Many countries of the Asia-Pacific region share long land borders across which many consignments of plants, plant products and other regulated articles pass through land border entry points. While long-distance trade in large consignments exists and uses the established regulatory systems, a large proportion of cross border trade concerns the local trade of large numbers of small consignments which require specific border region import regulatory systems. Dealing with the trade of small amounts of plant material is a major problem at many land border entry points.

Plants take up only 50 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer applied to agricultural land. Part of this inefficiency is a result of emissions of ammonia (NH3), nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO). Quantifying these emisions is important, both as part of an attempt to improve fertilizer use efficiency and because of their influence on ecosystems, atmospheric pollution and the so-called greenhouse effect. This report provides a comprehensive review of the literature about emissions of NH3, N2O and NO, and examines the regulating factors, measurement techniques and models.

This publication has been prepared as a background paper in view of the UN conference on the human environment that was held in Stockholm in 1972. This background document had contribution from UNESCO, IAEA and WHO. While the demand for land for land increases at a very rapid rate through population growth, technological progress and industrial development, soil resources remain fixed. The maintenance of their productivity is therefore of paramount importance.

The papers contained in this issue have been selected from those presented at a series of workshops, held in 2002 in Hungary, Uganda, Mexico and Cambodia, that were organized by the World Bank jointly with the Department for International Development (DFID), the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and with FAO, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the African development Bank (AfDB), the European Union (EU), the International Land Coalition, Oxfam, and other bilateral an

Abstract not available.

In countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the development of arrangements for land consolidation takes place in the wake of the transition to a new private property regime, and in the context of accession to the European Union. The process of institutional change is complex and sensitive to immediate political and economic agendas. It is also determined by other prevailing social, economic and cultural factors.

Land cover maps constitute a necessary tool for development planning and management of the territory. Furthermore, land cover maps depicting the current reality are a must in countries where, due to political changes, rapid dynamic phenomena have taken place, resulting in a complete restructuring of the agricultural and other sectors, as in the case of Bulgaria.

The scale of such maps should be large enough to provide detailed information, however it should allow for regional assessment, statistics and subsequent planning. The 1:50 000 scale is the most suited for this exercise.

The report summarises the papers, presentations and discussions of a workshop on failures and achievements at securing women’s land rights. In particular, it addresses the following issues: Land rights and legal reforms,legal aid and land administration practice, women's land rights in an HIV/AIDS context,women's land rights from a food security and livelihoods context. Organised by the FAO and Oxfam, the workshop seeks to establish global and multi-sectoral alliances and multiple strategies as a means of breaking out of the present impasse in this matter.

Whilst still in its infancy, the development of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) tools is paving the way for global land use monitoring. This paper provides a first, tentative description of livestock related land use.

This report is the outcome of a study undertaken on men and women’s access to and control

over land in seven districts of the Volta Region in Ghana. The study evolved out of a need for

increased insight into gender differences in access to and control over land and the implications of insecure access to land for households within the Volta Region of Ghana.

The objective of the study was to obtain an improved understanding of gender-specific

The former socialist countries of Eastern Europe (that is, Europe east of Germany and west of the Urals, but including all of Russia) began a transition to a market economy in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. This paper looks at one aspect of that transition: the transition from state ownership to private ownership of agricultural land and the accompanying transition to a land market for agricultural land.

This report summarizes the findings of the e-mail conference that took place from 9 October to 4 November 2002 and which was organized by the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands project (LADA). The report contains exchanges of views on data sets and methods that may be used to assess land degradation and a discussion on the biophysical, socio-economic and institutional indicators that explain the root causes, driving forces, status, impact and reponses to land degradation at various scales.