Shutterstock Nothing excites law students like the idea of a free house. Or alternatively, enrages them. It depends on their politics. As a result, academics condemned to teaching property law find it hard to resist the “doctrine of adverse possession”. The fact that a person can change the locks on someone else’s house, wait 12 years, and claim it as their own, makes students light up in a way that the Strata Schemes Management Act never will. The idea of “squatters’ rights” has received a lot of media attention recently amid the grim reality of the Australian housing market. It fuels comment ..read more

South Africa’s government is calling for public comments on an updated version of its existing biodiversity economy plan. The National Biodiversity Economy Strategy aims to conserve biodiversity while also contributing to job creation and economic growth. It proposes to do this by promoting sustainable use of the country’s natural resources. The strategy is being revised so that the country’s national policy is better aligned with recent international policy developments in the biodiversity sphere. The most important of these is the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global ..read more

danymages / shutterstock A radical reduction in the amount of meat, dairy and other products sourced from animals is possible in the coming decades, as people turn to an increasing variety of alternatives. This would unlock vast amounts of land currently used to rear animals and to grow crops that feed them. We recently published research that considered what might happen if demand for animal products really did decrease and the newly released agricultural land was instead used to grow crops for renewable energy and carbon removal. In short, we found the potential benefits are huge. Replacing ..read more

Ghana’s urban population has more than tripled in the past three decades, from 4 million to nearly 14 million people. Competition for land in cities has increased among various land uses. These trends have led to encroachment in ecologically sensitive areas such as wetlands. Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, has a high level of encroachment and this has led to the pollution of water bodies. Kumasi’s population growth has been rapid because of its central and strategic location and its functions as a major commercial, traditional and administrative centre. In 2022, the population of Kumasi w ..read more

State governments across the country have plans to increase social and affordable housing to address ballooning waitlists. While necessary, this won’t be enough to clear the backlog of people waiting for public housing. It also takes time to make more affordable long-term housing options available. So what can be done in the meantime? Our research shows a new way of providing interim housing to support people transitioning out of homelessness. Read more: Efforts to find safe housing for homeless youth have gone backwards. Here's what the new national plan must do differently Short-term solutio ..read more

Land ownership disputes are a common feature in Ghana's legal system Wikimedia Commons Ghana went into colonisation with two broad types of customary land arrangement. In one, a traditional leader was the custodian of the land and gave his followers equitable access to it. In the other, there was no traditional leader. Colonial administrators then made their mark on the land ownership regime, and since independence change has continued through national policies. Another influence on land use has been globalisation, which exposes rural land to large-scale transactions and takeovers. Changes in ..read more

Habitat loss has driven Asian elephants, like these foraging at a garbage dump in Sri Lanka, into human areas. Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP via Getty Images Despite their iconic status and long association with humans, Asian elephants are one of the most endangered large mammals. Believed to number between 45,000 and 50,000 individuals worldwide, they are at risk throughout Asia due to human activities such as deforestation, mining, dam building and road construction, which have damaged numerous ecosystems. My colleagues and I wanted to know when human actions started to fragment wildlife habita ..read more

Shutterstock The decline of the coal industry means 17 mines in the New South Wales Hunter Valley will close over the next two decades. More than 130,000 hectares of mining land — nearly two-thirds of the valley floor between Broke and Muswellbrook — will become available for new uses. Restoring and reusing this land could contribute billions of dollars to the Hunter economy, create thousands of full-time jobs and make the region a world leader in industries such as renewable energy and regenerative agriculture that improves soil and water quality and increases biodiversity and resilience. Bu ..read more

Shutterstock Australia’s renewable energy transition has prompted the construction of dozens of large-scale solar farms. The boom helps reduce Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels, but requires large areas of land to be converted to host solar infrastructure. Solar farms are mostly built in rural areas. This has raised concerns about a potential decline in both agricultural production – as arable land is used for solar energy production – and wildlife habitat. But there are ways to expand solar infrastructure so both nature and people win. We’ve already seen this in so called “agrivoltaics ..read more

Getty Images The January 27 storm that hit Auckland broke all previous rainfall records and has caused widespread damage, mostly from flooding and landslides. But while climate change helps explain the intensity of the rainfall, the way land has been used and built on in the city is a major factor in what happened. Such rainfall events generate significant landslides, probably in the thousands. What geologists refer to as “multiple-occurrence regional landslide events” (MORLEs) are sometimes also triggered by earthquakes (such as happened in Kaikoura in 2016). But predicting where and when la ..read more