This report sets out the results and key insights from recent research on land policy and analysis of specific interventions relating to land. The aim is to highlight the importance of nuanced policy advice, but also to illustrate some general principles for formulating such policy advice in specific country settings.Conclusions and recommendations include:providing secure tenure to land is needed to improve the welfare of the poor, in particular, by enhancing the asset base of those, such as women, whose land rights are often neglected.

This paper is a synthesis of land issues and land policy constraints in Southern Africa prepared for the World Bank Regional Workshop on Land Issues in Africa and the Middle East held in Kampala, Uganda, in May 2002. It synthesizes key points made in commissioned papers, plenary comments, and facilitated discussions from a special Southern Africa Working Group attended by conference delegates.

Can land reform have a lasting impact on poverty reduction?

In this short, polemical article, the author argues that NGO advocacy groups are acting against the interests of the poor and of international development through unreasonable criticism of the World Bank and similar agencies. The author argues that, in a typical situation, the Bank designs a reasonable project, which inevitably has flaws. NGOs seize on these flaws and add a large sprinkling of inflammatory rhetoric.

This paper takes a grassroots approach to understand the causes of the variation in food security status among rural farm households Ethiopia.The research is carried out by the Broadening Access and Strengthening Input Market Systems (BASIS) project in Ethiopia which conducted a panel of household surveys since June 2000 in four study districts in South Wollo and Oromia zones of Amhara region.

Report finds that land rights in Ethiopia are highly insecure, and higher tenure security and transferability could enhance investment and agricultural productivity. Trying to identify and implement measures to increase producers’ tenure security could have a large pay-off in terms of rural productivity and poverty reduction.The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity.

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution, growth and welfare. Land reforms have been central to strategies to improve the asset base of the poor in developing countries thought their effectiveness has been hindered by political constraints on implementation. In this paper we use panel data on the sixteen main Indian states from 1958 to 1992 to consider whether the large volume of land reforms as have been legislated have had an appreciable impact on growth and poverty.

There are many commendable successes with respect to relief, recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation to assist the earthquake affected districts of North West Frontier Province3 and Azad Kashmir. The same, however, cannot be said unambiguously about housing reconstruction. Partly, the obstacles are rooted in Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) rigid procedures. In many areas, though, housing reconstruction has also become mired in the traditional land tenure regime.

The agriculture sector faces the challenge of providing adequate food to a growing world population. There is limited scope to expand arable land, and unpredictable weather, floods, and other disastrous events make food production even more challenging. This guidebook provides information on 22 technologies and options for adapting to climate change in the agriculture sector.

The current level of per capita production of rice in Bangladesh can be sustained only through increased yields of modern rice varieties.The recent growth of food grain (primarily rice) production in Bangladesh has outpaced population growth largely because of the spread of green revolution technology. The transition from being labeled a "basket case" in the early 1970s to the virtual elimination of rice imports in the early 1990s is particularly remarkable considering the severe land constraint in Bangladesh.

Land reform has been the main policy response of government to correct the sharp inequalities in the distribution of land ownership in the Philippines. The historical records show that the process of disposal of State lands has heavily favored households with economic and political power. These households had undue advantage over the common populace in acquiring property rights through the Spanish system of royal grants and the American system of land cadastre.

Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?