This study contends that Zambia cannot develop if it neglects policy for the efficient utilization of its natural resources. One such area has been the absence of land policy for effective management of rural land.While failure in this area has been attributed to a number of factors, notably absence of credit and funding, this paper contends that the base factor is the absence of efficient land management for rural land.This paper attempts to show that rural land in Zambia remains undeveloped for a number of reasons:The absence of an institutional framework to guide land administration.

Analyses the range of institutional arrangements being used for gaining access to land and natural resources in two regions of southern Benin.

This paper is based on a series of studies conducted by the author on the settlement problems, work roles and educational experiments among nomadic Fulani in Plateau, Bauchi and Kaduna States, Nigeria, from 1982 to 1984.The first part of this paper describes the land tenure system in northern Nigeria and the way in which it affects pastoral nomads and plans for their settlement. The second part discusses the Nigerian Government;s intention to educate nomads and gives the example of special schemes which have attempted to do this.

This paper seeks to map out the historical trajectory leading to a series of migrations in and from the erstwhile princely state of Travancore during 1900-70 in order to acquire and bring land under cultivation. It argues that these migrations undertaken with a moralistic and paternal mission of reclaiming ‘empty’ spaces into productive locations were a result of a specific form of economic modernity in Kerala as beckoned by colonialism and appropriated by a resolute local agency through a process of translation.

There is an increasing global demand for oil palm, but its production provokes societal debate on the environmental and social aspects that surround it, particularly in southeast Asia. This study, at the request of request of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV), ISRIC-World Soil Information, Alterra and Plant Research International, assessed the biophysical land suitability for the production of oil palm in Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Everyone agrees that logging and agriculture can cause deforestation. But does shifting cultivation, or ‘slash and burn’ farming destroy forests particularly? Are local farmers solely to blame? Recent research by Overseas Development Institute (ODI) suggests the role of shifting farming in starting forest fires has been exaggerated. It is not, in fact, a major cause of biodiversity loss. The report finds that the causes of deforestation are many and varied, and that governments and international investors are also responsible.

This paper develops a conceptual framework to holistically explore the impact of HIV/AIDS on land, particularly at the rural household level. It is intended that this framework will provide a basis for pragmatic recommendations on this issue, which the paper argues is a neglected area in all Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries.A broad review of the impacts of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, economic impacts and impacts on household livelihood strategies, provides the basis for the conceptual framework.

This paper argues that legal reform of land tenure will not take place fast enough to enable developing countries to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through REDD+. It highlights that a global agreement on REDD+ is needed by 2020, if the mechanism is to have a significant impact on mitigating climate change. However, legally defensible and enforceable land tenure rights, while a key enabling condition for effective and equitable REDD+, will not be achieved in most forest countries before this date.

Growing populations and economic change resulting from globalisation and climate change are increasing pressure on land, particularly in urbanising countries. This exposes many of those occupying and using land, particularly the poor and women, to risks resulting from tenure insecurity. Customary practices in land management are giving way to market-based statutory systems of land tenure.

This article explores the history of notions of land ownership among Mongolian pastoralists in a historical context.In the 1990s the Mongolian state implemented a series of reforms designed to create a competitive market economy based on private property. These included the wholesale privatisation of the pastoral economy and the dissolution of the collective and state farms. The Asian Development Bank and other international development agencies advocated new legislation to allow the private ownership of land.

The paper offers two models for looking at land reform as a human rights issues in Namaqualand, South Africa. It argues that South African land reform needs to be grounded in a human rights and policy discourse in local, real-world entitlement processes. It uses two theoretical models: an environmental entitlement framework: analyses how people turn resources into endowments, entitlements and capabilities.