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The report argues that agricultural management practices often provide simultaneous benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation, particularly through soil carbon sequestration. It identifies financial, institutional, and technical barriers to adopting an integrated approach and proposes policy options, including the creation of a dedicated work programme on agriculture under the UNFCCC's Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA).

The paper examines the conflict between the AmaDiba community, the South African government, and Mineral Commodities Limited (MRC) over a proposed ilmenite mine. It highlights failures in community consultation, contradictions between the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) and the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs (DWEA), and the misuse of black economic empowerment (BEE) legislation via the Xolobeni Empowerment Company (XolCo). The author argues for the adoption of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) protocol to ensure a 'social licence' for mining.

The document outlines various international efforts to protect the ancestral and collective rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples. It highlights resistance against large-scale industrial projects, such as the Bakun dam in Malaysia, mining in the Philippines and Costa Rica, and oil sands extraction in Canada and the US. The report also discusses community-based forest governance in Indonesia and Cameroon, the promotion of food sovereignty through local markets in Colombia and seed banks in Uruguay, and the fight against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) globally. It argues that community rights serve as a legal and social tool to resist corporate dominance and transition toward environmentally sustainable and socially just societies.

The report examines the surge of foreign direct investment in African farmland and water, often termed "land grabs," and its negative impacts on local communities, human rights, and food security. It identifies three main types of investors: food-insecure states, western agribusinesses, and financial sector actors. The document highlights systemic failures, including lack of transparency, weak land tenure laws, and the marginalization of women. It proposes a role for parliamentarians as watchdogs and legislators to ensure free, prior and informed consent and transparency. Key recommendations include land tenure reform, the potential for a moratorium on large-scale land acquisitions, and the adoption of inclusive business models to align investment with national development strategies and the Maputo Declaration.

The document details the consequences of a surge in foreign land acquisitions in Africa, driven by global food and energy demands. It highlights the erosion of local land rights, lack of transparency in contracts, and the marginalization of women. It proposes a parliamentary roadmap including land reform, mandatory community consent, and a potential moratorium on large-scale land acquisitions to ensure investments benefit local populations.

The document analyzes the surge of foreign direct investment in African farmland and water, often termed 'land grabbing', highlighting the systemic lack of transparency and the violation of local land rights. It identifies three types of investors—food-insecure states, agribusinesses, and financial speculators—and examines the legal frameworks that often prioritize investor protections over community rights. The report advocates for a parliamentary role in ensuring social inclusion, promoting inclusive business models, and implementing the Maputo Declaration's agricultural goals. It concludes with a draft resolution calling for a moratorium on large-scale land acquisitions until a proper governance framework is established.

The document details the outcomes of a July 2011 seminar on foreign investment in African arable land and water. It identifies the drivers of 'land grabbing'—including biofuel demand and food insecurity in Gulf and Asian states—and analyzes the negative impacts on rural populations, particularly women. The report highlights a systemic lack of transparency in investment contracts and the weakness of national land laws, which often allow governments to allocate land despite existing community use. It proposes a parliamentary roadmap focusing on legislative oversight, the requirement of free, prior, and informed consent, and the potential for a moratorium on large-scale land acquisitions until robust governance frameworks are established.

The document details the outcomes of a July 2011 seminar on 'land grabs' in Africa, highlighting how large-scale foreign investments often undermine local land rights, water access, and gender equality. It argues that current investment models frequently lack transparency and fail to deliver promised socio-economic benefits. The report calls for a temporary moratorium on large-scale land acquisitions, the adoption of the Maputo Declaration's 10% budget allocation for agriculture, and a stronger role for parliamentarians in overseeing contracts and protecting community rights.

The document examines the surge of foreign investment in African agricultural land and water, driven by demand for food and biofuels. It highlights systemic failures in governance, including the disregard for local land rights, lack of community consultation, and the absence of environmental impact assessments. It argues that the current legal landscape—dominated by investor-centric international treaties and contracts—often undermines local food security and environmental protection. The briefing urges parliamentarians to demand transparency, access to investment contracts, and a role in the ratification and monitoring of these deals to ensure sustainable development and the protection of vulnerable populations, particularly women.

The report finds that while Lesotho has established necessary legal and policy frameworks, actual implementation of APRM recommendations is weak and lacks direct linkage to the APRM process. The country received an overall 'orange minus' rating, indicating some progress but significant gaps in execution and 'branding' of initiatives as APRM-related.

The policy brief examines the friction between Tanzania's land laws and its gold mining sector. While gold production has increased significantly, contributing 41.3% of export earnings, the lack of alignment between the land and mining cadastres has led to land degradation and tenure conflicts. The author highlights the environmental impact of large-scale mines, such as the North Mara Mine, and the unregulated nature of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). The brief recommends strengthening compensation frameworks, merging land and mining cadastres, and exploring co-ownership models to address the deep ancestral attachments of local communities to their land.

The document examines the governance of climate finance in developing countries, highlighting systemic failures in accountability, stakeholder representation, and benefit sharing. It argues that climate finance is often driven by donor priorities rather than local needs, leading to conflicts of interest and the marginalization of indigenous and local communities.

The document examines the historical and contemporary drivers of conflict in Sudan, arguing that the centralisation of power in Khartoum and the economic neglect of peripheral regions created a pattern of resistance. It distinguishes between the 'high politics' of oil, which fueled the second civil war and secessionist movements, and the 'low politics' of subsistence resources, such as land and water, which continue to drive local-level violence between pastoralists and farmers. The author concludes that the stability of both Northern and Southern Sudan depends on their ability to move away from elite-driven power concentration and establish inclusive governance and resource-sharing frameworks.

The report identifies a shift in tropical deforestation from state-initiated to enterprise-driven processes, primarily fueled by global urban and export demand for commodities like beef, soy, palm oil, and timber. While drivers vary by region—cattle and soy in Latin America, palm oil and timber in Southeast Asia, and small-scale farming in Africa—the document highlights that global emissions from land-use change have declined by 39% between 2000 and 2009. It argues that development without deforestation is possible through agricultural intensification, the restoration of abandoned lands, and international mechanisms like REDD+.

The document examines the role of safeguards in REDD+ to prevent social and environmental harm and to generate 'multiple benefits' such as poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation. It analyzes various international standards, reviews how countries integrate these into Readiness Preparation Proposals (R-PPs), and discusses the challenges of creating a cost-effective, transparent information-sharing system that respects national sovereignty while ensuring accountability.

The document analyzes the role of safeguards in REDD+ to prevent negative social and environmental impacts while maximizing 'multiple benefits' such as poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation. It evaluates various international standards (e.g., UN-REDD, World Bank SESA, FSC) and argues that no single standard covers all Cancun Agreement criteria. The paper explores the technical and financial challenges of establishing national and international information-sharing systems for safeguards, noting that costs for readiness phase monitoring vary from 35,000 USD in Costa Rica to 600,000 USD in the DRC. It concludes that effective safeguards require broad stakeholder participation, transparency, and a balance between international guidelines and national sovereignty.

The report denounces the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) as a mechanism to legitimise 'land grabbing' by corporations and governments. It argues that voluntary guidelines cannot remedy the systemic human rights violations, environmental destruction, and food insecurity caused by large-scale land acquisitions, which it claims are driven by financial speculation rather than food security. The authors call for an immediate ban on large-scale land transactions, the return of misappropriated lands to communities, and a transition toward food sovereignty based on peasant agriculture and agroecology.

The document details WWF's progress in operationalizing its indigenous peoples' policy through the creation of focal point networks, the adoption of new social policies on poverty and human rights, and the establishment of the Social Development for Conservation (SD4C) team. It highlights specific country-level initiatives in regions such as the Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia, while noting that the implementation of an internal complaints resolution process remains a priority for 2011.

The report examines ten indigenous carbon market projects across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico. It highlights diverse methodologies—including afforestation, avoided deforestation, and traditional fire management—to demonstrate how carbon revenues can support environmental, cultural, and economic goals. The document identifies systemic challenges such as a lack of federal policy, difficulties with third-party verification of tribal land governance, and the technical complexity of proving 'additionality'. It recommends participatory planning, the use of voluntary markets for 'co-benefits', and the development of indigenous-specific verification resources to ensure local ownership and sustainability.

The report examines how existing corruption and weak governance in forest-rich developing countries may undermine REDD objectives and how REDD resource flows could create new incentives for rent-seeking. Through case studies in the DRC, Kenya, and Tanzania, it identifies risks such as 'carbon fraud', elite capture of funds, and the marginalisation of local communities. It suggests that while REDD can act as a catalyst for improving forest governance, success depends on tailored anti-corruption measures, independent monitoring, and the integration of REDD into national development strategies.