Official report of the East African LANDNET Africa meeting held in Kenya in August 2000. Summarises welcoming remarks, the keynote address by H.W.O. Okoth-Ogendo, and thematic presentations on women’s land rights in eastern Africa, common property networking at the global level, and land tenure networking issues in Rwanda. Also sub-regional LANDNET Africa updates, and country land tenure networking updates from Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, plus identification of priority issues and future plans. Lists addresses of participants and the workshop programme.

Examines the relationship of people’s rights in land to the manner in which they may be involved in the management of forests in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Lesotho and to a lesser degree Botswana and Swaziland.Includes examination of property relations, state power, land reform, recognition of customary rights, the changing nature of tenure, and the impact of new land law on community forest rights.

This paper initially highlights the general characteristics of rangelands and pastoral production systems of the Tibetan Plateau.The article finds that:given the realities of life in a heterogeneous and marginal environment, the issue of secure resource tenure, both customary and legal, is fundamental for effective rangeland managementa simple shift in tenure from the communal (traditional and subsistence) to individual household level (ranching and commercial) will not be enough to facilitate a change in behaviour toward "rational" livestock operationsmany institutional mechanisms must be

This paper identifies key issues and develops guidelines for conducting research on the relationships between property rights and technology adoption in smallholder agriculture.The topics addressed in the paper are: definition of scope and termskey issues pertaining to the relationships between technology adoption and property rights variables data collection and measurement issuesanalyses and interpretation of findings The primary target groups for this paper are researchers and policy analysts wishing to undertake or interpret empirical research

Local governance has become increasingly significant as devolution from central and provincial levels is being attempted in India as a result of the enactment of the 73rd and 74th Amendment of the Constitution in 1993. The essence of local self governance is to enable a small community to maintain access and control over their natural and physical resources, to take collective decisions in the common public good and to provide resources in priority developmental actions. Another dimension of local self governance is to demand accountability from people in public positions.

This paper is a report on anthropological fieldwork on the civil society movements in northeastern Thailand. The case of Kok Hin Khao land rights conflicts in the district of Nam Phong of Khon Kaen province was thoroughly examined to understand the current dynamics of civil society in the Northeast.It is argued that the discrepancy between the government's development rhetoric and what actually happened at the grassroots level has laid the ground for the emergence of contemporary civil society to protect its own interests.

Describes the main features of the new Eritrean land law and its operative assumption that the legislation is meant to extend state control over land.The legal devices employed by the law are widely used in sub-Saharan Africa (and were largely inspired by colonial policies). The State of Eritrea frequently asserts that its recent independence gives it the opportunity to learn from other developing countries' mistakes and to avoid them.The basic patterns of the new land law, however, are common to the rest of Africa, notwithstanding the evident poor results.

Grey literature collection includes documents from India over the last twenty years, the collection traces the process of social forestry, which aimed to satisfy local needs through fuelwood plantations and to divert pressure from natural forest through the participation of private framers and communities.The papers included are as follows:Village-level management of common property resources, especially fuelwood and fodder resources in Karnataka, IndiaBrokensha, D. 1988Women and wasteland development - policy issues.

Under the socialist regime that prevailed until the start of the 1990s, Mongolia made great progress in improving human development indicators, and poverty was virtually unknown. Through innovative service delivery mechanisms to nomadic pastoralists, almost universal coverage of primary health care services was achieved and adult literacy reached 97%.Political and economic transition in the 1990s ushered in a rapid rise in asset and income inequality, and a third of the population have been defined as living below the poverty line since 1995.

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.

This article discusses what is the best means of managing the commons. The article stresses that these are critical questions in the current wave of decentralisation and tenure reform taking place in many Sahelian states.