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 study examines the effects of land tenure systems on resource-use productivity and efficiency in the Upper East region of Ghana with data drawn from the Ghana Agricultural Production Survey. A stochastic frontier model is employed to analyse resource-use productivity and efficiency of the rice farms. The study establishes that rice farms under the various land tenure systems are technically inefficient. Technical efficiency for the pooled sample was 61.80%.

The rise of urban populations has rendered cities in both developed and developing countries vulnerable to poor health and diseases that are associated with urban living conditions and environments. Therefore, there is a growing consensus that while personal factors are critical in determining health, the urban environment exacerbates or mitigates health outcomes, and as such the solution for improving health outcomes in urban settings can be found in addressing socio-environmental factors that shape urban environments.

La gobernanza sostenible de la tierra requiere que todos los miembros de una comunidad, tanto mujeres como hombres, tengan los mismos derechos y voz en las decisiones que afectan a sus tierras de propiedad colectiva. Lamentablemente, las mujeres de todo el mundo tienen menos  tierra en propiedad y derechos más débiles que los hombres, pero esto puede cambiar, y este informe muestra cómo hacerlo.

This chapter investigated threats of statutory tenure on customary land. The study was primarily qualitative in nature and adopted a case study approach. Using evidence from Chamuka Chiefdom in Chisamba District, Central Province, the paper concludes that there are various threats of statutory tenure on customary land. These include traditional leaders losing control over land, displacements, land disputes, investors acquire more land than what is demarcated to them by traditional leaders, traditional leaders’ not consulting their community members, corruption, and tenure insecurity.

Scaling up promotion of land rights and improved access to land for the poor, women and other vulnerable groups has been at the core of the global land community’s agenda. The pro-poor land recordation tool (PPLRT) offers an alternative approach to both conventional and emergent responsible land tools, which can be implemented on its own and in combination with other tools. It has recently been tested for various types of rural contexts.

Gender gap in ownership of agricultural land is still wide in many developing countries, mainly in favour of men. In some of these countries, both patrilineal and matrilineal systems are practised and recognized by governments. Tanzania is one of the countries in which both systems are practised. This paper explores the extent of gender equality in ownership of agricultural land in Kisarawe and Mkuranga districts which are typical rural agricultural settings and mainly matrilineal societies in Tanzania. It also attempts to examine women’s benefits from agricultural activities.

In Northern Africa region, land administration and land management systems are characterized by the existence of various institutions and a diversity of land tenures. In order to meet the requirements of the new era, a series of emerging policies has been developed and implemented according to the national needs and to the international regulations. In terms of historical events, we distinguish in the Northern Africa three different groups’ state members: (1) Sudan and Egypt, and (2) Tunisia and Morocco, (3) Algeria and Mauritania.