Full text of the Convention to Combat Desertification, which was elaborated by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INCD) and signed in June 1994.Also available from the CCD WWW site in French and English

What does community based natural resource management (CBNRM) mean for Mozambique's poor?Through the case study of Derre Forest Reserve in Zambezia province, this paper explores the theory and practice of CBNRM, an approach which has been widely promoted in southern Africa, and is central to elements of the Mozambican forestry and wildlife policy of 1999.The paper examines the history of community involvement in forest use in the reserve, and the changing nature of local organisations.

Overview of the relationship between gender, poverty and water. The first section explores how, in every corner of the globe, women play a central role in managing water supply and distribution. It also examines how access to water and sanitation has implications for women’s health and economic activities.

Land rental markets can potentially improve the access to land for land-poor households that possess complementary resources that can enable them to utilize land efficiently. Land rental markets can also enable landowners who are poor in non-land resources to rent out their land such that their land is utilized more efficiently and they themselves can get a better income and improved welfare from their land resource. This report assesses the land rental market that is dominated by a reverse tenancy system with relatively poorer landlords and less poor tenants.

This paper addresses the issue of land security and sustainability. The paper tackles the assumption that, in the case of China, giving farmers more secure land rights would undermine the function of land as a social safety net and, as a consequence, not be sustainable or command broad support.The report draws on data from three provinces, one of which had adopted a policy to increase security of tenure in advance of the others.

UK aid money is creating an "oil curse" for developing economies, according to this new report published by Friends of the Earth, Plan B and Platform Research. Pumping Poverty accuses DFID of an aid policy that is incoherent, fails the people it is design

This paper draws out the key links between land tenure and poverty eradication. The author argues that in countries where land distribution remains highly inequitable, effectively designed and targeted, it could be a key component of anti-poverty strategies, but significant complementary measures, notably agrarian support services, are also required to achieve real impacts, together with investments in employment and economic diversification.

By and large, it appears that the goals of agricultural reform are being met in Mexico. But measures such as decoupling income supports and price supports or reorienting research and extension could help farmers who cannot afford access to machinery and purchased inputs and services.Lopez, Nash, and Stanton report the results of a study of Mexican farm households using 1991 survey data and a smaller resurvey of some of the same households in 1993.One study goal was to empirically examine the relationship between assets and the output supply function.

This paper examines how, over the past 10 years, Kyrgyzstan has privatised most of its agricultural land and distributed it to individual households. These households either farm alone or join together and farm cooperatively. This research seeks to examine whether women have been adversely affected in the process of privatisation, asset ownership, or business development.

The objective of this technical paper is to shed insights on ways of reversing the spiraling decline of the land and the economy in rural Rwanda, with focus on the forces behind productivity decline in the Rwandan agricultural sector. The results are based on collaborative research between the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and Michigan State University.Among the key findings are that Rwandan farmers need to sustain and intensify their farming by pro-tecting the soil against erosion.

This paper examines the fundamentals of Mozambican land policy from a livelihoods perspective and identifies considerable potential for improving the sustainability of rural livelihoods and the flexibility and cost effectiveness of policy instruments aimed at increasing security of tenure.The paper examines the impact of the cancellation of private land applications in one province, and argues that, notwithstanding the apparent official reluctance to implement this element of the policy, the impact has been almost wholly beneficial for local community groups.Challenges to land policy framew

This paper discusses the nature of the land problem in the region and tries to situate the general land reform process in Zimbabwe within a regional context.It examines the four key land problems facing the region the discriminatory and insecure forms of land tenure that are found among variouslandownership regimes the increasingly imbalanced landownership structures and factors underlying itthe contradictory tendencies towards irrational land-use patterns through both the over utilisation and underutilisation of land the devotion of most prime lands and resources to production for externa