As in most low-income countries, the majority of the poor population in Viet Nam is found in rural areas, where agriculture provides the primary means of livelihood. It has been argued that an agriculture-based development (ABD) strategy is more appropriate for Viet Nam at the present time than both import-substitution and export-led industrialization, considering its effectiveness in generating income opportunities, directly and indirectly, for the rural population.

Reviews recent practices relating to displacement, resettlement, rehabilitation and development of people negatively affected by the construction of dams, in order to locate the global experiences in dam induced displacement and understand the socio-political context of displacement and resettlement. Further, the assessment focuses on how legal and regulatory instruments facilitating displacement and involuntary resettlement have performed in safeguarding the rights of affected people.

This paper initially highlights the general characteristics of rangelands and pastoral production systems of the Tibetan Plateau.The article finds that:given the realities of life in a heterogeneous and marginal environment, the issue of secure resource tenure, both customary and legal, is fundamental for effective rangeland managementa simple shift in tenure from the communal (traditional and subsistence) to individual household level (ranching and commercial) will not be enough to facilitate a change in behaviour toward "rational" livestock operationsmany institutional mechanisms must be

This case study deals with the South African government policies for restitution and redistribution of land to people in rural areas who were deprived of it due to racially discriminatory laws and practice. Its main focus is on how the interactions between civil society and the state in the several phases of land reform through the 1990s reflect some key issues of governance, eg.

Describes the main features of the new Eritrean land law and its operative assumption that the legislation is meant to extend state control over land.The legal devices employed by the law are widely used in sub-Saharan Africa (and were largely inspired by colonial policies). The State of Eritrea frequently asserts that its recent independence gives it the opportunity to learn from other developing countries' mistakes and to avoid them.The basic patterns of the new land law, however, are common to the rest of Africa, notwithstanding the evident poor results.

Looks at location, natural resources, and different policies toward the elite's preemption of unused land shaped the historical development of different agrarian structures across Southeast Asia, conditioning agricultural growth performance until today.Aims to give a broad perspective on the process by which different agrarian structures developed in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, along different historical paths under different ecological conditions.

Between March 1997 and February 1998 three tests of Criteria and Indicators (C&I) for assessing the sustainability of community-managed forests were conducted by the Center for International Forestry Research. The tests, each lasting approximately one month, were sited in humid forest in Central Province, Cameroon; Sanggau, West Kalimantan, Indonesia; and in the Arapiuns river basin, Para, Brazil.

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.

What can development cooperation do to improve gender-responsiveness of land tenure development' Central to this objective is the mainstreaming of gender considerations into all areas (macro, meso and micro levels) of development cooperation which influence access to, control over, and benefits from land. This paper outlines the situation of women with regard to land tenure worldwide, and the challenge for development cooperation in addressing the gap between gender imbalances in land tenure and internationally declared aims for gender equality.

The first meeting of the sub-committee on Geo-information was held at Headquarters of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 29 June to 2 July 1999.