This lesson brief examines the law and practice of allocating land in the protected estate for private investment. It is part of the Uganda module on the Focus on Africa: Land Tenure and Property Rights online educational tool. Private investors need land to conduct their business.

This lesson brief explores alternative biofuel production schemes in Tanzania and their impacts on rural land rights and local livelihoods.

This BMZ comissioned report by GTZ highlights the dramatic increase of land concessions and rising inequality in land distribution in Cambodia. Parts of the study refer to an earlier report by Uch Sophas “Foreign Direct Investment in Land for Biomass Production in Cambodia”. The South-East Asian country Cambodia has an area of 181,035 km2. The Government of Cambodia is adapting its activities to attract FDI, which has lead to a steady increase especially since 2007.

This report is one of the 28 being published as a part of the global study. The full list of studies, and information on other initiatives by ILC relating to Commercial Pressures on Land you can find here.

This lesson brief discusses the dangers and opportunities of increasing biofuel cultivation in Ghana and provides recommendations for a national policy governing this sector. It is part of the Focus on Land in Africa: Land Tenure and Property Rights online educational tool.

As governments in the global North look to diversify their economies away from fossil fuel and mitigate climate change, plans for biomass energy are growing fast. These are fuelling a sharp rise in the demand for wood, which, for some countries, could outstrip domestic supply capacity by as much as 600 per cent. It is becoming clear that although these countries will initially look to tap the temperate woodlands of developed countries, there are significant growth rate advantages that may lead them to turn to the tropics and sub-tropics to fill their biomass gap in the near future.

Just a couple weeks ago,  Iowa State University (ISU) withdrew from advising the Iowa-based firm AgriSol Energy on itsplanned land deal in Tanzania.

I am sharing this extremely important report from Margaret Sekaggya, the Special Rapporteur of the situation of human rights defenders (2011). In 2007 the former Special Rapporteur, Hina Jilani, affirmed that “the second most vulnerable group when it comes to danger of being killed because of their activities in the defence of human rights, are defenders working on land rights and natural resources” (Hina Jilani, 2007, Report submitted to the Human Rights Council, A/HRC/4/37).

The 2008 report by ActionAid suggests that, since women and girls are overrepresented among poor and excluded people, the food crisis is having a particularly harsh impact on them.  According to the FAO, even before the current crisis women made up 60% of the chronically hungry.

[adapted from ActionAid] October, 2012- The report states that the importance of land to rural women goes beyond growing food. Having secure access to, and independent control over, land can mean the difference between, on the one hand, enjoying rights such as education and freedom from violence or, on the other, continual subjugation in society. ActionAid view security of land tenure for impoverished rural communities as a fundamental component of dignified, sustainable development and a crucial step towards reducing poverty and reducing inequality.

[via UN-HABITAT] How can we judge if a land tool is responsive to both women and men’s needs?

Despite progress on women’s rights, rights to land and security of tenure are not enjoyed equally by women and men in many parts of the world. This goes against international human rights, and also impacts negatively on households and the economy.

[via UN-HABITAT] GLTN considers gender as a critical cross-cutting theme in the work on promoting pro-poor, large-scale land tools (for more information on GLTN see www.gltn.net). This short report summarises an analysis undertaken by the GLTN Secretariat to assess how women’s rights, and specific needs, are being addressed by selected projects in the GLTN land tool inventory—a database consisting of numerous international development projects in the land sector is available on the website.