Presents some preliminary results on the impact of the economic crisis on farmers’ livelihood and forest use, based on fieldwork in four provinces in Indonesia (Riau, West and East Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi). Stresses the great variation throughout the country, and the volatility of the situation. Price data reveal that some groups of export crops-oriented farmers enjoyed a short-term gain during the first 2-3 quarters of 1998. Soaring food prices and a stronger rupiah since October 1998 have, however, gradually made real prices move towards their pre-crisis levels.

Future Agricultures Working Paper 73Emmanuel Sulle and Fred NelsonDecember 2013

Following initial enthusiasm in the post-war period, land reform fell out of favour with donors from the early 1970s. Nonetheless, sporadic efforts to redistribute land continued: Ethiopia in 1975, Zimbabwe in 1980 and a renewed commitment to land reform in the Philippines in 1988. These reforms stemmed from shifts in the domestic balance of power between landowners and landless workers and peasants, which were quite independent of donor policies.

This report considers the human rights implications of the 'fast track' process of land redistribution in Zimbabwe, under which the government has revised the constitution and amended legislation in order to allow it to acquire commercial farms compulsorily and without compensation, and the land occupations that have accompanied it since early 2000.

Women’s land ownership and control have important connections with their empowerment in Pakistan’s agricultural context. However, the link between these has largely remained unexplored; and there has been only a few research to determine how many women own or control land in Pakistan. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) carried out a multiple pronged research in 2007-09 to fill this knowledge gap and to examine the reason behind women’s land ownership and empowerment.

This draft paper outlines a strategy for World Bank involvement in land policies. It focuses on property rights to land, land transactions, and socially optimal use of land.

This working paper focuses on the Movement of the Landless (MST) and the various legal strategies used to redefine property law in Brazil. Through a number of legal strategies MST has helped produce watershed high court rulings, contributed to the process of constitutionalising law, and made access to land more equitable in parts of Brazil by redefining property rights in practice.The paper explores legal change triggered by the strategic action through what Bourdieu calls the juridical field (relating to the function and administration of the judicial system).

This study focuses on mining related conflicts in Tanzania, a relatively new mining country. It argues that unclear land and mining rights, and conceptual differences in how land and mining rights are perceived, contribute to conflict in the country and to a feeling among both local people and human rights advocacy groups that the government has betrayed ordinary people.The study finds that there have been seven recorded conflicts related to mining companies in the country, six of them taking place over the last seven years.

The world’s attention was be on Peru December 2014, as governments from 195 countries convened in the capital Lima for the UN Climate Conference. As delegates negotiated a global deal aimed at averting catastrophic climate change, a parallel human rights crisis is still unfolding in Peru and around the world. An increasing number of people on the frontline of the fight to protect the environment are being killed.

How important is common land to rural people’s livelihoods? Are pooled resources a significant factor in household income? Why has communal land been so undervalued in recent studies?

Improving women’s ability to securely access land is recognised as an effective means to increase gender equality and advance other key social and economic development goals. Despite progressive laws in many African countries, gender disparities commonly persist in women’s access and ownership of land.

This article, a summary of the book sharing the same title, examines issues around the allocation of land and education within families.