Walter ChambatiApril 2013

Assesses the process of land registration in peri-urban areas of Mozambique and its outcomes for poor and marginalised groups. The research finds that there is little awareness of land registration processes on the part of low-income groups. The ‘individual’ registration process is slow and bureaucratic with high transaction costs and corrupt practices on the part of state institutions. Unlike the case of rural land, specific regulations governing the use of urban land are not yet in place.

This paper looks at the case of Mdudwa village in the Eastern Cape to explore the processes and impacts of democratic decentralisation.

Articles in this edition develop several areas and introduce specific experiences relating to land reform. The main thread running through the articles is that of change; how we can help to understand what change means and how it can be managed.

Builds on a conceptual analysis of both land tenure and food security to set these various links in a dynamic framework that captures both the effects of access to resources on food security and the effects of food security on access to and use of resources. Uses this framework to examine a range of issues arising in empirical research and to discuss their implications for future research related to land policy and food policy. [author]

This summary document provides a synthesis of the key issues and discussion points emerging from a four week online conference on the subject of land tenure in drylands.The broad areas of discussion were as follows:Drylands Tenure Policy. What are the contents and essential elements of Drylands Tenure Policies?Strategies for implementing land tenure reform in drylands. What can we learn from drylands experiences?Land policy dialogue and participation.

This paper argues that REDD+ will not stop forest destruction developing countries and the underlying causes of deforestation remain untouched. The paper suggests that because REDD+ is embedded in the logic that environmental destruction in one location can be ‘compensated’ in another, it acts to reinforce the underlying drivers of deforestation and climate change. It also gives forest destroyers a way to legitimise their actions as environmentally ‘friendly’ or ‘carbon neutral’.

A University of Leeds collaborative study has probed links between environmental change and famine – two problems perceived to lie at the heart of Africa’s current crisis – in the context of another all too often linked to the continent - warfare and civil unrest. Land hunger and environmental depletion in the aftermath of war are often cited as causes of famine that in turn will lead to further conflict. Is such a chain reaction really at work? Is there an inevitable causal link between environmental degradation and violent conflict?

Describes the main features of the new Eritrean land law and its operative assumption that the legislation is meant to extend state control over land.The legal devices employed by the law are widely used in sub-Saharan Africa (and were largely inspired by colonial policies). The State of Eritrea frequently asserts that its recent independence gives it the opportunity to learn from other developing countries' mistakes and to avoid them.The basic patterns of the new land law, however, are common to the rest of Africa, notwithstanding the evident poor results.

Series of country papers on HIV/AIDS and land in Lesotho, Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, with concluding paper on methodological and conceptual issues. The key questions addressed include: The impact on and changes in land tenure systems (including patterns of ownership, access, and rights) as a consequence of HIV/AIDS with a focus on vulnerable groups. The ways that HIV/AIDS affected households are coping in terms of land use, management and access, e.g. abandoning land due to fear of losing land, renting out due to inability to utilise land, distress sale of land, etc.

This paper examines the evidence for land degradation in Burkina Faso, and argues that local farming practices are not as unsustainable and environmentally destructive as many reports suggest.Main findings of the study include:there is little evidence of widespread degradation of crop and fallow land in Burkina Faso; the low external input practices used by West African farmers are not leading to region wide land degradation processesa major reason for the overestimation of land degradation has been the underestimation of the abilities of local farmersthere is much more to soil and water co

This paper considers the degree of environmental variability in an extensive pastoral area of Altay, northern Xinjiang (China); assesses the extent to which institutional arrangements are able to accommodate environmental variability, and discusses the implications of this for rangeland policy.The article finds that:there is some inter-temporal variation in rangeland productivity (in pasture zones), suggesting some applicability of new range ecologythere is less environmntal variation in summer pasture, suggesting that the concepts and tools of conventional rangeland management might be mor