The biofuel boom has become a core issue in Zimbabwean land and development debates. Biofuels require large tracts of land for production; and the land acquisition programmes by the various state, non-state actors and individuals have been termed ‘land grabbing’. The increasing global demand for biofuels has different gender specific socio-economic and environmental effects in Zimbabwe. Males and females in the biofuel producing zone may face a differential risk matrix, comprising different issues.

Does poverty in Egypt have a woman's face? Is female poverty linked to their conditions in the labour market or levels of education? Are women particularly at risk in poor households? This report addresses the gender dimensions of poverty using the recent Household Expenditure, Income and Consumption Survey of 1999/2000 for Egypt. Poverty measures of males and females were found to be significantly different, in both urban and rural areas, where higher levels are observed among females than males.

This Supporting Resources Collection - part of the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and Climate Change- showcases existing work on gender and climate change. It presents summaries of a mix of conceptual and research papers, policy briefings, advocacy documents, case study material and practical tools from diverse regions. Examining why a focus on gender and climate change is important, the resources look at the human and gender impacts of climate change, the global and national responses to climate change and locally relevant gender aware responses to climate change.

Climate change is increasingly being recognised as a global crisis, but responses to it have so far been overly focused on scientific and economic solutions. How then do we move towards morepeople-centred, gender-aware climate change policies and processes? How do we respond to the different needs and concerns of women and men, and also challenge the gender inequalities that mean women are more likely to lose out than men in the face of climate change? This In Brief sets out why it is vital to address the gender dimensions of climate change.

The emergence of social and environmental movements against plantation forestry in Southeast Asia positions rural development against local displacement and environmental degradation. Multi-scaled NGO networks have been active in promoting the notion that rural people in Southeast Asia uniformly oppose plantation development. There are potential pitfalls in this heightened attention to resistance however, as it has often lapsed into essentialist notions of timeless indigenous agricultural practices, and unproblematic local allegiances to common property and conservation.

Over the last decade, following the doi moi reforms, the Vietnamese government has formally recognised the household as the basic unit of production and allocated land use rights to households. Under the 1993 Land Law these rights can be transferred, exchanged, leased, inherited, and mortgaged. A land market is emerging in Vietnam but is still constrained for various reasons. Additionally, lack of flexibility of land use is an issue.

This paper critically examines theories of accumulation, dispossession and exclusion for analyzing the agrarian transformations that result from contemporary large-scale land acquisitions across the Global South. Building upon Marx's primitive accumulation, Harvey's accumulation by dispossession and Hall et al.'s Powers of Exclusion, conceptual lenses are developed through which to examine how land grabs transform property and social relationships of resource-based production.

This participatory poverty assessment (PPA 2006) comprises one component of ADB’s Technical Assistance to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic for Institutional Strengthening for Poverty Monitoring and Evaluation. The goal of this PPA, as with the first PPA in 2000, is to complement the statistical analyses of poverty in a meaningful way and to record the experiences and concerns of the poor in order to initiate and identify more effective forms of public and private actions to alleviate poverty.

Since the early 1960s, notwithstanding dire predictions of agricultural theorists and colonial observers, agricultural growth has been strong among most Southeast Asian countries. More recently, this expansion has reached the maritime domain, with the rapid development of aquatic production through sea-based aquaculture among others. In recent territorial expansion and increase in yields for export crops has been faster than for food crops.

Production of commodities for global markets is an increasingly important factor of tropical deforestation, taking over smallholders subsistence farming. Measures to reduce deforestation and convert shifting cultivation systems towards permanent crops have recently been strengthened in several countries. But these changes have variable environmental and social impacts, including on ethnic minorities. In Vietnam, although a forest transition - i.e.

Investment in agricultural land in the developing world has rapidly increased in the past two decades. In Cambodia, there has been a surge in economic land concessions, in which long-term leases are provided to foreign and domestic investors for economic development. More than two million hectares have been leased so far, sparking debate over the consequences for local communities and the environment.

Over the past 15 years, northwest Cambodia has seen dramatic agrarian expansion away from the central rice plain into the peripheral uplands fuelled by peasant in-migration. Against this background, we examine the nature of relations between the peasantry and the state. We first show the historical continuities of land control processes and how the use of violence in a post-conflict neoliberal context has legitimised ex-Khmer Rouge in controlling land distribution.