These Country Profiles represent a new edition of a continent-wide set of profiles prepared and published by the Land Tenure Center in 1986. This new volume reflects a decade of intensive work on the continent by LTC and a very considerable deepening of knowledge and understanding of land tenure issues in Africa. It addresses events of the past ten years, which have been substantial in many of the countries covered. Land tenure continues to be a volatile policy domain. The standard topics from the earlier profiles have been revised to take into account new development concerns.

The current level of per capita production of rice in Bangladesh can be sustained only through increased yields of modern rice varieties.The recent growth of food grain (primarily rice) production in Bangladesh has outpaced population growth largely because of the spread of green revolution technology. The transition from being labeled a "basket case" in the early 1970s to the virtual elimination of rice imports in the early 1990s is particularly remarkable considering the severe land constraint in Bangladesh.

Report finds that land rights in Ethiopia are highly insecure, and higher tenure security and transferability could enhance investment and agricultural productivity. Trying to identify and implement measures to increase producers’ tenure security could have a large pay-off in terms of rural productivity and poverty reduction.The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity.

Mexican rural reform has questioned the role of the peasantry and private national producers in agriculture. The reform followed a neoliberal paradigm for incorporating the nation into the global village. As part of a government strategy, land reform in Mexico aims to change entrepreneurial and land tenure patterns in rural areas into an individual, private, large-scale, and capitalist productive structure, and the land market is vital in allowing the land transfers needed to change the land tenure pattern.

Argues for certain basic re-thinking in the policy options for viable watershed management by combining local knowledge with the formal science through rejuvenated or revitalized traditional institutions. Part one reviews the policy environment in the light of some of the recent reports in India which have a major bearing on watershed development programs.

This issue focuses on the economic, social and instiutional restructuring required in Afghanistan to achieve food security and justice.The major areas of action required include:the revival of Afghan agricultureaffirmative actions to restore Afghan women’s rightseducation to develop human capital The articles included are:From relief to recovery: rebuilding AfghanistanTribal strengths can help manage common landHungry for learning: food for education programmes

This article explores the history of notions of land ownership among Mongolian pastoralists in a historical context.In the 1990s the Mongolian state implemented a series of reforms designed to create a competitive market economy based on private property. These included the wholesale privatisation of the pastoral economy and the dissolution of the collective and state farms. The Asian Development Bank and other international development agencies advocated new legislation to allow the private ownership of land.

Analyses the range of institutional arrangements being used for gaining access to land and natural resources in two regions of southern Benin.

Growing populations and economic change resulting from globalisation and climate change are increasing pressure on land, particularly in urbanising countries. This exposes many of those occupying and using land, particularly the poor and women, to risks resulting from tenure insecurity. Customary practices in land management are giving way to market-based statutory systems of land tenure.

This study provides a concise overview of the information available on the land rights of indigenous peoples, with a focus on those in developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Successive chapters summarise the rights of indigenous peoples in international law and then examine how these rights are being recognised, or not, in Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific.

Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?

This paper argues that legal reform of land tenure will not take place fast enough to enable developing countries to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through REDD+. It highlights that a global agreement on REDD+ is needed by 2020, if the mechanism is to have a significant impact on mitigating climate change. However, legally defensible and enforceable land tenure rights, while a key enabling condition for effective and equitable REDD+, will not be achieved in most forest countries before this date.