Given the recent trend of granting vast areas of African land to foreign investors, the urgency of placing real ownership in the hands of the people living and making their livelihood upon lands held according to custom cannot be overstated. This study provides guidance on how best to recognize and protect the land rights of the rural poor. Protecting and enforcing the land rights of rural Africans may be best done by passing laws that elevate existing customary land rights up into nations' formal legal frameworks thereby making customary land rights equal to documented land claims.

Throughout its history, Mozambique has had to deal with cyclones and floods, and when these are severe they have a devastating impact. Apart from the immediate threat to human life, such natural disasters seriously impede economic growth. There is no doubt that the Limpopo valley floods in 2000 were one of the worst flood disasters in Mozambique’s history. At least 700 people died, and some 500,000 to 650,000 were displaced and temporarily sheltered in over 100 camps set up by the government.

This internal background paper has been prepared to help inform the 2010 environment strategy with respect to a proposed way forward on use of country systems. The World Bank Group environment strategy is built on three pillars: leveraging natural resources for growth and poverty reduction; managing the environmental risks to growth and development; and transforming growth paths. As part of its exploration of these three pillars, the strategy considers the question of environmental co-benefits of climate change actions.

The article published in NeBIO-An International Journal of Environment and Biodiversity highlights the complicated classifications of land ownership in Khasi Hills viz., private land, group or clan land, community land and government land.

Northern Uganda is the scene of one of the world’s most volatile and spontaneous processes of reintegration. There are approximately 1.1 to 1.4 million people in the Acholi sub-region at the time of writing3 ; 295,000 internally-displaced persons (IDPs) remain displaced either in IDP camps or transit sites. Approximately 800,000 Acholis have already left the camps and spontaneously returned home over the last three years.

Over 80% of all land in Uganda is held under unregistered ‘customary tenure’. This means that it is private property, but the owners need no documents to prove ownership. Their claims to the land, and the boundaries of the land, are locally recognised, and this recognition is given the full protection of State law.

Tenure in Mystery collates information on land under conservation, forestry and mining in the Karamoja region. Whereas significant changes in the status of land tenure took place with the Parliamentary approval for degazettement of approximately 54% of the land area under wildlife conservation in 2002, little else happened to deliver this update to the beneficiary communities in the region. Instead enclaves of information emerged within the elite and political leadership, by means of which personal interests and rewards were being secured and protected.

This paper looks at how recent economic and legal changes have affected pasture management and property rights in Tajikistan. Firstly, current trends in livestock numbers and mobility are compared with those of the Soviet period. Secondly, the impact of current land legislation is investigated using 2007 field data from two sites in the Gorno-Badakhshan region of the country. We describe the extent to which pasture at these sites is under private, community or state control and discuss the implications for sustainable management of this resource.

The research begins by describing the land access and tenure context in Laikipia, Kenya. The paper also incudes:
•• Pastoralism researchers analyse coping innovations during
the 2009 drought that pushed Maasai herders to Mount Kenya.
•• Despite previous brittle social relations, agreements between
ranchers and farmers permitted limited grazing of cattle and sheep inside commercial ranches on a controlled basis

This paper presents several case studies to show how the Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) has been working within Tanzania’s legal and policy framework to support a diverse range of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, all of whom face
fundamental threats from external appropriation of, or encroachment on, lands and natural resources. The work also responds to local needs to rationalise resource use rights amongst competing local groups, such as farmers and livestock keepers. By using participatory

This brochure provides the necessary information for people living in communal areas to have their land rights registered.  The brochure also tackles why land has to be registered; who is responsible for the various aspects of the process; and how land disputes are handled.

In land administration (LA), the right to exercising property/ownership rights on land is based on cadastral processes of adjudication, survey and rights registration. Private ownership rights are now being taken up in pastoral areas, where they must contend with pastoralists’ land rights. Pastoral land use