Our blogs on Land

Introduction

By Robert Winterbottom 

This is the first installment of WRI’s blog series, New Perspectives on Restoration. The series aims to share WRI’s views on restoration, dispel myths, and explore restoration opportunities throughout the world.

Almost half of the world’s original forests have been cleared or degraded. So naturally, most people think of the “forest restoration” movement as an effort to re-plant these lost trees.

By Katie Reytar 

This is the second installment of WRI’s blog series, New Perspectives on Restoration. The series aims to share WRI’s views on restoration, dispel myths, and explore restoration opportunities throughout the world.

By Kathleen Buckingham and Lars Laestadius

This is the third installment of WRI’s blog series, New Perspectives on Restoration. The series aims to share WRI’s views on restoration, dispel myths, and explore restoration opportunities throughout the world.

By Kathleen Buckingham

Trees have become an iconic image of environmentalism, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we should plant millions of them.

This coming weekend, Openhack will be hosting Openhack Gothernburg 2019.  Openhack is a collaborative community where ideas and knowledge are exchanged in order to solve humanitarian challenges through open source development.  Hackathons are physical meetings that take place and innovations are sparked to life. This is where tech volunteers, aid organizations, social actors, and sponsors together in the same building to work together.

Across the globe, indigenous and rural women make invaluable contributions to their communities and toward global sustainable development and climate goals. They use, manage, and conserve the community territories that comprise over 50 percent of the world’s land and support up to 2.5 billion people. 

By Chris Hufstader

After an audacious land grab by a foreign company, indigenous women in a remote Cambodian village struggle to regain their farms and sacred sites.

Sol Preng remembers vividly the day in 2012 when bulldozers unexpectedly arrived on her family farm.

“The company came and cleared away our cashew trees right before the harvest,” she says. “I lost four hectares of land and all my cashew trees.”

Author: Ahmadou Aly Mbaye

Editor's Note: 

By Deborah Espinosa and Patrick Gallagher, USAID’s Land Technology Solutions Program

Persistent and pervasive gender inequality is a global development challenge that constrains economic growth, educational opportunities, and health outcomes. It jeopardizes food security and undermines poverty reduction strategies. The world over, some formal and many informal laws and customs operate to hinder women’s empowerment and thus their full potential as agents of economic and social change.

In February of this year, a deportation officer of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency was indicted for extorting immigrants for cash and sexual favors. Arnaldo Echevarria promised two undocumented women “working papers” in exchange for sex, eventually impregnating one of them.

This is just one example of the many cases of sextortion that vulnerable women, and sometimes men, face around the world.