These Country Profiles represent a new edition of a continent-wide set of profiles prepared and published by the Land Tenure Center in 1986. This new volume reflects a decade of intensive work on the continent by LTC and a very considerable deepening of knowledge and understanding of land tenure issues in Africa. It addresses events of the past ten years, which have been substantial in many of the countries covered. Land tenure continues to be a volatile policy domain. The standard topics from the earlier profiles have been revised to take into account new development concerns.

This paper provides a brief review on the global and Malaysian perspective of climate change, and its impacts on Malaysian agriculture and relevant adaptation practices. It also provides policy recommendations for better coping with the changing nature of climatic factors. Changing climate has had negative impacts on Malaysian agriculture, including: water stress; worsening soil condition, disease, pest outbreaks on crops and livestock; and sea-level rise.

The policy debate about the merits and demerits of biofuels is growing and changing rapidly, with concerns being voiced over their effectiveness for mitigating climate change, role in recent food price hikes and social environmental impacts. This study contributes to these debates through examining the current and likely future impacts of the increasing spread of biofuels on access to land in producer countries, particularly for poorer rural people. It draws on a literature review of evidence drawn from diverse contexts across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

This paper presents an analysis of the actions and omissions of the Guatemala State in respect to its obligations under the human right to food, and also refers to several paradigmatic cases of violations of the right to food within the context of the indigenous population and land and labour conflicts.

This issue focuses on the economic, social and instiutional restructuring required in Afghanistan to achieve food security and justice.The major areas of action required include:the revival of Afghan agricultureaffirmative actions to restore Afghan women’s rightseducation to develop human capital The articles included are:From relief to recovery: rebuilding AfghanistanTribal strengths can help manage common landHungry for learning: food for education programmes

Examines—from the perspective of transaction costs—factors that constrain access to land for the rural poor and other socially excluded groups in India. They find that: Land reform has reduced large landholdings since the 1950s. Medium-size farms have gained most. Formidable obstacles still prevent the poor from gaining access to land. The complexity of land revenue administration in Orissa is partly the legacy of distinctly different systems, which produced more or less complete and accurate land records.

Access to land is deeply important in rural India, where the incidence of poverty is highly correlated with lack of access to land. Mearns provides a framework for assessing alternative approaches to improving access to land by India's rural poor.

This paper analyses issues that affect the role of agriculture as a source of economic development, rural livelihoods and environmental services. Using experiences of land expansion in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa, it assesses the extent to which recent demand for land differs from earlier processes of area expansion and identifies the current challenges, in terms of land governance, institutional capacity and communities’ awareness of their rights.

Considerable hype and debate are currently surrounding the potential of biochar (charcoal created through the burning of biomass in low oxygen environments) in climate change mitigation and agriculture. This report attempts to summarise the arguments, assumptions and interests in the biochar debate and offer reflections on its prospects. The report begins by outlining what it calls the triple-win of biochar. The production of biochar can be tuned to release bioenergy or biofuels in the form of syngas and bio-oil, thus providing decarbonised biomass fuel.

This paper employs an historical analysis to consider some of the consequences of conflicting resource use and political friction on resource exploitation within and outside Turkana District during this century. Given this historical context, development alternatives tested to ameliorate food insecurity are reviewed.The article proposes that the stage for political conflicts, environmental degradation and food insecurity within the region was set decades ago.

DFID are looking to propose that the UK supports a package of measures to strengthen land transparency and ultimately governance. This work is of a high priority for DFID and the wider UK Government. Following further research on the evidence and internal discussions, DFID have identified a gap relating to two specific questions:

1.    What are the impacts of large-scale land acquisitions (LSA) on local food insecurity and malnutrition levels? 
2.    Is there a difference in impacts whether investments are international or local? 

Examines livelihood diversification as a survival strategy of rural households in developing countries. Although still of central importance, farming on its own is increasingly unable to provide a sufficient means of survival in rural areas.