This essay briefly explores South African post-apartheid land reform as a human rights issue. It suggests that land reform has an ethically, politically and strategically important interface with international human rights. This refers both to the context-dependent livelihood role of land and to context-independent principles regarding land ownership and governance, involving several types of rights (allocation, protection, provision, procedure and development). It discusses the merit and limitation of a state-centric perspective on human rights and development.

Overview of a conceptual definition or sustainable land management policies

Brief summary of FAO’s experience in agrarian reform and the most relevant activities of the current programme related to this field. It argues that the type of agrarian reform that considers the redistribution of land from the rich to the poor either through confiscation or through pre-emptive buyouts belongs to the past. However, this does not mean that Member Nations have stopped seeking ways to improve access to productive resources (land, water, etc.) as a cornerstone to their rural development policy.

In this note of food security and land tenure security in Lesotho, the authors present arguments in favour of the enactment and implementation of a legislation in Lesotho that will enhance land tenure security in the country.

This paper analyzes the impact of land titling on child health and education in Argentina. The authors exploit a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles across squatters in a poor suburban area of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to evaluate the impact of property rights on child health and education outcomes.

In Southern Africa, landlessness due to the asset alienation that occurred during colonial occupation has been acknowledged as one of several ultimate causes of chronic poverty. Land redistribution is often seen as a powerful tool in the fight against poverty in areas where a majority of people are rural-based and make a living mostly, if not entirely, off the land.

This report highlights key developments and recent sustainability trends in agriculture, rural development, land, desertification and drought, five of the six themes being considered by the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at its 16th and 17th sessions (2008-2009).

Considers the cultural dimension of applying the land information system (LIS) concept to lands held under customary land tenure. The article recognizes that the LIS concept has been developed primarily to serve the needs of countries with a western-style land market where individual land rights are the norm. However, many countries where customary landholdings exist, or predominate, are also interested in establishing LISs to manage their land resources better. The article has three main sections.

Current land management approaches focus on achieving ecological resilience for natural resources and biological diversity, and socioeconomic resilience for the people who depend on the land for their livelihoods and wellbeing. In the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, landscapes extend across national boundaries and their effective management requires cooperation among the countries sharing the transboundary area, particularly in light of the impacts being experienced from a wide range of drivers of change, including climate change.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how projects could be designed to address land degradation through the four focal areas; with special reference to incremental costs assessment. Approaches the question from a generic form through to specific examples.

With land being the main source of income for many people in the developing world, security of access or ownership rights is imperative to the alleviation of rural povety. Past polices of land redistribution, prohibition of land renting and later legalisation of short-term contracts only, may have prevented or undermined tenancy markets in Ethiopia. This paper examines the allocative efficiency of the land rental market in Northern Ethiopia, and the extent to which adjustment in the tenancy market is constrained by transaction costs.

This document presents a proposed methodology, and step-by-step guidance, for Participatory Subnational Planning (PSP), tailored to operationalise subnational REDD+ programmes. PSP is a participatory planning method presented as a comprehensive, yet cost-effective approach to identifying: drivers of deforestation and forest degradation; interventions to address these drivers; environmental and social benefits/risks of these interventions; and indicators and monitoring plans.