This policy brief explores the importance of land issues in forced displacement in Kenya, drawing out their implications for current humanitarian and early recovery interventions in the wake of the violence and displacement that followed the 2007 elections. Key messages nclude:

This paper examines the impact of land reform in Vietnam which gives households the power to exchange, transfer, lease, inherit, and mortgage their land-use rights. The authors expect this change to increase the incentives as well as the ability to undertake long-term investments on the part of households.

Traditional land tenure systems in Togo have been undermined but not destroyed by the introduction of private property and ‘modern’ tenure reform. However, confusion over land tenure issues has proved to be an obstacle to efforts to promote efficient resource management and to combat desertification.

Recent arguments have stated that the new livestock development policy will carry a high social cost, that the reality of range degradation in Botswana has been ignored, and that there is no basis for assuming that de-stocking would decrease the productivity of rangeland.

This paper discusses the nature of the land problem in the region and tries to situate the general land reform process in Zimbabwe within a regional context.It examines the four key land problems facing the region the discriminatory and insecure forms of land tenure that are found among variouslandownership regimes the increasingly imbalanced landownership structures and factors underlying itthe contradictory tendencies towards irrational land-use patterns through both the over utilisation and underutilisation of land the devotion of most prime lands and resources to production for externa

Drylands have potential for economic activity now markets are emerging for natural products such as aloe or gum Arabic. However it is difficult to take advantage of these opportunities because there is a lack of structure for this market. A regulatory framework providing an enabling environment for increasing investment in the sustainable use and management of land and natural resources would be beneficial.

This document summarises the main points in the conclusions and recommendations sections of the World Bank’s Final Report of the Extractive Industries Review (EIR). The document focuses particularly on a few of the issues touched upon in the report, such as indigenous peoples’ rights, human rights generally, World Bank accountability/institutional issues, and the definition of poverty and sustainable development.The Final Report recognises that if the World Bank Group is to comply with its mandate, strict conditions must be applied to Extractive Industry (EI) projects.

Local governance has become increasingly significant as devolution from central and provincial levels is being attempted in India as a result of the enactment of the 73rd and 74th Amendment of the Constitution in 1993. The essence of local self governance is to enable a small community to maintain access and control over their natural and physical resources, to take collective decisions in the common public good and to provide resources in priority developmental actions. Another dimension of local self governance is to demand accountability from people in public positions.

The paper considers: the question of whether the process of population ageing affects the ways in which land is passed on between members of different generationsthe likely implications of ageing-related changes in intergenerational transfers for food production in developing countriesThe paper concentrates primarily on rural population ageing in contexts where the individual ownership of land or natural resources is a predominant socio-economic phenomenon, although it also considers communal ownership situations.The authors conclude that: the need to conceptualize the elderly as a neces

Previous studies of land contracts have focused more on efficiency questions than on determinants of access to land and dynamics of access. By looking closely at the question of access to land, the authors conclude:land rental contracts more friendly to the poor than land sales markets to access land.

It has been argued that many of the poverty reduction strategy papers pay insufficient attetion to the role of land access and land distribution in rural poverty. Redressing the inequalities between small-scale and large-scale farming sectots is likely to be an important element of an effective rural poverty reduction strategy in countries such as Zimbabwe and Kenya.