This paper develops a theoretical model of land leasing that includes transaction costs, risk pooling motives and non-tradable productive inputs. It investigates the empirical implications of land contracts using data collected from four villages in Ethiopia.The paper shows that sharecropping is the dominant contract if transaction costs are negligible, but that a rental contract may arise if transaction costs decrease with increasing the tenant’s share of output.

The Land Policy in Tanzania is an example of citizens engaging in a protracted struggle for effective participation in the policy process, despite the long exclusion they have experienced in policy making. This paper looks at the evolution of the policy, and the interactions between civil society and the state in its development.The paper concludes that this was the first serious and systematic civic organizations' challenge to the state command model of policy process.

Summarizes recent research (to 1991) on rural land markets in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region and on the relationship between this research and broader land tenure issues. The purpose of the project that prompted this paper was to carry out cross-country and longitudinal research on land tenure issues in the LAC region so as to provide an instructive and informative analysis of how tenure patterns affect economic, rural development, and environmental issues.

This brief explores the reform of land tenure institutions which re-emerged in the 1990s, and asks if these reforms are any more gender sensitive than those of the past?The paper highlights that a focus of the recent reforms has been on land titling, designed to promote security of tenure and stimulate land markets. The reforms have often been driven by domestic and external neoliberal coalitions, with funding from global and regional organisations which have argued that private property rights are essential for a dynamic agricultural sector.

There is a common view and belief that women are the ones that do the farming in Africa while the men do not work much. This paper seeks to find explanations to why land productivity is lower on land rented out by female landlord households than on land rented out by male landlord households in the Ethiopian highlands. The authors find that female landlords have tenants who are older, own less oxen, are more related, and under longer-term contracts.

This working paper reviews historical and current factors and patterns affecting land use, land tenure, resource access, human settlement, and conflicts over resource access and tenure in the districts around Mt. Elgon in Kenya and Uganda. The paper draws on a series of interviews conducted with government officials in the districts along with other support sources such as paper maps and existing GIS databases.Based on this approach, the common findings from this study in the current setting of land tenure and land management are:

The main objective of the paper is to explore possible institutional arrangements among the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), Philippines, implementing agencies in a post-2008 transition scenario for CARP. There were three reasons cited for the implementation of the agrarian reform program, namely: (i) to increase productivity, (ii) to reduce inequality particularly in the countryside, and (iii) to address one of the main causes of the persistent Communist insurgency in the country.

This report presents an analysis of the synergies between environmental policies and the development of comprehensive environmental projects.

Land tenure security is crucial for women's empowerment and a prerequisite for building secure and resilient communities. Tenure is affected by many and often contradictory sets of rules, laws, customs, traditions, and perceptions. For most rural women, land tenure is complicated, with access and ownership often layered with barriers present in their daily realities: discriminatory social dynamics and strata, unresponsive legal systems, lack of economic opportunities, and lack of voice in decision making.

This paper looks for the possible explanations for the land productivity differential between high caste and low caste farm households in Nepal. The paper indicates that caste position still plays a vital role in rural areas of Nepal.The paper finds that: land productivity is higher among low caste households. However, in case of owner-operated plots, the land productivity differential between low caste and high caste is found to be insignificant after controlling for land quality and household characteristics. This difference remains highly significant in case of rented in plots.

Over 2008 large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Southeast Asia have increased. This report discusses key trends and drivers in land acquisitions, the contractual arrangements underpinning them and the way these are negotiated. It also analyses the early impacts on land access for rural people in recipient countries with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

This latest discussion document explores the plan by The Navigator Company to develop a new pulp mill in Mozambique. The Portuguese company, operating as Portucel Mozambique and with funding from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, is acquiring huge areas of land for establishing eucalyptus tree plantations to supply the mill.