Kenya is the most recent African state to acknowledge customary tenure as producing lawful property rights, not merely rights of occupation and use on government or public lands. This paper researches this new legal environment. This promises land security for 6 to 10 million Kenyans, most of who are members of pastoral or other poorer rural communities. Analysis is prefaced with substantial background on legal trends continentally, but the focus is on Kenya’s Community Land Act, 2016, as the framework through which customary holdings are to be identified and registered.

Much of the international commons literature reveals a decreased functioning of local traditional institutions that regulate natural resource harvesting. In South Africa, it is believed that the creation of new democratic structures at the end of Apartheid has contributed significantly to the deterioration in traditional resource regulation and this in turn has led to the extensive resource degradation seen in parts of the country. Many of these assertions, though, remain anecdotal in nature.

Peer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that Land maintains high quality standards for its published papers. In 2017, a total of 88 papers were published in the journal.[...]

An evaluation of landscape tradition, in Near and Middle East area, could emphasize a profound past of agricultural experience, as well as of landscape and garden art. In reference to this common past, Byzantine and Arabic landscape and garden art paradigms appear to be geographically and culturally correlated, as proved by a Byzantine 12th century folksong, presenting the construction of a villa, with its surrounding gardens and landscape formations, in the territory of Euphrates River.

Political transformations in most developing nations have been accompanied by vast land claims by indigenous communities who were forcibly detached from their traditional land during colonisation and apartheid-like dispensations. In the context of sub-Saharan African countries (including South Africa), the need for land reform has been aggravated by the great scarcity of farmland. However, most of the reclaimed land is in areas pursuing conservation activities.

Recognition and respect for tenure rights has long been recognized as an important concern for development, conservation, and natural resource governance. This paper discusses why secure tenure rights for local communities, indigenous peoples and women are central to good natural resource governance and important for livelihoods and human rights, as recognized in multiple international conventions. The paper reviews both challenges and opportunities for securing rights in practice and highlights successful cases of tenure reform.

African universities have a key role to play in developing technical and human capacities to support land policy development and implementation, according to experts attending a two-day meeting to validate a study on ‘Land, Ethnicity and Conflict in Africa’, held last month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This LEGEND bulletin explores early experiences and emerging lessons from four of these projects, and includes testimony from community members attesting to their positive results.

Constitution of Côte d'Ivoire 2016

We envision a world in which land governance systems, both formal and informal, are effective, accessible, and responsive for all.