This guide on Rural property tax systems in Central and Eastern Europe has been prepared to support governments in the design and implementation of systems to raise revenues at local levels. An increasing number of countries are introducing policies to decentralize the provision of rural services but very often local levels of government have insufficient funds to carry out these newly decentralized responsibilities. Raising revenues through property taxes on rural land represents one way to improve the capacity of local levels to deliver services.

This publication contains the final report and background documentation of the Expert Consultation on Catalysing the Transition away from Overcapacity in Marine Capture Fisheries held in Rome, Italy, from 15 to 18 October 2002. The Expert Consultation was intended and designed to develop a set of general recommendations to assist in addressing the difficult subject of overcapacity in marine capture fisheries.

Selon leur définition par les États Membres de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO), les objectifs fondamentaux de l’Organisation sont «d’améliorer les niveaux de nutrition, la productivité agricole et la qualité de vie des populations rurales et contribuer à l’essor de l’économie mondiale.» En tant qu’organisme spécialisé des Nations Unies, la FAO a un rôle essentiel à jouer pour la promotion d’une plus grande sécurité alimentaire et la réduction de la pauvreté.

This guide on Leasing agricultural land is designed to provide information on leasing arrangements in a format that can be used by grassroots organizations that work with small farmers and others in rural communities. Fair and secure leasing arrangements that balance the interests of the tenant and the land owner can lead to improvements in access to land for farming, better agricultural production and improved access to food. At the core of most land-leasing arrangements are three issues shared by tenant and land owner alike: risk, security and trust.

Land Tenure Working Paper 13: Secure land rights are crucial if local populations are to engage actively as stakeholders in rural development.

This paper represents part of an area of work which analyses access to natural resources in Mozambique. An initial paper examined the extent to which Mozambique’s recent regulatory changes to natural resource access and management have had their intended effects (LSP Working Paper 17: Norfolk, S. (2004). “Examining access to natural resources and linkages to sustainable livelihoods: a case study of Mozambique”). This paper is complemented by LSP Working Paper 28: Tanner et al. (2006).

This manual complements FAO Land Tenure Studies 6: The design of land consolidation pilot projects in Central and Eastern Europe. The manual concentrates on the practical aspects of defining and implementing the first pilot projects. It identifies the main conditions that should be in place before the project starts, and it defines potentials and constraints. It draws attention to issues that should be addressed and it discusses methods, tools and techniques. The manual identifies the main activities in a pilot project and their sequence.

This publication provides an overview on the main issues debated during the development and passage of the India’s National Food Security Act (2013), which legally binds national and state governments to extend far-reaching social protection to the country’s population. It raises many lively and pertinent debates that may be useful for policy-makers and advocates, especially in low-income countries but also emerging economies, who wish to strengthen the programmatic and legal frameworks for food and nutrition in their respective countries.

This paper describes the perspective of stakeholders on the development of the Voluntary Guidelines on tenure. These Guidelines represent the greatest extent of “common ground” on governance of tenure that has been found to date in a global forum. This consensus was developed through intergovernmental negotiations with the participation of civil society, the private sector and research and academic institutes. This paper draws on interviews to identify how people engaged in the process and the dynamics that were created between the parties.

This study is a revised version of a working document originally prepared by FAO in April 1995 analysing the policy and legal options available for dealing with the sensitive issue of foreign ownership of land. It provides information on the approaches that are, or have been adopted to regulate foreign ownership of land. As such, it aims at providing a framework for analysis and a representative sample of the legal techniques and strategies that have been devised to deal with the issue; it is not intended to be an authoritative summary of the state of the law in this area.

This paper represents part of an area of work which analyses the linkages between rights to land and water. An initial scoping paper explored the interface between land and water rights (LSP Working Paper 10: Hodgson, S. (2004). “Land and water – the rights interface”). It is complemented by two regional analyses: this Working Paper and LSP Working Paper 25: IIED. (2006). “Land and water rights in the Sahel: Tenure challenges of improving access to water for agriculture”.

This report is based on the proceedings of the Technical Consultation on Gender, Property Rights and Livelihoods in the Era of AIDS, organized by FAO in November 2008. It takes stock of where FAO and its partners are in terms of addressing property rights insecurity and provides a proposed framework through which future action can take place.