Report on a donor consultative meeting at the World Bank on land policy lessons learned and new challenges for the World Bank’s development agenda. Contains background, areas of donor agreement, outstanding issues and outcomes. The greatest controversy continued to centre around market assisted land reform.

Over the years agricultural scientists and extension agents have asked themselves why farmers do not take steps to control soil erosion, especially where such measures would appear to be cost-effective. Several explanations have been put forward, but thus far insufficient attention has been given to differences between scientists and farmers in their perception of the causes and effects of soil erosion. This is illustrated by a case study carried out in Zululand in South Africa.The case study revealed various differences between farmers and scientists in their perception of erosion.

This study presents the findings of an agricultural assessment for St. Kitts and Nevis in 1983 funded by USAID.

It suggests that more intensive use of labour and land could occur if individuals or groups of individuals have more widespread and secure access to government controlled land. The paper recommends that a project be developed that assists several hundred people to become farm operators, through land purchase arrangements or long term land leases, on land that is government controlled.

This article discusses the transhumant pastoralists of the Abruzzo highlands of central Italy. The article indicates that this system of production depended, and still depends, on the availability of communal grazing areas where access is open to all local residents and management is joint. The article discusses the relationship between herders, common property regimes and the State.The article concludes that:as a pastoral system increases in complexity, from being a self contained CPR to an outward-looking one, with moveable assets and flocks, transaction costs increase.

This case study draws on research that investigated the extensive informal land market in Maputo, Mozambique; specifically, how urban land is transacted and the mechanisms by which it is secured. The case study is based on a research study managed by Caroline Wanjiku Kihato and Lauren Royston, and undertaken by José Alberto Raimundo (Universidade Pedagógica, Maputo) and Inês Macamo Raimundo (Universidade Eduardo Modlane, Maputo). The work received technical and financial support from Urban LandMark.

Soil erosion has conventionally been perceived as the chief cause of land degradation, yet the limited effectiveness and poor uptake of widely promoted physical and biological anti-erosion methods challenges this logic. An alternative perception focusing on prior land damage - notably to soil cover, architecture and fertility - permits an holistic, farmer-centred approach which has generated positive response to date.

This paper assesses the underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation and the forces behind unsustainable agriculture. It demonstrates the far-reaching consequences of globalisation, in terms of land tenure policies and inequalities. It examines consumption and production patterns and the global problem with many actors.

This study explores the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights in Kenya, with a particular focus on women as a socially vulnerable group. It examines: the ways that HIV/AIDS-affected households are coping in terms of land access, use and management; the consequences of these coping strategies on security of access and rights to land; and how changes in land tenure, access and rights to land among different categories of people are affecting agricultural productivity, food security and poverty.

Assesses the process of rural land registration in Mozambique and the outcomes for poor and marginalised groups. The research finds that community land registration, under the 1997 land law, can strengthen community rights to use and benefit from their land in relation to outsider interests in land. However, intra-community and intra-household land rights are not addressed, since it is only community land boundaries which are registered.

Will intensifying the road network around market areas produce greater economic returns and less environmental damage than extending the road network into new areas?Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. To explore the trade-offs between development and environmental damage posed by road building, Chomitz and Gray develop and estimate a spatially explicit model of land use.

This research in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe looks at the practice of rights claiming on the ground, in the context of 'legal pluralism' and complex, politicised institutional settings. In the southern African context rights are formulated and claimed in a very unlevel playing field and are highly contested. In practice rights are realised through complex negotiations about access to resources at a local level.