Land reform is a many-splendoured thing. The term has been used to include not only redistributive reforms of ownership rights but also the establishment of collective or communal forms of farming, state sponsored land colonization schemes in frontier areas, and land tenure reforms, i.e., changes in the contractual arrangements between the landowner and those who cultivate the land. In addition, tax (and credit) measures intended to create incentives for large landowners to sell part of their holding sometimes are described as “market friendly” land reforms.

India is vast, diverse and complex, in its environments and in environment-society relations. These relationships, and government policies which influence or control them, are the subject of very significant reforms currently occurring in India. At the most fundamental level, this report asks "Who is to protect, manage and regenerate India’s forests, where and for what, and what resources or support does each agent need to fulfil the mandate efficiently and equitably?" The conventional forestry systems have been under scrutiny.

In this paper, concepts from Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) theory are applied to explore interactions among ecosystem services, livelihoods and resilience of SES. The approach was to i) examine trends in the stock of bundle of ecosystem services in three study landscapes namely Fogera, Jeldu and Diga within the Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopia, ii) describe the trajectories in livelihood strategies, poverty status and present evidence of success and failure in these SES, and iii) explore linkages between stocks of ecosystem services, livelihood conditions and resilience of the SES.

This paper provides a global review of the link from forests to poverty alleviation. Definitions are clarified and the key concepts and indicators related to livelihoods and policy reduction and prevention are explored--distinguishing between the analysis and the measurements of poverty. Reviewing the macro-level literature on the relationship between economic growth, inequality and poverty, the authors found that economic growth usually does trickle down to the poor and that poverty reduction without growth is in practice very difficult to achieve.

We examine the geographic dimensions of food consumption in Ecuador, which has one of the highest rates of chronic infant undernutrition in Latin America. We use statistical and spatial analyses to examine the distribution of food consumption and food poverty and to test and generate hypotheses of food poverty estimates at the district level. Results show that the food poor are concentrated in certain locations with a significant cluster identified in the central Andean region.

Very large numbers of the rural poor derive some part of their livelihood inputs from forest resources, in different ways and to different extents. For many the dependence on forests is a function of their poverty, because they lack better alternatives. Helping meet their subsistence and survival needs can therefore be as important a role for forestry aid as supporting those able to increase their incomes through forest activities, but needs to avoid encouraging forms of forest dependence that could lock the very poor into continued poverty.

Governments in many countries are decentralising to give more control over decision making and budgets to local administrations. One expectation of this change is that local governments will more effectively and efficiently respond to the poorest citizens in their jurisdictions. Decentralisation is especially significant to forest communities, which have historically benefited little from government services and poverty reduction programmes because of their physical isolation and social marginalisation.

The overall aim of this study was to explore what the development community can do, or facilitate, to significantly improve livelihoods in semi-arid systems.The authors based their analysis on two case-study sites in the communal lands of southern Zimbabwe. The main tool was a detailed livelihood questionnaire, supplemented by participatory appraisal and observation, action research, biophysical analysis and systems modelling.