This policy brief discusses the issue of food security in relation to trade and the anticipated impacts of climate change within Southeast Asia. It begins by contextualizing the debate before examining the manner in which trade, climate change and food security are interlinked within the Mekong region. The brief goes onto examine Cambodia as a case study in order to establish lessons for other countries in the region.

New technology that enables sustainable and profitable production of food and fibre is critical for both food security and economic development. Whether framed in terms of modernisation, productivity enhancement, poverty reduction, social protection, environmental protection or adaptation to climate change, technical change is at the heart of most agricultural policy, programmes and projects. From a development perspective, a nagging question is why the benefits of new agricultural technology often appear to by-pass poorer farmers – even when they are the ‘target’ group.

Through an analysis of the right to adequate food and the right to land, this civil society report, argued that achieving food sovereignty requires agrarian reform.

With an estimated 40 percent of people in Africa, South America and Asia living in drylands, land degradation poses a significant threat to food security and survival. This report looks at the relationship between gender and dryland management based on an analysis of field experiences in Africa and Asia. Highlighting the roles of women and men in dryland areas for food security, land conservation/desertification, and the conservation of biodiversity, it makes available key findings on a number of projects and programs in the regions.

Recent food security crises in Africa have revived the debate on whether current land tenure systems constrain farmer innovation and investment in agriculture. Both direct and indirect linkages between land tenure and food security have been suggested. This study aims for a better understanding of these linkages.

The purpose of this guide is to provide support to those who are assessing and designing appropriate responses to food insecurity and rural development situations. This guide aims to show where and why land tenure is an important issue in food security and sustainable rural livelihoods. The main objective of these guidelines is to provide detailed suggestions for consideration of land tenure issues in rural development policy.

Secure land rights are important for development and poverty reduction and the greatest challenges for providing such rights are in urban, peri-urban areas, and the most productive rural areas. This publication updates and revises UN-HABITAT’s 2004 publication ‘Urban Land for All’, and stresses the need for policies that facilitate access to land for all sections of their existing and future populations – particularly those on low or irregular incomes.

Review for sub-Saharan Africa, examines the English-language literature and focuses on four important dimensions of exclusion: (i) exclusion from agricultural land; (ii) exclusion from agricultural livelihood; (iii) exclusion from formal and informal employment; (iv) exclusion from organization and representation.Paper is organized in six sections. The first section discusses concepts of exclusion. The main body of the review examines the four dimensions of exclusion listed above.

Recent years have seen pastoralist communities in Tanzania becoming increasingly impoverished and vulnerable, due to  livestock diseases, drought, fluctuating market prices and unfavourable policies. This paper discusses strategies to address the last of these factors with reference to the Ereto-Ngorongoro Pastoralist Project, which was set up in response to growing concern about the unprecedented and rising levels of poverty among pastoralists in Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

In this note of food security and land tenure security in Lesotho, the authors present arguments in favour of the enactment and implementation of a legislation in Lesotho that will enhance land tenure security in the country.

Although world food and agricultural production, based on current trends, should be sufficient to meet demand in the decades ahead, the world still faces a serious food crisis that is as dangerous and life-threatening for millions of poor people today as in the past. The main objective of this article is to illuminate the world food situation and to make a critical analysis of the root causes of world food insecurity by identifying the various misconceptions surrounding our understanding of hunger, starvation and poverty.

In urban areas of Cote d'Ivoire, human capital is the endowment that best explains welfare changes over time. In rural areas, physical capital especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned matters most.Empirical investigations of poverty in developing countries tend to focus on the incidence of poverty at a particular point in time. If the incidence of poverty increases, however, there is no information about how many new poor have joined the existing poor and how many people have escaped poverty.Yet this distinction is of crucial policy importance.