The overall objective of the present national cross-sectoral Forest Policy is to achieve sustainable forest management that would ensure sustainable increases in the economic, social and environmental benefits from forests and trees for the present and future generation including the poor and the vulnerable groups.

Baseline survey which includes a literature review. Findings cover land and livelihoods, land ownership and security of tenure, land rights and decision making, land market and transactions, land disputes. Concludes that the volume of land transactions is too low to support a transformation from subsistence to commercial agriculture, as planned. Smallholder farmers have limited capital options making increased land utilization impossible. Tenure security for women is still far from a reality. There is a need to strengthen land rights of widows and orphans.

Increasingly, economists are examining how the dynamics within households affect the outcomes of household decisions. This paper uses data from the 1991/92 and the 1998/99 Ghana Living Standards Surveys to examine how the share of assets owned by women in Ghanaian households affects household expenditure patterns. In this analysis, assets include business assets, savings, and farmland. The results indicate that women’s share of assets do have an impact on household budget shares for a number of expenditure categories in each time period.

The colonial and postcolonial legacy of the “Lost Counties” land issue has recently resurfaced as a contentious ethno-political issue in Uganda. The aim of the paper is to critically examine the politics of belonging and land rights in relation to Ugandan land legislation and the “Lost Counties” issue. The empirically basis of this paper is primarily derived from field work in Kibaale District, during the period January to July 2004.

Land reform has been the main policy response of government to correct the sharp inequalities in the distribution of land ownership in the Philippines. The historical records show that the process of disposal of State lands has heavily favored households with economic and political power. These households had undue advantage over the common populace in acquiring property rights through the Spanish system of royal grants and the American system of land cadastre.

La brecha entre hombres y mujeres en la propiedad de la tierra en América Latina es enorme. En pocos países, las mujeres alcanzan una cuarta parte de los propietarios de tierra. La desigualdad por género en la propiedad de la tierra se relaciona con la preferencia masculina en la herencia, los privilegios que disfrutan los hombres en el matrimonio, el sesgo masculino en los programas estatales de distribución de tierras y en el mercado de tierras, en donde la mujer tiene menos probabilidades que el hombre de participar con éxito como compradora.