Forest rights are of utmost importance for the future of forest initiatives, be it for resource use, management, and conservation, or for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The growing trend towards acknowledging the relevance of the sustainable use and conservation of forests is intertwined with the recognition of the forest rights of people who have traditionally depended on the forests for sustenance – especially marginal indigenous and tribal people.

Het hoofddoel van China’s landbouw- en plattelandsbeleid is behoud van voedselzekerheid in eigen land en bijdragen aan de voedselzekerheid in de wereld door duurzaam gebruik van natuurlijke hulpbronnen en verbetering van de landbouwproductiecapaciteit voor de lange termijn. In veel gebieden in China gaat de landbouwproductiecapaciteit op lange termijn echter achteruit door intensieve landbouw en de daarmee gepaard gaande degradatie van de hulpbronnen land en water.

Liquid biofuel from oil crops are broadly promoted globally, among which biofuel from perennial wood species, as well as from bushes and small trees such as jatropha. In China, oil-bearing small trees, which mainly grow on slope land, are applied as so-called bioenergy and oil forests for liquid biofuel production. The national government in China has devised a series of laws and policies to promote bioenergy and oil forest programs. In this study, the focus is on jatropha and camellia programs.

In zijn preadvies voor de Vereniging van Agrarisch Recht (gepubliceerd in Agr.r.2008, p. 118 e.v.) levert dr. Slangen kritiek op het advies van de Commissie Pachtnormen van 2006. Dit advies heeft, zoals bekend, ten grondslag gelegen aan het nieuwe pachtprijzenstelsel. De kritiek van Slangen is vermeld in de hoofdstukken 6 en 7 van het preadvies `Pacht: stand van zaken en toekomst¿ en houdt ogenschijnlijk geen verband met de inhoud van de overige hoofdstukken. In deze bijdrage willen wij ingaan op deze kritiek.

This thesis is an enquiry into the persistent problem of water scarcity in the paddy growing regions in the southeastern part of Palakkad district, in the state of Kerala, in South India. It views the problem of scarcity as an outcome of the existing unsustainable and inequitable mode of water resources management and distribution. It therefore places the problem of scarcity in the particular irrigation and agricultural context of Kerala.

This study discusses the links between land access, property rights, and economic development, analyzing the results and limitations of a public intervention- Land Titling and Registration- that constitutes one of the main instruments for contemporary land policy in Peru. It starts with a global perspective, and then develops a meso (or regional) and micro level approach for the study of the Peruvian Land Tilting and Registration Program (PETT).

Property conflicts have an enormous impact on relations between the members of farm households and their families. Given the long duration, frequency and intensity of these conflicts an investigation of how they arise and how they affect the daily lives of, and relationships between, landholders is certainly warranted. Conflicts over land visibly manifest themselves in destroyed fences, stolen crops, poisoned dogs, horses that are set free, bloody machetazos, hails of stones between children and murder.

The study identifies measures that have created property rights in the Danish, Dutch and UK fishery sector. Property in this respect is not considered as an asset in the stock of fish but as a stream of benefits, resulting from the right to fish. The limited access to the fishery by the vessel licence and by the recognition as a commercial fisherman have created two forms of property rights in the Danish fishery. In the Netherlands, the national TACs for the individual species have been transformed into transferable individual quota (ITQs).

In this paper it is proposed to analyse legal regimes for integrated management of estuaries with the help of institutional legal theory and the Schlager & Ostrom framework for types of ownership. Estuaries are highly valued and valuable and therefore need protection. The problem is that they qualify as multiple-use and multiple-user common pool resources. To be able to analyze the legal regimes governing the estuaries, you must be able to take the position of governmental actors and NGO's into account.

Legal institutions are critical for the development of market-based economies. This paper defines legal institutions and discusses different indicators to measure their quality and efficiency. It surveys a large historical and empirical literature showing the importance of legal institutions in explaining cross-country variation in economic development. Finally, it presents and discusses three different views of why we can observe the large cross-country variation in legal institutions, the social conflict, the legal origin and the culture and religion hypotheses.