High food prices are not only causing a humanitarian crisis, but also putting at risk the development potential of millions of people. Global agriculture markets are undergoing structural changes, and the next three to four years will pose great challenges for achieving an affordable and accessible food supply for the world's most vulnerable. Soaring food and fuel prices are creating a "perfect storm" for the world's most vulnerable.

Research on collective action confronts two major obstacles. First, inconsistency in the conceptualization and operationalization of collective action, the key factors expected to affect collective action, and the outcomes of collective action hampers the accumulation of knowledge. Inconsistent terminology obscures consistent patterns. Second, the scarcity of comparable data thwarts evaluation of the relative importance of the many variables identified in the literature as likely to influence collective action.

Pour de nombreux pays, la mise en place d’une politique rationnelle de gestion des forêts est une tâche difficile. Une des raisons à cela est que différents secteurs stratégiques (politique énergétique, politique du commerce extérieur, par exemple) sont étroitement liés à la politique de gestion des forêts et qu’il faut tenir compte des intérêts d’une multitude d’acteurs.

This paper provides guidance on how to conduct collaborative and participatory risk assessments, paying attention to the human rights of project-affected people. It was written for stakeholders who seek more effective strategies for investigating the human rights impacts of business projects or operations, and who wish to make their human rights impact assessments more inclusive and responsive, or who seek to encourage greater buy-in from other stakeholders.

Land is one of the terrains of struggle for most rural women in Africa because of its importance in sustaining rural livelihoods, and social-cultural and geopolitical factors that hinder women from enjoying land rights. Even when there are progressive land laws, as it is for Tanzania, women have not really enjoyed their rights. However, this has not stopped women to keep fighting for their land rights.  They have sought their own approaches by leveraging opportunities within traditional, religious, and formal systems standing for their rights. 

Administration of land in Tanzania is more decentralized from the president to the village level. The law gives power to village councils and village assemblies to administer village land. The District authorities are given advisory and supervisory mandates over villages and represent the commissioner who takes overall administrative powers.  Despite decentralization, institutions responsible for land administration, land have continued to be cause of many conflicts for years.  Conflicts have been escalating and lead loss of lives and property.

This chapter is an initial exploration and sharing of experiences and ideas based largely on a case study of a group of small farmers who have occupied and are producing on land that they believe they have an historical right to. The group, called Mahlahluvani – although they include people from other communities and claimant groups – are part of a land claim that has been lodged on the land they now occupy, but the claim is not yet settled.

The land tenure system of Tanzania has passed through different historical milestones which form the basis for the analysis of the land tenure regime in general and tenure relations for land owners and users in particular in the past eight decades. The history dates back to 1923 when the British colonial legislative assembly enacted the Land Ordinance cap 113 to guide and regulate land use and ownership in Tanganyika which was their protectorate colony. Prior to this law, all the land in Tanzania was owned under customary tenure governed by clan and tribal traditions.

To ensure that there is sustainability at the community level in its land rights and governance training programme, Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (HAKIARDHI), a Tanzanian national level organization that spearheads land rights of small-scale producers, uses land rights monitors (LRMs) in its program areas. In each of the selected villages of the program districts, two LRMs (a man and a woman) who have received land rights training from HAKIARDHI are democratically elected by villagers.

The Land Rights Research and Resources Institute held its second National level Public Forum on land on 12-13 May 2005. The two day forum was partly one of the planned activities in the Institute’s three year Strategic plan and a special event to commemorate the Institute’s tenth Anniversary. It thus took place along with other activities such as Training of Trainers (TOT) workshop, preparation and running of a documentary on land rights advocacy, special media programmes, Special theatre performance by Dhahabu theatre arts Group and moving into a more specious office premise.

In the Mekong region, conflicts between local communities and large scale land concessions are widespread. They are often difficult to solve. In Cambodia, an innovative approach to conflict resolution was tested in a case involving a private company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), and several indigenous communities who lost some of their customary lands and forests when the company obtained a concession to grow rubber in the Province of Ratanakiri. The approach was developed by CSOs Equitable Cambodia (EC) and Inclusive Development International (IDI) with the support of QDF funding from MRLG.

This study uses a livelihoods perspective to facilitate understanding of the role played by seeds and PGRs in rural people’s livelihoods and considers how a livelihood perspective may strengthen understanding of issues of access. A sustainable livelihoods perspective offers a way of thinking about the linkages among vulnerability, poverty and environmental or natural resource management.