Prior to the beginning of the Cold War, exploration of outer space by explorers was majorly for scientific discoveries of new planets. But as time went by, governments and private entities began to explore further for natural resources that could be beneficial to the existence of man on earth. Such minerals that could be found in asteroids include iron, iridium, nickel, magnesium, gold, platinum, and palladium, among others. Although every nation of the world is believed to have equal right to outer space and the resources discovered therein, the commercialisation of space mining activities have seemingly restricted the control of these resources to world leading governments such as, the United State, China, Russia, Japan, France and some private enterprises who have the financial power for such activities. The goal of the article was to examine commercialisation, property rights and contemporary legal issues concerning outer space mining. Can private or non-governmental entities operate in the outer space without governmental authorisation and continuing supervision? How best could ensuing space mining disputes and environmental concerns be addressed? Doctrinal research method was adopted for this study to discuss fundamental issues and resolve questions raised by the article. This entailed the examination of available literature in the area plus existing international and domestic laws regulating outer space mining activities in order to give in-depth analysis of the subject matter and to support the position reached in the article. In concluding the article, the authors proffered some suggestions on the identified contemporary issues.

In communities governed by customary law, the position of the land is crucial, so it is important to take care of any land that has been granted usage rights to its residents. The research objective is to analyze the concept of abandoned land in customary law communities as a foundation for national land law. The type of research used is normative legal research using secondary data to be further analyzed descriptively qualitatively. The results of the research show that the emphasis on abandoned land criteria in customary law is more on the length of time the land is not used, so that the physical land becomes unmaintained, as if it is no man's land. If the obligation to maintain and use the land is not fulfilled properly, accompanied by sanctions against some indigenous peoples, the party who neglects the land for some time will no longer be given management rights over customary land, even if they submit an application to the customary institution again. Meanwhile, customary lands that have been abandoned and returned to the control of the alliance are then used by customary institutions either by giving them to members of the customary law community or external parties who meet the requirements of the customary law community. The concept of abandoned land that exists in customary law is normalized in national land law, requiring that a new area of land rights can be declared abandoned if there is an element of intent. Even this is not instantaneous because through a series of processes to identify the land that was allegedly deliberately abandoned until the government issued a stipulation of the land as abandoned land.

The forest of Cameroon which is located in western equatorial Africa is central to economic growth and development and livelihood sustainability. Forests play three important functions: They provide habitat for the preservation of biodiversity; act as carbon sinks; and contribute to maintaining and enhancing the quality of the soil. Furthermore, forest is a source for nutrition and generates income for the state. Recently the demand for forest products by loggers and other forest users for the production of timber, fuel wood, and charcoal have been on the rise. Illegalities in the forest sector is fast becoming worrisome with incidents of illegal logging at the forefront and visible on every angle, beginning with illegal loggers to the corrupt government officials. Illegal logging is a chain of activities, beginning with the unclear allocation of concession rights, inappropriate felling of wood, transportation and marketing of the illegally exploited wood. The major cause of this has led to over exploitation of the forest in order to meet local and international demands. This further has an adverse effect on the forest as species are gradually disappearing, a change of climate, pollution, soil depletion, and a breach of local community’s right to forest. To this respect, our objective is to analyze the legislative instruments and their consistency or efficacy in regulating logging activities, and the encumbrances faced. To achieve these objectives we made use of both doctrinal and analytical research methodology with primary and secondary sources of information as the main tools. We observed that, the forest is under serious threat from adverse human activities, especially illegal logging encourage by factors such as corruption, ineffective forest legislations, and lack of consistency amongst others. In the light of the above mentioned huddles we proffered some recommendations such as beefing up enforcement procedure, minimizing corruption, an increase in the sanction against defaulters, reducing the procedure to obtain exploitation permit, reforming, harmonization and codification of the forest law which will serve as a way forward.