Several studies have shown that the land registration and certification reform in Ethiopia has been implemented at an impressive speed, at a low-cost, and with significant impacts on investment, land productivity, and land rental market activity. This study provides new evidence on land productivity changes for rented land and on the welfare effects of the reform. The study draws on a unique household panel, covering the period up to eight years after the implementation of the reform.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, one woman's impassioned speech linking women's exclusion from land rights with the failings of Honduras' state-led agrarian reform and counter-reform gathered gale force, simultaneously weakening particular levees of gender-bias while constructing others. Post-Hurricane Mitch organizational practices and reconstruction policies in Northeastern Honduras afforded women access to joint property titles and participation.

Local people's involvement in the management of conservation initiatives is central to ongoing debates on the relative merits of distinct biodiversity conservation models. Since different governance models provide distinct opportunities for local people to participate in the management of protected areas, their knowledge of these governance models and motivation to collaborate will vary. This paper analyses cognisance and participation in (1) government-imposed biosphere reserves and (2) community conservation areas, in which ecotourism projects take place.

Making the assumption that property rights might determine whether farmers adopt particular strategies, this study aims at modelling farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change by focusing on their property rights – declined as institutional arrangements on land and rights on land – as well as their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The case study took place in northern Benin (West Africa). In this zone, 308 farmers producing maize and adapting to climate change were randomly sampled.

O caminho percorrido para que as questões do género e do desenvolvimento e em especial a sua interligação sejam assuntos importantes e alvo de atenção tanto académica como política, foi longo. Várias áreas do conhecimento, como a sociologia, a antropologia e a economia, contribuem para a construção do conhecimento neste domínio, a par de outras mais recentes como os estudos feministas e os estudos pós-coloniais. Como resultado, as teorias e os conceitos sobre a relação das mulheres com o desenvolvimento e os efeitos deste sobre as mulheres têm sido vários.

This paper examines how tourism as a form of land use and economic development is a critical site of struggle over the meaning of neoliberalism, landscape and land rights in northern Tanzania. I examine two tourism arrangements in Loliondo: joint ventures between expatriate-owned ecotourism companies and predominately Maasai villages; and the leasing of a hunting concession on village lands by the central government to a powerful foreign investor from the United Arab Emirates.

As concerns heighten over links between biomass production and land grabs in the global south, attention is turning to understanding the role of governance of biofuels systems, whereby decision-making and conduct are not solely determined through government regulations but increasingly shaped by non-state actors, including multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI). Launched in 2005, Bonsucro is the principal MSI that focuses on sustainability standards for sugar and sugarcane ethanol production.

Shifting cultivation, which long provided the subsistence requirements of a large number of people in the mountains of South and Southeast Asia under a situation of low population, has been shown to be an environmentally and economically unsuitable practice. Efforts have been made throughout the region to replace it with more productive and sustainable land-use systems. Experiences have been mixed.

In Papua New Guinea, the fate of forests is governed by forest-dwelling tribal societies. A rapidly increasing pace of logging compels us to ask why tribal communities prefer logging to conservation. In the absence of feasible development opportunities, remote communities become quickly enthusiastic about conservation projects, but once an area is opened up to logging few such projects survive. Direct payments to forest owners to cover the costs of missed opportunities for economic development are advocated here to make conservation competitive.

Land and agrarian reform has the potential to expand South Africa's rangeland commons and enhance their contribution to the livelihoods of the rural poor, yet to a large extent this has been an opportunity missed. Shifting policy agendas have prioritised private land rights and commercial land uses, seeking to dismantle the racial divide between the white commercial farming areas and the ex-Bantustans by allocating former white farms to black farmers. These agendas and planning models reflect class and gender bias and a poor understanding of common property.