Includes background to the National Land Policy workshop, discussions with civil society, and key issues arising during the workshop (the role of chiefs, the sale of customary land, and the sale of land to foreigners). Contains what next? and a postscript on the Ministry of Lands’ assessment and position one month after the workshop.

Examines the evolution of the World Bank’s land policy since its 1975 Land Policy Reform Paper. Shows how the Bank has moved away from its earlier views on titling.

The major objectives of this workshop are to sharpen the focus of ILRI's ecoregional research, to further identify commonalities in tools and new methods that can enable ILRI to do effective transregional research, and to identify improvements to the way in which ILRI does ecoregional research.

There are diverse opinions as to what an ecoregional research approach should involve. Ecoregional research is meant to fill gaps in natural resources management research, rationalise overlapping mandates, provide focal points and streamline interactions between NARS (National Agricultural Research Systems) and CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) centres. This paper describes the institutional structure and technical operation of the proposed ecoregional programme in sub-humid West Africa.

Developments in the international institutional context and in the capacity of governments to ensure sustainable forest management in Central Africa lead to new approaches to participatory management being explored. The author reviews current initiatives in this field in Congo Brazzaville, Gabon, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea. Such initiatives are still in an experimental stage and aim at answering issues linked with conventional forest management as well as meeting prerequisites imposed by international organisations for granting aid to development.