Community land and natural resources lie at the heart of social, political and economic life in much of rural Africa. While the Zambian government acknowledges customary tenure, it has not established required legislation needed to secure it and support to communities in their efforts to protect their lands.
This paper explores the politics of ‘customary’ land tenure, land reform, and traditional leaders in Zambia. In Zambia, as elsewhere in Southern Africa, the government at the behest of donors has implemented market-based tenure reform legislation. This legislation aims to improve the security of land tenure and to promote development through investment. The paper shows how complex, indeterminate, and contentious this tenure reform has been on the ground – particularly in relation to the 94 per cent of Zambian land that is held in ‘customary’ tenure.
Desde las décadas de 1970 y 1980, la forestería comunitaria ha ido adquiriendo cada vez más popularidad, a partir del concepto de que las comunidades locales, cuando se les conceden suficientes derechos de propiedad sobre los bosques colectivos locales, pueden organizarse de forma autónoma y crear instituciones locales a fin de reglamentar el uso de los recursos naturales y manejarlos de forma sostenible.
From January 15 to February 6, 2018, the USAID’s Tenure and Global Climate Change Program and Land Portal Foundation co-facilitated a dialogue on experiences of documenting household and community-level customary rights in Zambia. The dialogue brought together the perspectives of government, traditional leaders, practitioners, civil society, and academics to consider how customary land documentation can contribute to national development goals and increased service delivery in rural and peri-urban areas.
This paper represents part of an area of work in support of enhancing access to land and forest resources in support of rural livelihoods in Mongolia. . This synthesis report draws on field studies undertaken recently in five rural areas of Mongolia, covering all ecological zones from montane and northern taiga forest to arid forest in the Gobi. Our findings document and explain, with case studies and documentation from participatory analysis, the downward cycle of resource depletion and descend into poverty that is in action.
In the context of the global land rush, some portray large-scale land acquisitions as a potent threat to the livelihoods of already marginalized rural farming households in Africa. In order to avoid the potential pitfall of studying a particular project that may well have atypical effects, this paper systematically investigates the impact on commercial farm wage incomes for rural smallholder households of all pledged investments in the agricultural sector in Zambia between 1994 and 2007.
From the outset, the development of agriculture has been strongly associated with women’s endeavour. In fact, women’s contribution to agriculture goes back to the origins of farming and the domestication of animals when the first human settlements were established more than 6 000 years ago. Over the years, the division of responsibilities and labour within households and communities tended to place farming and nutrition-related tasks under women’s domain. Nowadays, in many societies women continue to be mainly responsible for family food security and nutrition.
Increasing women’s access to land is crucial to fight hunger and poverty. However, gender disparities in land access remain significant in most countries, regardless of their level of development. A new FAO database helps to understand the factors that prevent women from accessing land; and to design better policies to effectively address this situation.
Aumentar el acceso de las mujeres a la tierra es crucial para combatir el hambre y la pobreza. Sin embargo, las disparidades de género en el acceso a la tierra siguen siendo notables en muchos países, con independencia de su nivel de desarrollo. La nueva base de datos de la FAO ayudará a comprender los factores que impiden que las mujeres tengan acceso a la tierra, con lo que permitirá asimismo diseñar políticas mejores para afrontar esta situación de manera eficaz.
A través de nuestro sólido motor de búsqueda, puede explorar cualquier elemento de los más de 64.800 recursos rigurosamente seleccionados en la Biblioteca de la Tierra. Si desea obtener una visión general de lo que es posible, siéntase libre de examinar la Guía de búsqueda.
