Overview of a conceptual definition or sustainable land management policies

Brief summary of FAO’s experience in agrarian reform and the most relevant activities of the current programme related to this field. It argues that the type of agrarian reform that considers the redistribution of land from the rich to the poor either through confiscation or through pre-emptive buyouts belongs to the past. However, this does not mean that Member Nations have stopped seeking ways to improve access to productive resources (land, water, etc.) as a cornerstone to their rural development policy.

This paper analyzes the impact of land titling on child health and education in Argentina. The authors exploit a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles across squatters in a poor suburban area of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to evaluate the impact of property rights on child health and education outcomes.

In Southern Africa, landlessness due to the asset alienation that occurred during colonial occupation has been acknowledged as one of several ultimate causes of chronic poverty. Land redistribution is often seen as a powerful tool in the fight against poverty in areas where a majority of people are rural-based and make a living mostly, if not entirely, off the land.

This report highlights key developments and recent sustainability trends in agriculture, rural development, land, desertification and drought, five of the six themes being considered by the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at its 16th and 17th sessions (2008-2009).

Considers the cultural dimension of applying the land information system (LIS) concept to lands held under customary land tenure. The article recognizes that the LIS concept has been developed primarily to serve the needs of countries with a western-style land market where individual land rights are the norm. However, many countries where customary landholdings exist, or predominate, are also interested in establishing LISs to manage their land resources better. The article has three main sections.

This article estimates the poverty reducing impact of the recent land reforms and land transfers in the different land tenure systems of Uganda. Using balanced panel data for 309 households in 2001, 2003, and 2005, models that control for unobserved household heterogeneity and endogeneity of land acquisition and disposition are employed to measure the poverty-reduction effect of land on household expenditure per adult equivalent. Significant poverty reduction effects of increased land access in form of owned, operated and market-accessed land were found.

Most land-based livelihoods rely on having secure access to land, a precondition for sustainable agriculture, economic growth and poverty reduction. This working paper examines the state of knowledge with regard to aspects of land reform- redistributive reform, land tenure reform, and the issue of land markets. It also addresses issues that remain unknown in areas of land and social equity, land administration, and land tax.Redistributive land reform aims to bring about an equitable distribution of land and the political power emanating from it.

The purpose of this guide is to provide support to those who are assessing and designing appropriate responses to food insecurity and rural development situations. This guide aims to show where and why land tenure is an important issue in food security and sustainable rural livelihoods. The main objective of these guidelines is to provide detailed suggestions for consideration of land tenure issues in rural development policy.

This paper assesses factors related to local land border conflicts and how low cost land registration and certification has affected land conflicts during and after land registration and certification using data from northern Ethiopia. Border conflicts were more common near district centers, further away from markets, and where property rights had been redistributed more recently.

This paper explores the dualities in the coexistence within Zimbabwean politics of constitutionalism and legality versus a complex combination of paralegal, supralegal, oppressive and brutal political action, especially as this pertains to elections and land. The analysis is set in the period 1999-2002.

This document investigates the concept of land reform in South Africa and argues that there is a need to redefine 'land reform' to take account of the realities of an urbanising, modernising, economy. It analyses recent political developments on land issues and sheds light on the current process of land reform as well as agro-climatic, economic, budgetary constraints that impinge on the process.