Full Coverage: Land

27.09.2004 In rural Guatemala, poor mostly indigenous farmers scrape a living off the nationÂ’s poorest soils while wealthy plantation owners reap the benefits of an agricultural system based on international exports and the exploitation of cheap labor. Guatemala has one of the most skewed land distribution patterns in the world, and the second-most inequitable in Latin America ; roughly 2% of the population owns 70% of all productive farmland.

24.09.2004 Gana and Gwi Bushmen are protesting against eviction from their ancestral land by the Botswana government. Their campaign comes to London - 30 September and 4 October.

20.09.2004 Though FAO estimates that $100 million is required to control locust-infested 4 million hectares of land, the FAO has received only $4 million out of $24 million promised by the donor countries.

20.09.2004 Agriculture has been badly hit in Afghanistan due to below-average rains as well pest attacks. The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme predict that this will lead to acute shortage of food.

20.09.2004 Two activists chronicle oral testimonies of textile mill workers from a central Mumbai textile area and highlight their battle against displacement and dispossession. The authors provide the reader with an account of the political, economic, social and cultural history of the area in the backdrop of globalisation.

14.09.2004 Donors have flocked to support Tanzania's pastoralist land rights movement. However, well-intentioned desires to promote democracy, indigenous rights, participatory development and community conservation have had perverse consequences. Leaders of pastoral non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have become less and less accountable to their communities. The pastoralist movement has lost momentum as its energies have been diverted into activities to please donors.

08.09.2004 Two years ago, the González brothers planted wheat and raised livestock on their land in the department of Soriano, bordering Argentina. In debt with the state-owned Bank of the Republic, they were forced to sell to an Argentine company. The wheat and cattle are now gone, replaced by soy beans.

07.09.2004

Mountain Wilderness

Forty years after landmark legislation set aside 105 million acres of public land as Wilderness Areas, the Bush administration is dismantling the nation's reservation system by opening up wilderness areas to extractive industries and reversing the Roadless Conservation Rule.