Future Agricultures Working Paper 73Emmanuel Sulle and Fred NelsonDecember 2013

Following initial enthusiasm in the post-war period, land reform fell out of favour with donors from the early 1970s. Nonetheless, sporadic efforts to redistribute land continued: Ethiopia in 1975, Zimbabwe in 1980 and a renewed commitment to land reform in the Philippines in 1988. These reforms stemmed from shifts in the domestic balance of power between landowners and landless workers and peasants, which were quite independent of donor policies.

This report considers the human rights implications of the 'fast track' process of land redistribution in Zimbabwe, under which the government has revised the constitution and amended legislation in order to allow it to acquire commercial farms compulsorily and without compensation, and the land occupations that have accompanied it since early 2000.

Women’s land ownership and control have important connections with their empowerment in Pakistan’s agricultural context. However, the link between these has largely remained unexplored; and there has been only a few research to determine how many women own or control land in Pakistan. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) carried out a multiple pronged research in 2007-09 to fill this knowledge gap and to examine the reason behind women’s land ownership and empowerment.

This draft paper outlines a strategy for World Bank involvement in land policies. It focuses on property rights to land, land transactions, and socially optimal use of land.

This working paper focuses on the Movement of the Landless (MST) and the various legal strategies used to redefine property law in Brazil. Through a number of legal strategies MST has helped produce watershed high court rulings, contributed to the process of constitutionalising law, and made access to land more equitable in parts of Brazil by redefining property rights in practice.The paper explores legal change triggered by the strategic action through what Bourdieu calls the juridical field (relating to the function and administration of the judicial system).

In Pakistan, the case for both land reform and, more broadly, agrarian reforms, is premised on the need to create sustainable livelihoods which is widely agreed to be the most effective method of alleviating poverty. In addition, land reform combats social injustice while achieving sustained economic growth.

Improved agriculture in the Drought Prone Uplands (DPUs) depends critically on better water conservation and management. However, there is a high degree of uncertainty surrounding issues of water availability, allocation and local rights. Despite broad similarities in the goals of many programmes, there has been a lack of consistency and coherence among them. The focus of this paper is on the difficulties of developing a coherent analytical framework that would enable questions of technical and institutional choice to be addressed systematically.

Improving women’s ability to securely access land is recognised as an effective means to increase gender equality and advance other key social and economic development goals. Despite progressive laws in many African countries, gender disparities commonly persist in women’s access and ownership of land.

This article, a summary of the book sharing the same title, examines issues around the allocation of land and education within families.

Full title: Lessons for the New Alliance and Land Transparency Initiative: Gender Impacts of Tanzania’s Land Investment Policy
Policy brief 67 Helen Dancer

What have we learned about land markets in South Asia about land reform, land fragmentation, sharecropping, security of tenure, farm size, land rights, transaction costs, bargaining power, policy distortions, and market imperfections (including those associated with gender)?Faruqee and Carey review the literature on land markets in South Asia to clarify what's known and to highlight unresolved issues. They report that: We have a good understanding of why sharecropping persists and why it can be superior to other standard agricultural contracts.