The cities in the East African region are characterised by rapid urbanisation and uncontrolled spatial sprawl, with large informal settlements and inadequate service provision. The research study investigates how urban land markets operate in such a context, and particularly, how effectively poor people can access, trade and hold land.

Legislation was passed in India in 1992 imparting constitutional status on Panchayati Raj (village-level local government) institutions. This study attempts to assess the success and sustainability of such local institutions (particularly Village Forest Committees) in their attempts to rehabilitate common lands in the Aravalli hills in Haryana State, and to enact a transition from an ‘open access’ system to a community controlled regulated access system for governing the use of these lands.

CAADP Policy Brief 10by Kate Wellard-Dyer

This paper provides an overview of what we know about farm size distributions, the emerging land markets, the role of tenure systems, tenure reforms and land policies in shaping the distribution of increasingly scarce land resources. The primary focus is on Africa while making some comparisons with Asia. Climate risk and change have serious implications for household vulnerability and food security. While there is a need to absorb further population growth in rural areas, a rapid rise in rural-urban migration is inevitable.

This paper explores gender and issues of land access and administration in rural development. It argues that increasing social, economic and technological changes are requiring a re-examination of the institutional arrangements used to administer who has rights to what resources and under what conditions.

This paper investigates how HIV/AIDS affects land access, utilisation and control in Malawi, with a particular focus upon vulnerable groups. It presents findings on the effect of HIV/AIDS on land holding, household responses to HIV/AIDS (to ensure their ability to continue using land as a resource), implications for tenure, effect of HIV/AIDS on land administration institutions, and the role of national legal and policy frameworks.The paper recommends:Firstly, that there is a need to raise the profile of the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS to poverty reduction.

The report focuses on: the statue of land degradation: types of degradation, their nature, severity and extent; the causes and consequences of land degradation; institutions to combat land degradation; proposals for strengthening efforts to combat land degradation. Countries covered are: Afghanistan; Bangladesh; India; Bhutan; Iran; Pakistan; Nepal; Sri Lanka.

The cities in southern Africa reflect the rapid urbanisation characteristic of sub-Saharan Africa in general. Angola, Botswana and South Africa have the highest levels of urbanisation with about 60% of their population living in cities in 2010 and this percentage is expected to rise to about 80% by 2050.

The poor in Mozambique survive off the land, but what would the consequences be if the land was privatised? This paper looks at how Mozambique is approaching issues surrounding land usage and ownership as market reforms take place and the land becomes increasingly susceptible to being opened up to the market.A historical background to the issue of land use and ownership in Africa is given, from colonisation to the impact of globalisation and the market in present day Africa.

Local entrepreneurs drive development in deprived neighbourhoods. Small-scale actions – rather than abstract urban planning by officials – are most effective. Planners should start observing street life and begin to understand that everyday practice and local enterprises can, with a little outside help, be scaled up to improve poor urban people’s lives.