It is estimated that up to 84% of Malawians earn their livelihoods directly from agriculture - it contributes over 90% to export earnings, 40% to GDP and accounts for 85% of total employment.

This profitability assessment is an early effort to generate baseline information for the Agroforestry and Forestry in Sulawesi: Linking Knowledge with Action project the ‘AgFor project’ , for implementation in two provinces, South Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi. The study collected information on existing farming systems and estimated profitability for each land use. The profitability indicators used in the study are: net present value NPV , equivalent annuity and return to labour.

Rising poverty in rural Uganda is linked to increasing landlessness, as the latter drives land degradation and reduces agricultural productivity. This paper examines the complex relationship between owning land and poverty. It identifies effective strategies and land policy guidance to address this concern.

In recent years, there has been growing attention and effort towards securing the formal, legal recognition of land rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Communities and Indigenous Peoples are estimated to hold as much as 65 percent of the world’s land area under customary systems, yet many governments formally recognize their rights to only a fraction of those lands. This gap—between what is held by communities and what is recognized by governments—is a major driver of conflict, disrupted investments, environmental degradation, climate change, and cultural extinction.

This article suggests that communual rangeland management policies in Botswana and Zimbabwe are based on incorrect technical assumptions about the stability of semiarid rangelands, the nature of rangeland degradation, and the benefits of destocking. Consequently, inappropriate policies, stressing the need to destock and stabilise the rangelands, are pursued.Acknowledgement of the great instability but intrinsic resilience of rangeland would encourage the Governments to more favourable regard the opportunistic stocking strategies of the agro-pastoralists of the Communual Areas.

The interfaces between high-altitude rangelands and other ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region such as forests, wetlands, and agricultural land are suffering from degradation, desertification, and soil erosion, which are further aggravated by climatic and anthropogenic factors. However, more information is needed on the ecological role of high-altitude rangelands and their interfaces as a basis for developing and implementing plans for conservation and sustainable management of these fragile ecosystems.

This paper discusses the competition for land resources and the issue of land-use change due to the rising demand for food and energy, specifically for the transport sector. The linkages between land, food, and energy become particularly complex within the context of climate change. This is not only because agriculture contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, but also because climate change itself can alter the productivity and availability of land.

Legislation was passed in India in 1992 imparting constitutional status on Panchayati Raj (village-level local government) institutions. This study attempts to assess the success and sustainability of such local institutions (particularly Village Forest Committees) in their attempts to rehabilitate common lands in the Aravalli hills in Haryana State, and to enact a transition from an ‘open access’ system to a community controlled regulated access system for governing the use of these lands.

CAADP Policy Brief 10by Kate Wellard-Dyer

This paper provides an overview of what we know about farm size distributions, the emerging land markets, the role of tenure systems, tenure reforms and land policies in shaping the distribution of increasingly scarce land resources. The primary focus is on Africa while making some comparisons with Asia. Climate risk and change have serious implications for household vulnerability and food security. While there is a need to absorb further population growth in rural areas, a rapid rise in rural-urban migration is inevitable.

This paper explores gender and issues of land access and administration in rural development. It argues that increasing social, economic and technological changes are requiring a re-examination of the institutional arrangements used to administer who has rights to what resources and under what conditions.