous people of Chiapas of their ancestral land will only push them into extreme poverty, and building eight-lane highways in the middle of the rainforests will inflict grave environmental damage.