Women constitute the bulk of people who rely on land in many of the regions most affected by desertification, land degradation and drought. One in three people on earth depend directly on agriculture, while nearly 80% of employed women in least developed countries report agriculture as their primary livelihood. Food availability fluctuations also impact women’s role in food production and intra-family food distribution, with women often reducing their nutritional intake and that of their children, with dire health consequences.

The importance of land manifests in various components of the everyday lives of people insocieties: cultural heritage, livelihood, the environment, economy, and community, among manyothers. Land is a factor of development. It is the most influential determinant of developmentbecause women, youths, and men (and households) depend on it for their livelihoods and formaintaining their living conditions in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas.

Positioning land tenure within LDN: framework, implementation model and monitoring. In order to position tenure rights within the LDN approach, this article first proposes how land tenure, viewed as sets of tools, can be specifically integrated into the LDN framework (Figure 1), implementation model (Figure 2), and monitoring approach (Figure 3). These three figures build upon the schematics established by UNCCD for LDN (UNCCD, 2016a; 2014; 2013b) and used subsequently in examinations regarding how LDN intersects with the variety of topics noted above.

Up to 2.5 billion people depend on indigenous and community lands, which make up over 50 percent of the land on the planet; they legally own just one-fifth. The remaining land remains unprotected and vulnerable to land grabs from more powerful entities like governments and corporations. There is growing evidence of the vital role played by full legal ownership of land by indigenous peoples and local communities in preserving cultural diversity and in combating poverty and hunger, political instability and climate change.

Women disproportionately bear the negative impacts of large-scale land investments (in agribusiness, extractives, logging) in the global South.

▪▪Lack of formal land rights and their subordinate role in the household and community lead to the marginalization of women in decision-making processes and the bypassing of them in the distribution of compensation and the planning and implementation of resettlement.

Valuations of tenure rights are required by the State and by the private sector for a wide variety of reasons, often forming and informing the basis of transactions, taxation, compensation and accounting. Value and the valuation process form a part of our everyday lives, and yet these are often shrouded in mystery and are not clearly understood.

Although ancestral rights to land are a cornerstone of the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, few countries have been ready to undertake their recognition. Lack of political will together with obstacles such as lack of legal recognition of indigenous rights in national legal frameworks and tenure regimes, different forms of discrimination and inappropriate policies towards indigenous peoples are at the root of some of the limitations that are found with regard to the recognition of indigenous peoples’ land rights.

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

Almost all societies acknowledge the concept of state or public landownership in which property rights are vested in a public body on a national, regional or community level. State and public land tenure arrangements define rules for the distribution, use and protection of publicly vested lands. State lands may be used to deliver public services. Authorities or customary rulers may act as custodians of common property resources or of environmentally or culturally sensitive sites on behalf of society. Many forms of public tenure arrangements have been introduced.

The articles in this issue supplement the recent publication "Good governance in land tenure and administration" (Land Tenure Studies No. 9), which provides practical advice for land professionals on improving governance in a land administration system or other land tenure arrangement.

The articles in this volume supplement FAO Land Tenure Studies 10, Compulsory acquisition of land and compensation. The latter publication explains what compulsory acquisition and compensation are and what constitutes good practice in this area. This current volumes introductory article provides an overview of these issues. The issue of compulsory acquisition from a human rights perspective is also addressed here as are the concepts of market value, compensation value and just terms compensation.

This issue of Land Reform, Land Settlement and Cooperatives contains an interesting and wide-ranging set of contributions providing insights into land related issues ranging from Italy to the Central Andes, and from the historical development of sustainable tenure practices to aspects of agriculture sector planning. The eight articles featured open with that of Lavigne Delville, which addresses issues relating to insecurity of tenure in West Africa, and identifies what the paths of change currently appear to be.