Natives allowed to appeal | Daily Express Newspaper Online, Sabah, Malaysia.

Published on: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 via Natives allowed to appeal | Daily Express Newspaper Online, Sabah, Malaysia..

Kota Kinabalu: The Federal Court on Monday granted six natives leave to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision to affirm a High Court ruling on their native customary rights claims over their ancestral lands in Tongod, Kinabatangan.

Justices Tan Sri Arifin Zakaria, Tan Sri Raus Sharif and Tan Sri James Foong unanimously allowed the application by plaintiffs Darinsok Pangiran Apan, 83, Kayah Unto, 44, Wilster Lewrince, 49, Jaafar Dorong, 51, and Jaimon Darinsok, 44, on four questions of law raised in their Notice of Motion.

The appellate court also granted their application for a stay on the order by the Court of Appeal for the Assistant Collector of Land Revenue (ACLR) to conduct a public inquiry to hear the plaintiffs’ claim for Native Customary Rights (NCR) within 60 days from June 9 this year.

Over 150 natives from the affected land areas dressed in their native attire and their supporters turned up in court to hear the case.

 

Villagers lodge report against SLDB over land | Daily Express Newspaper Online, Sabah, Malaysia.

Published on: Thursday, March 03, 2011 via Villagers lodge report against SLDB over land | Daily Express Newspaper Online, Sabah, Malaysia..

Keningau: A police report has been lodged against Sabah Land Development Board (SLDB) for allegedly encroaching into the customary land of villagers, here.

The affected villages were Kg Binakaan, Kg Tuaran Baru and Kg Bangawong and the report was lodge by action committee chairman Ediwot Lantiong.

They claimed that the villagers had applied for 2,000 acres for settlement since Sabah gained its independent but it was not approved although the land has been surveyed by the Land and Survey Department.

However, several companies that uses SLDB to apply for the land had received approval and that they had started carrying out clearing work even though the villagers had used it for rubber, paddy and fruit cultivation for years.

Ediwot said that he lodged the report after he received no positive response from Sook assemblyman Datuk Ellron Angin over the matter.

“The government should take action. Why a new company that has just applied for the land was given approval and we didn’t?

We want about 200 acres for these three villages to carry our farm work,” Lantiong said.

Meanwhile, Pensiangan MP Tan Sri Joseph Kurup refuted claims by the villagers and urged them to understand the efforts of the government in helping develop their (villagers) economy.

Kurup’s communication officer Vincent Lee said that they had sent officers to inspect the land problems faced by the villagers, adding they hope to discuss the matter with District Officer to tackle the problem.

Call for Papers and Organized Sessions on Political Ecology

Details at:  University of Kentucky Political Ecology Working Group.

The University of Kentucky Political Ecology Working Group invites you to participate in the second annual DIMENSIONS OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY:CONFERENCE ON NATURE/SOCIETY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

April 13 – 15, 2012

University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

Keynote Address: Julie Guthman Department of Community Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

Plenary Address: Erik Swyngedouw Department of Geography, University of Manchester

Following the success of our inaugural conference, which included participants from 8 different countries, 25 states, 41 universities, and featured scholars from 17 different disciplinary affiliations, the University of Kentucky Political Ecology Working Group is now preparing for our 2012 conference.This three-day conference provides an opportunity to critically examine perspectives on human-environment relationships in their varied manifestations and to foster discussions among a diverse group of scholars.

Grant Opportunities | Embassy of the United States Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Source: Grant Opportunities | Embassy of the United States Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Throughout the year, the U.S. Embassy offers various open grant opportunities that aim to provide local organizations with funds in support of projects that help advance key strategic objectives in Malaysia. Below, please find information and applications for current Embassy-offered grant opportunities.

Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation: The Fund supports a wide range of projects to preserve cultural heritage, such as the restoration of historic buildings, assessment and conservation of museum collections, archaeological site preservation, documentation of vanishing traditional craft techniques, improved storage conditions for archives and manuscripts, and documentation of indigenous languages.

FUNDRAISING CAN BE A SIMPLE AND ENJOYABLE WORK

Source:  Prepare the staff in fundraising work – Funds for NGOs.

We often think that fundraising is a serious job and only someone with a high level of education and experience can undertake it. But this cannot be true always.

We believe that a person, mostly young and enthusiastic, with basic writing and speaking skills and some level of proficiency in computers and the internet can be suitable for this job. All we need to do is render the power of technology to this person in the best interests of the organization.

Look around your staff and find out who is good in communication and managing computer work. It could be your office assistant or a project officer or a field staff. The person may be currently busy with his or her own project work, but it is your responsibility to ensure that this person spares at least 25% of the time for the sake of the organization. After all, it is the organization that will remain through all the time, not the project.

We select this person and assign him or her with the additional task of raising funds for the organization.

To begin with it, it is important to make this person responsible! To make him or her feel that bringing revenues for the organization is one of the crucial tasks and he or she is now involved with it.

It is also important to ensure that the person has enough time to do it. In many organizations, the office assistant may already have too much work at hand and may not be able to devote time for fundraising. Make it a rule that the office assistant spends at least 1-2 hours every day only on covering fundraising work for your organization.

One of the ways to make someone responsible is to hand him or her a list of activities that need to be done. Develop a job description for the person so that he or she can have targets to be achieved.

 

Natural Resource Governance

Source: Natural Resource Governance.

Natural resources are not just valuable economic resources; they’re also political and social resources. At all levels: local, national and international, actors compete to gain access, control and benefits from natural resources. How these competitions are played out and resolved, and who ultimately benefits from them, lies at the heart of natural resource governance.

In situations of weak governance, people have limited incentives to manage their resources for the long term and face significant barriers to building a sustainable livelihood for themselves.  Ineffective management of common property resources can oftern lead to competition, over-exploitation and eventually the degradation of the resource itself.  Elite capture of resource revenues can prevent the benefits generated by natural resource wealth from reaching poor people. Insecure and biased property rights regimes can foster social and economic exclusion and generate conflict.  All of these processes undermine poor people’s livelihoods and increase their poverty and marginality.

The livelihoods of the poor are likely to be enhanced in circumstances of ‘good’ governance—where property rights regimes are predictable, secure and fair; effective institutions govern common pool resources; and the benefits of resource rents flow to the bulk of the population and not just to elites. In these circumstances, it is more likely that poor people are able to invest in the sustainable use of their resource base and use these natural assets as a foundation on which they can build a sustainable livelihood.

I say: Indigenous people always been the victim of development, but people in the government may consist of those that came from Indigenous communities. Quite often greed supersede “good governance” and rules and regulation often used to legitimise their actions

Communal land titles give Sabah a winning socio-economic solution

Source: Insight Sabah – Land for the landless – Musa Aman’s stroke of genius.

Chief minister Musa Aman wants to give land to thousands of extremely poor landless native villagers. But he faces a dilemma: the land is sold for a song to smooth-talking businessmen as soon as his government has given it to them. The villagers leave their home to spend their money in towns. Having spent it all, they are poor and landless again as they are displaced by new landowners. His solution: his state government will give villagers thousands of hectares of agricultural land. They will get a communal title, the first in Malaysia, which gives them joint-ownership of the property. They can develop the land but cannot sell it. Their heirs can inherit it for as long as the lease lasts. In this way the villagers will prosper and get themselves out of the poverty trap.

On May 29, he gave 1,400 heads of families in Kampung Salarom Taka of Nabawan, about 125km from Kota Kinabalu, their first communal land title to 3,650 hectares (9,000 acres) of agricultural land. They represent more than 5,000 villagers.

 

“This is the promise of the Barisan Nasional government to give land to our people,” Mr Musa said during a ceremony of the Juara Rakyat (people’s champion) programme of the Pensiangan division of United Malays National Organisation (Umno) where he handed the title to Nabawan’s district officer Bubudan Majalu who received it on the villagers’ behalf.

The Sabah Land Development Board (SLDB) and other government agencies will help villagers to grow export crops such as oil palms and rubber on it. The villagers will work on the land. The state agencies will manage it. And the villagers will earn most of the profits from the crops.

I say: State should have consulted the people on conditions attached to CT